While my journey into the Advanced Communication Manual goes on, I decided to also look at achieving my Advanced Leader Bronze (ALB), and Silver (ALS) concurrently. Firstly, to achieve ALB, I had to accomplish the following: Achieved new Competent Leader award Achieved Competent Communicator award (or Competent Toastmaster award) Served at least six months as a club officer (president, vice president education, vice president membership, vice president public relations, secre

Now with any journey that starts out at the basics, for improvement purposes, we should not be languishing at the basics. Toastmasters' Communication track allows you to improve yourself via the Advanced Communication Route. After you achieve the Competent Communicator level (i.e. completing the CC manual), there are 3 more levels to go, and I'll detail them a bit here. Advanced Communicator Bronze (ACB): Complete 2 of the 15 Advanced Manuals below. Each manual focuses on one

Continuing in the life of a Toastmaster, one of the highlights as a Toastmaster member for me was in attending conventions. Conventions are the twice a year events where Districts gather together and do mainly 3 things: conduct the finals of some of the speech competitions, learn from some of the best teachers / specialists in and out of the Toastmaster fraternity, and network like crazy. Semi Annual Conventions happen around the last quarter of the year, where the finals of

In the midst of playing roles in your club meetings, or preparing and delivering speeches as a new member, one will walk right into…. Contest season! Contests are the events in a Toastmaster's calendar that often bring the excitement up a few notches. As a newer member, one would usually start by helping existing members organise speech contests. And there are 2 seasons of contests, one around the 3rd quarter of the year and one around the first quarter of the year. The Humor

Last week I shared about the speeches portion of the Toastmaster journey using the Competent Communication (CC) manual. While that is the first manual every new member tries out, it is by no means the only manual to study and complete. Along with the CC manual, every new member also receives a Competent Leader (CL) manual. This manual covers the other half of what being a Toastmaster is all about. Toastmasters not only teaches and prepares you for public speaking, it also hel