Regular Meeting 150, July 7, 2026 (Hybrid)

Meeting Roles and Responsibilities

This was the first meeting in the 2026-2027 program year, featuring members' short speeches about their goals for the year.

Before that session, however, I had the honor of making a presentation about different roles in our meetings. In Toastmasters, there are many meeting roles that members take turns at every meeting: Toastmaster of the Day, General Evaluator, Speaker (Prepared Speech), Evaluators, Timer, Ah-Counter, Grammarian, Topicsmaster, among others. Each role has its purpose and provides us with an opportunity to learn something unique to it, if taken seriously. Yet, we tend to forget about these opportunities as we get used to serving in these roles. The main purpose of my presentation, therefore, was to let the members know, or remind them of, how we can be creative and "Make a Difference" in serving in these roles, making our meetings more fun and effective as we learn something valuable at the same time.

When we serve as Toastmaster of the Day, the facilitator of the educational portion of our meetings, for example, we tend to hold the meeting agenda in our hand as we introduce speakers. It is okay. We want to be accurate about the speech title and the name of the project the speaker is working on. Yet, it will not be as effective an introduction because our eye contact will be less powerful, looking at the agenda most of the time. What if we introduce the speaker without relying on the agenda? We will look at the audience, keeping solid eye contact, and introduce the speaker, mentioning the project name and the speech title with confidence. We will keep the audience engaged so that it will be a lot easier for the speaker to start speaking. It will require some work to do this. We will have to remember the project name and speech title before we take the stage. Yet, this is not that hard if we put our minds to it. A little attention and focus like this can make our presence powerful and our introduction far more engaging.

Likewise, there are so many different ways we can perform in these meeting roles. By intentionally going the extra mile in serving in the meeting roles, we can truly make a difference and take our own speaking skills to the next level, making our meeting more engaging and fun.

I hope we can inspire each other by trying to make a difference in how we perform these roles during this program year. Even if these differences are small, we should see a tremendous difference if we keep at it throughout the year. I look forward to seeing how we have grown in one year.

Hideo Temma

Founding President and Secretary 2026-2027, Shin-Osaka Leaders Toastmasters Club