On November 26, 2018 at her Tell Me A Story (R) blog Hillary Rea posted that Toastmasters is a thing of the past. Storytelling is the future. She also said:
“In
summation: if you are considering joining a Toastmasters group, please
reconsider.”
She had dissed them after visiting just one club meeting,
and taking a cursory look at their web site. Her LinkedIn profile says she
founded her company, Tell Me A Story, in May 2011. Years before that Toastmasters
was providing training on storytelling.
If she had looked more than superficially on the Toastmasters
web site, then she would have found that they had an entire manual about Storytelling
(with five speech projects) in their Advanced Communication series. (On July 8,
2011 I blogged about those manuals in a post titled The Competent Communicator manual is just the beginning of
learning about public speaking in Toastmasters International). How about the
more recent Pathways program? At Level 3 it has an elective project for all ten
paths, Connect with Storytelling.
There also are two articles by Craig Harrison about
storytelling in Toastmaster magazine. In the March 2010 issue on pages 16 to 18
there was an article titled The Glory of the Story, which I had blogged about
back on April 25, 2010. In the March 2017 issue on pages 20 to 23 there was a
second article titled Story Takes a Turn.
Hillary linked to an article by Mary Mann at Salon from August
25, 2013 titled How Toastmasters cured me of the desire to speak in public. I derisively
blogged about that article on September 4, 2013 in a post titled Blasting
Toastmasters first and not even asking questions later.
Hillary’s blog post is one more example of someone trying to market their
business talking nonsense about Toastmasters. Back in January I blogged about Charles
Crawford in a post titled Toastmasters International misevaluated, and another
titled Toastmasters International misevaluated again.
The thumbs down image came from Wikimedia Commons.
1 comment:
Thank you Dr. Garber for your comments and extensive research that you always do. You are an inspiration for me. Cleon
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