A thumbs-down for Toastmasters International from a superficial storyteller

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.