The Pathway of Greater Good

As a web designer, I mostly update webpages.

Sometimes I’m asked to redesign a website.

One thing I’ve found is, no matter how outdated, clunky, or ugly the existing website, the new website you replace it with will be met with plenty of complaints.

People hate change!

"Where is my stuff?" "I can't find anything!" "I can't login." "I hate the colors." "The organization is horrible." "Bring back the old website! Why'd you have to change anything?!"

Remember the book, Who Moved my Cheese? People know where their cheese is, they don't want to go somewhere else for their cheese, they want the same cheese, and if you make a change, they go crazy.

In 2018, Toastmasters International changed the Educational Program, which is the way members create, track, and report their speech making progress.

Predictably, people didn't like it.

I'm going to talk about the Education program through the years, how I recently completed a Path in the Pathways program, and finally I'm going to encourage Toastmasters to get into this new Education system and use it, because it makes for a better experience in our clubs. 

A brief review of Toastmasters Education programs

• 1928: Toastmasters founder Ralph Smedley copyrighted 10 Lessons in Public Speaking
• 1942: The first formal manual, Basic Training for Toastmasters
• 1978: A combined Communicator and Leadership manual
• 2005: The Competent Leadership manual published as a separate manual
• 2018: Pathways Learning Experience represents a major overhaul of the system

When Toastmasters International rolled out the new Pathways process, people, predictably, hated it.

First of all, it was only available online. Previously, when you signed up as a new member, Toastmasters International would send you the Competent Communicator and the Leadership manuals, which contained instructions for the first ten speeches you would give. These printed manuals were tangible, and people liked flipping through it and seeing what they had to do.

With Pathways, you log on to toastmasters.org and take a quiz to determine what aspect of public speaking and leadership you are interested in.

Then the system recommends one of eleven different Paths, or learning curricula, for you. Perhaps it's the leadership path, or the coaching path, or working with teams, or mastering presentations.

Because Pathways is customizable, you get to work on things you're interested in. But it also makes for a fragmented club experience since we are not all working through the same set of speech projects.

With the previous program, everyone did the same first ten speeches. There was the Icebreaker, to introduce yourself to the club, the second speech,"Organize your Speech", "Get to the Point", "How to Say It", and so on. Now we are following different Paths, so the speeches you give are for fulfilling different projects.

Another difference is that it takes less time to work through any given Path.

• It took me a little over a year to complete all ten speeches in the Competent Communicator manual .
• With Pathways, I completed four speeches which made up the first Level, in two months. This benefitted the club because we get credit for each member who completes a Level.
• Subsequently, I took between two to four months to complete each of the next three levels and finish the entire Presentation Mastery Path.

A Professional Educator Assesses Pathways

In my reading about Pathways, I came across a thesis for a Masters in Education called Finding Pathways by a woman named Veronica Brown, which came out in May of 2020.

She surveyed 60 Toastmasters clubs in Atlanta to find out how Pathways was going.

She found that by January of 2020, 80% of the clubs had already submitted at least some Pathways credit.

She called what we do in a Toastmasters meeting a Community of Practice, whereas Pathways was what she called a Cognitivist Intervention.

The club … has the mysterious power of a community of practice, where a shared interest in a common practice, tempered with ground rules, and balanced with a network of interpersonal relationships creates a time and place where learning happens spontaneously.

Pathways is educational content. Its job is to support the domain of the community, not become it.

We’re used to watching each other give speeches, interacting by giving feedback, encouraging each other in a circle of community effort.  

Pathways works like a self-directed online class, where you take quizzes, read the material, and follow the exercises leading up to a speech project. As Veronica Brown writes,

Pathways does change the Toastmasters experience to one that is more formally, less casually, educational: it is a series of courses in the same style as other corporate and academic elearning.

Veronica Brown claimed that it will take effort to get people used to a Community of Practice mode of learning, to accept the Cognitivist Intervention that Pathways represents.

I’ve found it’s not that much different to give speeches via Pathways than the previous method of printed manuals.

What did we join Toastmasters for? To practice getting better at writing, speaking, and performing for an audience. Pathways hasn’t changed that. It’s just an updated tool to give structure to our learning. Sometimes we may wonder why we’re assigned a particular project, but that was the case with the previous manual system also.

Personally I use Pathways in a minimal way. I go online, find what the next speech project will be, give a cursory look at the instructions, and download the speech evaluation form so I know what the goal of the project will be. Then I give the speech, mark it as complete, and get the next speech assignment.

Education IS Compulsory

I went to college and graduate school, and part of giving yourself over to an education system is what I consider coerced exercises. Sometimes you have to read a book, write an essay, or do a project and you wonder, “Why am I doing this, I don’t understand how this is worth my time” but I trusted that the instructor had a goal in mind and knew that these experiences were important to gain mastery of the material.

This all led me to remember a book by Tamara Shopsin called Arbitrary Stupid Goal.

In it she talks about the idea that everyone needs something to do with their life. Maybe it’s model trains, or perfecting your sourdough bread technique, or collecting stamps – whatever. You need a reason to get up and work at something.

A goal that isn't too important makes you live in the moment, and still gives you a driving force. This driving force is a way to get around the fact that we will all die and there is no real point to life.
But with the Arbitrary Stupid Goal there is a point. It is not such an important point that you postpone joy to achieve it. It is just a decoy point that keeps you bobbing along, allowing you to find ecstasy in the small things, the unexpected, and the everyday.

And if you achieve an endpoint to an Arbitrary Stupid Goal? Just go out and get another one.

Last year I achieved the Distinguished Toastmaster Award and I quickly pivoted to start working through my second Pathways goal.

We need goals to work toward, even if they seem arbitrary and stupid to anyone but ourselves. Pathways is as good as any other way to structure your learning.

Sign on, give it a chance. I predict that in ten years, we will look back and wonder what all the fuss was about.