I just happened across a video made by Dr. Ralph Smedley, founder of Toastmasters, here. In this brief film Dr. Smedley reflects on the early days of Toastmasters and its philosophy.

A Toastmaster who saw Dr. Smedley speak in the 1950’s wrote an excellent article for the Toastmaster magazine a few issues back. The author reflected that Dr. Smedley was a competent but hardly an extraordinary speaker. That would be my evaluation too based on what I saw. He plays with his hands a bit and could use some work on vocal variety. He’s not horribly PC because he says “men” did this and “men” did that. That doesn’t bother me because he was accurate - TM was men only till the 70’s!

Just like the author of that TM article (it’s not online unfortunately), I’m reminded that being a leader is about much more than oratory - even in an organization dedicated to the art of public speaking! I’m also reminded that where Google places you is a popularity contest, nothing more. A Google search on “Smedley” had poor Ralph showing up at the bottom of the third page, despite having founded an organization that has helped millions.