Looking at what people query in Google (or, uhm, Microsoft Search) for on this blog, a few hits have shown up for “Toastmasters clapping”. So I guess there’s some interest in the etiquette around this or maybe just why we do it so much, so here goes.

My thoughts on all the clapping are mixed. Sometimes it feels like we just go overboard on it. If it was just for general politeness, I would actually say we should only do it after someone speaks a sustained amount of time. Think about this exchange:

“Madam Timer, can we have a report please?”

“All speakers were within their time frames.”

Clapping

“All speakers were within their time frames,” doesn’t seem the type of thing you clap for. But I’m a 5 year TM now. I tend to forget that for a lot of people standing up and saying, “All speakers were within their time frames” is nerve wracking and is praiseworthy.

The thing is that we don’t know scared someone was. We can’t say, “Hey, were you about to poop your pants on that new member? If you were we’ll clap.” So we applaud everything.

We do need to be consistent. It’s lame when a minor role like timer gets clapping but grammarian doesn’t. It can make new members who think too much start second guessing if there was a reason they didn’t get applause, if they did something wrong. It is always the Toastmaster of the day’s job to lead the applause.

Ironically the one person who doesn’t always get applause but always should is the Toastmaster them self. When they hand off control back to the president at the end of the meeting, the president always needs to thank them for a job well done and lead the applause.