Toasting the Toastmasters!

Finally, I made it to my second Toastmasters meeting. Again, I feel so enthusiastic about it's possibilities, the people and the positivity the meetings create.  Oh, I must tell you, if you didn't already know, that Toastmasters is an international forum that creates opportunity for people to learn confidence in public speaking.

The first thing I noticed about it is it's acceptance of people of all walks in life. There are people attending where English is a second language, and they use the skills they learn in Toastmasters just to better their English speaking skills. There are others who have speech impediments, and want to overcome them, or gain confidence around people who have accepted their differences, and then there are people who are there to better their public speaking skills for work, for up and coming social events (like wedding speeches), or just to gain some self confidence in who they are. There are stay-at-home mums with young kids,  there are lawyers gaining a higher level of speaking skills, there are those who just need to speak in front of a small group for work, to those who need to step up to large audiences.

The great thing about Toastmasters is that everyone who speaks gets evaluated for their speech. There is a manual that helps you develop each level of speech requirements, and you are assessed on the requirements for each level. The evaluations are required to be positive, encouraging and nurturing. You have a mentor that helps you learn the skills you need to overcome to be a better speaker, your speech gets voted for over all the other speakers for the night, and it feels like a totally rewarding experience.

There are different types of speeches, from preparing a speech that goes up to 15 minutes, to being put on the spot with a subject you may or may not know about and you need to speak about it for 3 minutes. You can be a time keeper, a grunt master (counting how many ums and ahs are said), the 'toastmaster' for the night or an evaluator. There always seems to be something for each individual to do.

For me, I'm attending so that I can be confident talking about my book in public, and even though I spent 5 years behind a radio microphone (an amateur one, I might add), it's completely different talking to an audience when they are staring at you and you need to engage with them, versus not knowing (or worrying about) if anyone is listening at all.

If you absolutely love your Toastmasters meetings, you can attend statewide, nationwide or global competitions with other Toastmaster groups, and even if you're travelling around the world, you can find your closest Toastmasters organisation and continue your meetings wherever you are. How good is that?!

Speaking to Toastmasters who have been with the organisation for 7 or more years, they say the nerves will always be there, but having the direction in knowing how to not show those nerves is a skill that is worth it's weight in gold. I'm so looking forward to getting up and doing my first speech. I know I'll be nervous, but I'm so excited about learning how to show people the best of me in a public forum.