Develop Speaking Skills with Toastmasters
The ability to speak well is critical to career success, but have you ever evaluated your speaking skills? Many people, if they were to seek feedback, would learn that they talk too much, or perhaps too softly, that they fill their sentences with “ums” and “ahs,” or that they are just uninteresting. Don’t argue that it’s the message that matters; if you can’t put ideas across in a way that makes people want to listen, promotion could be a long time coming.
The Toastmasters organization exists to help. It’s not, as the name might suggest, about raising your glass, or even learning how to brown bread: Toastmasters is about improving your speaking skills.
Toastmasters offers a formal, self-paced program that will help you learn to speak better. The two keys to this are practice and feedback. Toastmasters clubs provide a friendly and supportive setting where you can practice your public speaking, and receive constructive feedback.
There are two parts to a club meeting: formal speeches and “Table Topics”. The formal speeches are usually of five to seven minutes duration (though more experienced members will sometimes choose to speak for longer.) Guidance for the aspiring speaker is given in a manual that sets out ten “projects” or speeches. Each of these has a specific goal, such as improving the use of gestures or working on vocal variety. These will help you learn how to express your ideas clearly and with confidence.
To aid development, after each speech an evaluator – usually an experienced Toastmaster – provides feedback. This is given in public and takes the form of an impromptu speech, but don’t worry about being criticized; the objective is to highlight what could be done better because feedback is essential to learning.
For many people the “Table Topics” part of a meeting is the most daunting, yet this is also of the greatest benefit for those wanting to improve how they speak at work. In Table Topics each person is called upon to speak off-the-cuff on a subject assigned without prior warning. If you’ve never done it before, delivering an interesting and well-structured talk to a group of attentive listeners without any preparation can be extremely difficult. Yes, the first time is hard, but it gets easier with practice, and that’s precisely the point.
Attend a meeting and you’ll find Toastmasters are more than willing to share stories of how Table Topics practice helped them at work. From explaining a project to a group of unexpected visitors to persuading colleagues to consider a crazy idea, being able to express thoughts clearly is essential to being viewed as both confident and competent.
Try it for yourself. Log on towww.toastmasters.orgto find a club near you, and attend a meeting. You won’t regret it!
