Im looking into joining a local Toastmasters club. Any members here who would like to share their experiences with these groups?
Did it help in your personal life? Your business life?
At what “level” of speaking did you start at and how long did it take you to progress? Where are you now? What’s your confidence like?
I myself am not that frighten of public speaking but could definitely improve. Recently I have come to realize how potentially powerful good speaking skills can be in almost any area of life.
Thoughts?
Thanks .
I was a member for several years while in grad school. I had always had major nerves with public speaking and realized I had to work on giving research talks or I might have a heart attack. Toastmasters is a good organization, but the benefit you get out of it depends partly on the people in the specific club you join, and your own ability to critique others and yourself. Every club has a culture, the combination of its members, and some are much better than others. Some are shy about criticism, which isn’t helpful, while others just rip 'em out, which can be bad too.
The good thing about TM is the chance to practice frequently, and forcing yourself to be concise because of the very short time limits.
One of the negatives, for me anyway, is having to follow the specific speech formats to reach various milestones in the group.
You probably know that every speech gets an evaluation. So you give speeches, and you give evaluations of other people’s speeches. My biggest annoyance is when people give dumb evaluations by majoring in minor details, homing in on some technical rules about public speaking and constantly noting whether people violated these little rules or not.
For example, one person in my club read something about how speakers should avoid distracting behaviors like ‘clicking’ their lips. Some people when nervous will get dry mouth, so their lips will make a clicking sound when they open their mouths…This one evaluator in my club would always point that out to the poor souls with that problem, even though it had NO IMPACT AT ALL on the effectiveness of the speech. And, in general, evaluators focus on obvious delivery stuff instead of the content of the speech.
But I can’t think of any other way to have such frequent opportunities to speak publicly, and if you put some effort and analysis into every opportunity, you’ll improve. After a few years of TM, I was considered among the best presenters in my program. I am still anti-social in my personal life, so I guess it didn’t help in that regard.
id say do it the old fashioned way and just drink some whiskey and make a go for it.
Thanks for the response.
Nobody else? These seem like very popular clubs, at least her in Vancouver.
i think there was an article about joining it in GQ magazine a few months ago, i remember reading about it briefly.
How old are you? what career are you in? Do you see this is a huge benefit to you or a way to network and meet people?
it would seem to me that it would be full of people that are uppity and full of themselves. The only time i can see myself making a toast would be at a wedding.
The other question is, do you really want to be so good at toasting that when you make a toast everyone says ‘wow that was a great toast’ and then one of your freinds says ‘yea he is in a toastmasters club they practice 2 hours a week’. Also, if you ever hear someone else speaking publicly, you are going to be overly critical of their amatuer level BS. remember how you worked out with a bad program before you found Tnation but didnt know any better, but not your laughing and judging everyone thats doing wrist curls?
i had a roomate that was a TV production major, he was so picky he had to stop watching TV, he said it ruined it for him.
so, take all that into consideration and make your move.
It’s a great way to improve your public speaking. Even if you are already good, it will polish your ability. I did it for a while and I found it rewarding.
[quote]clockworkchad wrote:
i think there was an article about joining it in GQ magazine a few months ago, i remember reading about it briefly.
How old are you? what career are you in? Do you see this is a huge benefit to you or a way to network and meet people?
it would seem to me that it would be full of people that are uppity and full of themselves. The only time i can see myself making a toast would be at a wedding.
The other question is, do you really want to be so good at toasting that when you make a toast everyone says ‘wow that was a great toast’ and then one of your freinds says ‘yea he is in a toastmasters club they practice 2 hours a week’. Also, if you ever hear someone else speaking publicly, you are going to be overly critical of their amatuer level BS. remember how you worked out with a bad program before you found Tnation but didnt know any better, but not your laughing and judging everyone thats doing wrist curls?
i had a roomate that was a TV production major, he was so picky he had to stop watching TV, he said it ruined it for him.
so, take all that into consideration and make your move. [/quote]
Thanks for the response. It is called “ToastMasters” but it’s really not specifically about making toasts, it’s more so just about public speaking, presenting, and how to properly use body language and intonation/inflection to be an effective speaker. For example, here in Vancouver there are many “corporate ToastMasters” groups, ToastMaster groups that are composed of employees of large business like banks etc.
I’m 20 and currently a student in a business administration program.