Speaking and Listening: Toastmasters Experience

 In any organization, I believe it is important to engage new members.  These could be volunteers at a charity organization, employees in the workplace, or members of a collaborative group like Toastmasters.  How do we engage new members? In the case of two of my Toastmasters clubs, I believe a key is to encourage their passion and participation.  One new member of a club just gave their first speech and did an excellent job!  Their speech evaluator did a great job pointing this out while also offering the new member suggestions of how they could grow through their involvement in Toastmasters.  I think (and hope!) that this will encourage this new member to be active in the Toastmasters program and keep giving presentations for our group! Another new member in a club showed interest in a side project the club is deciding to take on.  I was thrilled to see their interest in this even before becoming an "official" member and want to encourage them to par...

 Yesterday, I completed an exercise where I presented a hypothetical project proposal to my Toastmasters club and challenged them to come up with ways the project could go wrong - hindrances, obstacles, roadblocks.  I did this to complete a requirement for my Toastmasters "Persuasive Influence" path.  While the focus of the presentation was to give me practice preparing for disruptions to a plan, my evaluator shared a very interesting insight.  She suggested that when presenting the plan itself, I may want to focus on what could go right  before getting to the discussion of what could go wrong. I love this suggestion, because it forces me to look beyond the immediate objective of what I was doing (coming up with contingency plans) and consider the bigger picture.  Yes, it is important to assess risks for a project and come up in advance with ways to deal with those risks.  But in the broader scope of things, we can discourage our team if we only focus ...

When I work on a Toastmasters project, take a meeting role, give a presentation, or answer a table topic, I am focusing on my own personal development within Toastmasters.  And yet, Toastmasters is not just about my own learning and development, but helping others develop their skills.  One common example of facilitating the development of others is serving as a speech evaluation - giving feedback to help others improve their presentations.  Another less common example of facilitation within Toastmasters is leading a Speechcraft class. Speechcraft is a course any Toastmasters member can facilitate that guides students through specific modules to help them get a good start on improving their communication and presentation skills.  There are educational sessions and the students practice their skills by giving presentations. In preparation to lead a Speechcraft course myself, I recently I took a "Professional Facilitation Skills" course in my workplace.  Though th...