Speaking and Listening: Toastmasters Experience

 As I start this new Toastmasters year (as of July 1), I find myself in a position where my leadership positions focus on membership  and education .  In two of my clubs, I am VP Membership.  In my third club, I am VP Education, and at the District level, I am education coordinator.  So overall, my focus for this year is on engaging members  and helping in their  educational  journey. I think membership  and education  go nicely together.  Members join because they want to learn and grow.  They stay because they are learning and growing and see ongoing opportunities for learning and growth.  I have learned and grown a lot in Toastmasters, and I'm really excited about helping others do the same! Here are three specific ways I have already started to help others this year: Helped plan Club Officer Training (one session down, two more to go). Led an educational session on Area Director visits for District leaders Asked some o...

 When you speak from experience, does it have to be your own? Last week, my husband went on an extended bicycling trip across Nebraska.  I used his experience to answer a table topics question for which I won "best table topic" and to give a speech (at a different meeting) for which I won "best speaker." I often encourage people to speak from their own personal experiences, but leveraging the experiences of others can be powerful as well.  In the case of my husband's experience, I contrasted his experience of being out in nature, biking, and camping with my own of being in a house with air conditioning and a bed.  I strove to make his experience interesting, even though I wasn't sharing it from first hand knowledge. For the prepared speech, I got stories and information from my husband.  I got to learn more about his trip and then share it with others.  I even got pictures from him that he was willing to share!  I practiced not only my presentation ski...

 This past week, I attended a celebration of a Toastmasters club that has existed for 80 years!  I was so happy to see our club members, District leaders, and guests from other nearby clubs join us in the celebration.  We had many people attending in person and a few online. What keeps a Toastmasters club going for 80 years?  I can't answer that definitively, but based on my experience with this club, it seems to come down to members wanting to spend time together.  With this particular club, the majority of members attend every week, and even those who cannot attend weekly attend more often than not.  I love seeing my friends and fellow Toastmasters when I attend the meetings of this club, and from watching videos shared at the 80th anniversary party, it seems that past members felt the same. All Toastmasters clubs offer an opportunity to grow skills.  The ones that last seem to offer more than that:  a welcoming environment, a community of encou...

At the end of our "District Leader Training" session yesterday (a learning opportunity held monthly for certain Toastmasters leaders), we had a discussion of why we become members of organizations and why we stay.  A common theme I noticed was awareness.  Do you know of the organization?  Has someone you know told you about the organization?  Is it an organization you would come across when searching online for your goals or interests? Toastmasters International has a goal of becoming the go-to provider for "experiential" development of communication and leadership skills.  To reach this goal, step one is to raise awareness of Toastmasters and what it actually does.  This makes me wonder:  How many people have heard of Toastmasters?  And of that number, how many people actually understand what Toastmasters is about? Suppose someone wants to improve their communication and leadership skills.  Without any personal knowledge of or connection to ...

 June 30 will mark the end of this Toastmasters year and July 1 marks the start of the next one.  That means that this month, May, is a prime time for Toastmasters clubs and Districts (groupings of several clubs) to sort out who will take on leadership roles in the year ahead. During this past Toastmasters year (2021-2022), I held one District leadership role and three club leadership roles.  I was the District Public Relations Manager (PRM), in charge of PR efforts and communication both to members and to those outside Toastmasters.  I was also President of one club and VP Education and sergeant-at-arms of another.  As President, I was to provide overall guidance and direction for other club leaders and members.  As VP Education, I was to make sure members understood the educational offerings of Toastmasters and were able to meet their educational goals. As I reflect on these roles, I can see things I did well and also opportunities for improvement.  ...

 Last weekend, District 24 Toastmasters held our annual conference, and I was the chair of the event!  The theme was "Growing Together."  I had helped plan conferences for Toastmasters before, but this was my first time as the "chair", the person who was in charge overall.  It required a lot of delegation and a team of 14 to pull it off, but it was great.  Here are some things I learned/re-learned in the process: Delegate to others clearly.  Assign one person to be primarily responsible for a task (even if they draw on the help of others) and set expectations for when the task will be completed.  I occasionally got nervous about things not happening as quickly as I wanted, and realized it was because I a) tried to assign more than one person to the same task, causing confusion, b) did not share my expectations of a deadline, or c) both! Show gratitude.  I sent both digital and physical thank you notes to my team.  I tried to show appreciate i...

Speeches are made better by stories.  This past week, I combined both real-world and made-up stories into a well-received speech. I opened my speech in the style of a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book.  "You creep in to the dark and dank cavern..."  The upshot of the opening is that I am introducing the audience to the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game, a game in which players pretend to be characters in a (usually) fantasy world. This wasn't just a speech about fantasy, though.  I proceeded to talk about how players of the game must each make a different character, and each character should have a different skillset for the players to succeed in the game.  I then related this fantasy to the real world where we must form diverse teams if we want to succeed. To make my point, I told a real world story of forming a team to organize our annual District 24 Toastmasters Conference to be held April 22-23.  I have a wonderful team with diverse backgrounds, sk...