A colleague at work has decided to try out the Toastmasters club in Windsor. Being the very social person he is the whole office got an invitation as well. Obviously not everybody went, however we still ended up being quite a sizeable group.

Toastmasters International in short is a club for people who want to develop and practice their public speaking skills. The idea is to provide a safe environment for people to train as well as a place where they can obtain relevant and constructive feedback. As we all know we are judged by our audience every time we speak, however rarely in such situations do we get honest evaluation of how we actually came across.

Except for the colleague who has invited us in the first place, I don’t think anyone else had been to Toastmasters before. Thus although we more or less had an idea how the thing might look, we were pretty much virgins in the world of public speaking.

The club seemed highly concentrated on timing the speeches, as well as of the meeting itself. Unfortunately, to start with we have introduced some chaos, not only because of our group size, but also because of being slightly late - the club was way further from  Windsor Castle than we had anticipated.

The meeting itself abides by many rules and is very structured. It is split up into the following main segments:

• Welcome speech and Toastmaster of the evening introduction
• Table Topics
• Prepared Speeches
• Evaluations

Welcoming Speech

Once the meeting has started we have all been greeted by the club’s president who then proceeded with a quick explanation about Toastmasters finished off with the introduction to the Toastmaster for the evening.

I am not sure how much time is usually given to explanations at the beginning, however considering the amount of guests in the club that evening it was possible quite atypical. This is when the meeting’s structure was outlined and all the important people were introduced.

We were also informed about the benefits of joining the club. These include the Toastmaster’s magazine, and the first course book with 10 public speaking assignments and articles explaining the main focus of each of them in-depth. Also when you join you get a chance to take part in the international public speaking Toastmasters competition.

Once the Toastmaster for the evening was up it was her role to introduce this evening’s theme which was “relax”.

Table Topics

This part of the evening consists of impromptu speeches aimed to be 1-2 minutes in length. The Table Topics Master had prepared topics relating to the theme of the evening, and would ask a random member to come up to the front and give a short speech on that subject.

Very important information for anyone willing to try out Toastmasters is that unless a guest volunteers beforehand only full time club members are considered for the speaking exercise. Had we been explicitly told this in the beginning, we might have stressed a bit less.

As it happened one of the guests did actually volunteer, which in turn made us think that we might be called out any minute too!

In all honesty I think I could have dealt with some of the Table Topics questions, others not so much. However the worst part is, that you get to know the question only once you agree to take part or not. It made me think about would I try and do it, or would I say no. It was quite funny to realize, that in some way I found that I might struggle with saying “no”. It kind of implies that you are unable to even try the task at hand, and in that sense, I’d probably bare the horror of public speaking, just not to be labelled as “unable” of doing something…

Prepared Speeches

Prepared speeches are longer and are timed at 5-7 minutes.The topics of these were quite varied: from the Internet, through fish stories, to etymology related to God names.

Contrary to the Table Topics speeches these are fully evaluated, with each having an assigned evaluator. They also have certain areas the speaker should especially focus on, like for example: body language or speech structure. These are taken from one of the Toastmasters manuals depending on the speaker’s level.

The manuals are a sort of course book for public speaking in general to start with, and later once the first one is completed you can choose from different areas of speaking and focus specifically on these, like for example stand up comedy acts, or inspirational speaking, etc.

Evaluations

During the meeting everyone in the room evaluates each of the speakers anonymously on a piece of paper. We also voted for best speaker, best impromptu speaker and best evaluator. On top of that, as mentioned before, each of the prepared speeches gets a commentary from their assigned evaluator.

I found the later to be surprisingly gentle and positive in their opinions. Admittedly there were no first timers in this meeting, but I was expecting to see more criticism. This was quite reassuring to see.

After the evaluators came something I was not expecting at all. The Grammarian! Well, that would be one person I would be definitely scared of… With all my clumsy pronunciation, and all the ahs, and ums I’d probably get shot.

Is Toastmasters For Me?

After the meeting I did feel positively encouraged to join. For now I decided to go again as a guest and experience a bit more before I make a proper decision.

Although it might seem counter-intuitive, I think that the more you are scared of public speaking, the more you should actually be inclined to give Toastmaster a try. In the spirit of overcoming our fears, practising in front of a small group with similar problems and goals can be a great way to train you speaking skills.

People have opinions, however not all of them express theirs freely. Even worse, those who do voice their strong opinions are often ostracized and showered with love / hate responses. But isn’t this exactly what that person wants? As some say - any publicity is good, no matter if it’s positive or negative.

I might have not searched for outright acceptance, but often tried (maybe a bit too hard) not to offend anyone. This unfortunately leaves you in a gray area, the nice guy everyone passes by. They might nod in agreement or ignore your opinion without protest, however there is nothing to prompt a response.

When you meet people of similar views you will probably agree, have a conversation, maybe exchange some arguments supporting your cause and pinning down your opponents. But will it leave you sleepless? Will it force you to take action and spread the cause more vigorously? Not really.

How to have an opinion?

As stated above we all have one, so actually we should rephrase the question as: How to have a strong opinion. Or take it even further: How to be perceived as having a strong opinion. Ultimately - how to generate human responses.

• Take sides and state your point clearly
• Avoid phrases that convey uncertainty
• Do not be afraid of negative feedback
• Be passionate
• Don’t be afraid of being wrong

Take a side

As long as you are sitting on the fence you are not gaining anything. Saying that this person is a little bit right, and that person is a little bit right too, will not make you look like a strong personality.

Taking a side allows you to focus on one point. It does not matter if you agree 100% with that side, it is obvious that the world is not black and white. But when you want to generate discussion and/or create readership making a stand is important. Playing devils advocate can be a fun experience and a good learning opportunity.

Do not over complicate

Once you establish the point you want to make be clear about what your are trying to say. Adjust the vocabulary, style and presentation to your target audience. If you are targeting teenagers it is pointless to use language from philosophical disputes, and vice versa.

Interestingly taking a side will often lead to being much more precise. This is due to the fact that you are not constantly trying to defend more than one statement, which leads to your thinking not shifting back and forth between arguments.

Use the right words for the job

If your means of communication is writing, then words are everything. Deprived of all the cues like body language, facial expression or voice tones all the weight lies in the right choice of vocabulary.

The DOs and DON’Ts:

• use pronouns like I and me
• instead of might or can or could use is, will be
• avoid expressions like I think or in my opinion
• do not hint or suggest things, make statements instead
  

This does not mean you have to be dead serious. Jokes, anecdotes and some humor can work miracles with your content.

It’s not that bad to burn at the stake…

One big obstacle is worrying about what will other people think or say. Some of us take a lot of things personally and it can be hard to take even constructive criticism, not to mention a full on bashing. There is also the fear of being misunderstood, and trying to explain everything to the greatest detail.

Being racist, sexist, homophobic, etc will not get you sympathy, but at the same time you cannot spend all your life making sure you do not step on anyone else’s toes.

In fact the fear of people not liking what you have to say is worse, than it actually happening. Once you get over the initial feeling of rejection it gets easier and easier. There are as many opinions as there are people in the world, and the sooner you realize this the better.

As mentioned before the negative comments, even when not constructive, still mean interest and emotion coming from total strangers. If anything you can be actually proud of yourself for being able to elicit this kind of reaction. When you only have (no matter how long list) of praises this does not encourage people to discuss the topic further. In fact it often are the negative remarks that encourage other people similarly minded to defend your point of view for you!

Passion is king

The common saying is content is king, both for readership and SEO purposes. Though if you lack passion in your writing you might hit your Search Engine targets, but not necessarily gain many readers. Real humans expect something more than dry paragraphs of keywords upon keywords, and in the long term they are your true audience, not the spiders. The important thing is that if you write passionately you can sneak in a few keywords to make the Search Engines happy while not upsetting the real readers.

There is always place for improvement

Don’t be afraid to be wrong. Curbing your opinions in case you might be misunderstood is not the way. Ask yourself a question. What would happen if it turned out a statement I made is wrong? Would the world collapse? No.

In blogging for example it can actually be an excellent learning experience. If you are wrong and someone points this out you can always take it in, update your views and/or your article.

It is however important not to mistake being wrong with having different opinions than someone else. If you mixed up facts - it’s only fair to update your knowledge. However you should never be pressured into changing your opinion just because some random, anonymous person on the Internet says it’s stupid…