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.

Christmas cards, Birthday cards, Easter cards, etc. With Christmas coming there are tons of cards available in all sizes, colours and shapes. England seems to be a card crazy country. And if you have not been born in this card-land it might seem a little bit insane to you.

In Poland, where I come from, we also have cards for various occasions. Admittedly probably not whole shops devoted to them, but nevertheless there is a choice. The major difference however is that of to whom and when cards are presented.

The popularity contest

It seems like holiday cards are a way of showing off - look, I have so many friends, people who care, etc. The more the better. To the point, that the whole experience of choosing a card and sending it to a person, has been reduced to a chore that you are forced to obliged.

Well, that is if you send the card at all. Personally I was used to viewing holiday cards more as postcards, and a means to say to people I care about, but will not be seeing over a particular holiday or occasion, that I remember them and hope there will have a lovely time even despite the fact we cannot meet.

And in that sense it was very strange at first to buy cards for not only someone you WILL be seeing during Christmas, but who you actually live under the same roof with! For people both close to you and almost strangers.

Alternatively you could say in Poland cards are “little presents” given to people you might not have a close enough relationship to warrant gifts (or where gifts would even be inappropriate). This way you can still show you remembered about that person, and that they are more than a stranger.

Who gets the card?

Every year nearly all families in England (and probably in places like the US, that inherited some of the British traditions) go out and mass shop for Christmas cards. Numbers running above a hundred or two, would not be terribly uncommon. UK citizens frantically tick of their lists starting from close relations, through third cousins, to end up on neighbours, co-workers, local postman and the corner shop staff…

This approach to Christmas cards leads to their depreciation. If you are going to buy 150 cards, you are not going to pick each and every one of them by hand. You will probably grab a ready pack, which also has the advantage of a reasonable (cheap?) price.

Even if you start out with the earnest intentions of writing a witty personalized message for most of these cards, quite possible after going through half of them you’ll just run out of ideas… Not to mention all that writing.

At the office last year we have only put our signatures on the mass of corporate Christmas cards. And that was enough to make your wrist hurt.

What about the environment?

With such huge amounts of paper circulated around it does beg the question, why not cut down on cards? If you really want to send Christmas cards to a huge number of relatives, neighbours and friends, why not use email? Leave paper for closer relatives, and hand-pick those special cards.

This way you will not only help save probably quite a substantial number of trees, but also help your pocket. And money savings definitely cannot be overlooked in the current economic situation, no matter how small they might seem.