Toastmasters

In December of 2018, I joined Toastmasters[1] attending the chapter which conveniently meets at my workplace. I’ve really enjoyed the welcoming atmosphere that Toastmasters encourages. There are some extremely skilled and caring members(both at speaking and evaluating) who excel at encouraging growth and helping build confidence in public speaking.

I joined Toastmaster to raise my confidence in public speaking and increase my public speaking skills. I have a good friend who started at Cerner the same day as me who did Toastmasters for several years and his skills are pretty impressive. I also have known several respected engineers at Cerner who have done Toastmasters. My brother did Toastmasters for several years and he had a great experience. The primary reasons for me joining Toastmasters at this point in my life are:

• To gain confidence in giving the best man speech at my brother’s wedding in July.
• To gain skills and confidence in giving potential talks and speeches in the workplace.
• To gain skills and confidence in potentially giving speeches for some of the fundraising activities I do outside of work.

Speechcraft

As you can see my primary concern is my lack of confidence in my public speaking skills. I just completed a Toastmasters Speechcraft[2] program this last Thursday and the club I’ve joined conducts a Speechcraft twice a year - once in the Spring, and once in the Fall. I found Speechcraft to ultimately be extremely useful and I wanted to document my experience here.

What is Speechcraft

Speechcraft is a 6 week program designed to accelerate you on your journey on your Toastmasters activities and teach you additional skills and activities that you might not regularly hear during the normal Toastmasters meeting.

Why Speechcraft

I heard about Speechcraft in February and I was not feeling very confident in my progress in Toastmasters at the time. The thing that intrigued me about Speechcraft was the mention of actually discussing strategies for public speaking skills, which I thought had been lacking thus far in Toastmasters.

Schedule

Everyone’s Speechcraft schedule will be different depending on where they’re at in their Toastmasters journey, but here’s what my outline was:

Week 1

Our first week was the introductory Speechcraft session and we focused on strategies for giving effective table topics[3] speeches.

Week 2

In the second week I gave a redo of one of my speeches from two weeks prior. The intent of this redo speech was to practice incorporating feedback from a previous speech.

Week 3

In the third week I gave an evaluation for the first time and learned effective ways to give effective speech feedback.

Week 4

In the fourth week my task was to research a topic and deliver a speech on that topic. I chose to research Yosemite National park since I am going on a hike there in June.

Week 5

In the speech this week and I had to discuss my communication style, where was identified primarily as ‘supportive’.

Week 6

In this speech the goal was to use effective gestures. I decided to tell a funny story of mine which allows me to easily incorporate some gestures.

My Takeaways

It was pretty stressful to have to prepare for a speech or evaluation every week, but in the end it was worth it. I learned a ton about speaking and evaluating. I also learned about my communication style and learned a ton of strategies for delivering effective speeches. Speechcraft is exactly what I was hoping it would be an more. The coordinators and other Speechcraft participants were amazing and I learned a ton from them.

One pattern that I eventually noticed which I found kind of humorous, is that almost every week followed the same pattern for me

• Thursday: receive task(speech or evaluation) to prepare for on the following Thursday. Feel great and very encouraged by Toastmasters

• Friday-Sunday: Relaxation and other tasks dominate schedule (running, hiking, curling)

• Monday: Sit down and start preparing for speech and fall asleep

• Tuesday: Actually sit down and begin preparing for speech. Get some initial notes written down and then fall asleep after “taking only a 20 minute nap”

• Wednesday: Scramble to write the speech and practice it. On a few occasions I didn’t get a practice run of the speech in. Start questioning whether Toastmasters is worth it.

• Thursday: Stress out the entire day anticipating the speech. Get one or two practice reads of the speech in. On only one occasion did I not get a practice run of a speech in and that was because switched the plan for my speech late on Wednesday night and didn’t give myself enough time to practice.

• Thursday night: Feel great and relieved about having speech done. Feel very grateful for support and encouragement from Speechcraft organizers and other attendees. Question why I was questioning whether Toastmasters is worth it.

Is it worth it?

It is definitely worth it! This is the perfect place to practice speaking where people are there with the express intent of helping you on your journey. I came to Toastmasters expecting feedback and have received a ton of great feedback and hope one day I can be as good of a speaker and evaluator as those I’ve met in Toastmasters.

References

[1] [https://www.toastmasters.org/]

[2] [https://www.toastmasters.org/education/speechcraft]

[3] [https://www.toastmasters.org/membership/club-meeting-roles/table-topics-speaker]