I am two toastmaster’s meetings old and I am already looking forward to my next meeting as I will be taking up my very first club member role as the Ah-Counter.  Being an extrovert, I have always taken keen interest in the art of public speaking and effective communication but didn’t always have the discipline to practice it religiously.  Indeed the constant encouragement of teachers at high-school led me to participate in inter-school and state level extempore and holding various leadership positions in school and college councils demanded eloquence, but post these phases, there was a void in terms of exercising my fine speech muscles.  To not drift apart completely, I purchased some self-help and public speaking books such as How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, Talk like TED by Carmine Gallo and so on.  These books encapsulate transformation stories of people who have conquered stage fear and then advanced to conquer the attention of million spectators.  Through numerous such examples, these books provide tips and suggestions for mesmerizing an audience through the power of words.  However, these books themselves claim that without practice, there is no secret ingredient to the perfect talk or tone.

Thus, considering my need for practice and application, I set out to seek feedback groups and literally forced my family and friends to let off their commitments to listen to what I had to say.  Ofcourse, I wasn’t always successful and this whole affair was not exactly efficient for any of us. So when I discovered about Toastmasters, I was determined to experience the public speaking practice model which has worked so efficiently and more importantly, effectively.  Also, I was staring at real world examples of people who had transformed their articulation capability and truly gifted their listeners strong and memorable stories and content.  After my club first meeting, I was amazed particularly by three things:

1.  Delegation and Designation of Team Roles: Everyone is prepared be it the toastmaster of the day, the grammarian or the evaluators. If such clarity was bought into every meeting at the workplace, imagine the height of productivity organizations could achieve! Clearly defined positions in any toastmasters club make such meetings productive at the zenith level.
2. Feedback Model: Every evaluator assess the best parts and the weak parts of your speech. Often one-word feedbacks such as, ‘ Nice’, Great, ‘Interesting ’  are not enough. By knowing one’s performance through objective points, a prepared speech giver knows where to hit the nail and improves upon his or her competencies accordingly. In the end, it’s all about self-awareness and knowing your strengths and weaknesses.
3. Strategic Goal-setting: No great speaker was born with the gift of the gab.  Effective communicators shadow behind them years of practice and perseverance.  Toastmasters enables strategic fulfillment of communication goals through levels and rewards members accordingly.

And underlying all this brilliance is the network of like-minded toastmasters who are as passionate about your leadership drive and ambitions as about theirs.  Today I am glad that I am part of this global network and that I don’t have to worry about separately seeking feedback groups as I have found my own family of public speakers and changemakers- the Toastmasters Doyens Club.  Be careful about the ums and ahs in the next meeting, though.

– Pearl Ray ( Content Writer, Blogger, TEDx Curator & a Toastmaster at RG Doyens)