I joined Toastmasters at the beginning of May 2021 and left five months later in October 2021. In this post, I will describe my experience in Toastmasters and how it has taught me some valuable lessons in improving my self-confidence, communication skills, and avoiding the habit of saying um’s and uh’s.

What Is Toastmasters?

Toastmasters is a club where you learn to practice public speaking, improve communication, and build leadership skills. Many post-secondary schools have this club, but I also know some businesses that have created it to help their employees. When we become better communicators, it helps us in all aspects of our lives. Whether we are avoiding miscommunication with our family or persuading our colleagues to take a different approach, good communication is key to a clear message. Toastmasters allowed me to have a safe environment where I could practice doing speeches and get the feedback I needed.

Why Did I Join Toastmasters?

I first found out about Toastmasters from my co-worker, who had a speaking style that was very enthusiastic and inspiring. He occasionally mentioned that I should join him, but I always refused as I knew it would be a commitment that would be difficult to keep. Since the inception of this blog, I’ve made it a goal to share my work, inspire others, and invest in myself, so I thought there is no better way to do that than through Toastmasters.

1. Learn to Inspire Others
   I always had the goal of this blog to be motivating, show others what I’ve been doing in my life, and give ideas that can potentially benefit someone else’s life. The tricky part for me is that I never had the best communication skills. I always look towards the people in my life that can speak their minds and exude confidence, and someday I want to be like them as well.

2. Learn to Share my Experiences
   As I’ve learned through my journey in improving my communication skills, I have realized that we are all storytellers. We post opinions online; we talk about our lives to our friends, families and even strangers. Everyone wants to share, but I ask myself, to what extent do I want my knowledge to be passed onto others or forgotten? Do I want my voice to be heard and remembered? We are privileged to live in a time where it is so easy to share information. It is also a hindrance as there is already so much information that someone’s message may get lost. Even if there is no chance, I still want to try to get my message heard; To both learn to listen to others and share my views so we can all learn from each other.

3. Invest in Myself
   Successful people are those who have a growth mindset. That means spending the time to understand and improve my skills. If Toastmasters is an opportunity to enhance my leadership and communications skills, I felt it was an obvious next step to join.

What Do You Do At Toastmasters?

Different Toastmasters clubs have different styles of running the club, but I believe the main guidelines are as follows:

1. Take on Different Roles
   My initial reaction to the whole club was how organized it was. I thought it would be a simple case of speakers and evaluators, but a more efficient system is in place. There were many different roles that anyone could take in the group, and they alternated in between sessions. One example is Table Topics, where the Table Topics Master asks someone in the group a question, and that person must create a 1-2 min speech on the spot to answer it. It also impressed me that it wasn’t just about going through the motions of doing Table Topics, but the “Masters” of each would have to explain to the group what we would be doing. If we were playing Pictionary, the Funmaster would have to explain the game’s rules as if it was everyone’s first time playing it. I thought this was a very ingenious way of helping us get the practice to communicate to others what we need.

2. Do Planned Speeches
   These are the main attraction of Toastmasters. When I joined Toastmasters, I was able to gain access to this online portal called “Pathways,” where I had a list of speeches I would conduct. The first was the Icebreaker presentation about myself, but eventually, I could write on whatever topic I wanted. Whether I listen to a speech that someone else has spent the time practicing and refining or doing one myself, I always find this section exciting and knowledgeable. Each presentation would also get an evaluator where they would give their opinion. Doing speeches and being evaluated can be anxiety-inducing. Still, because everyone in Toastmasters understands that everyone is trying to improve, it feels like a safe environment to make mistakes and learn from them.

3. Evaluate Other’s Speeches
   Throughout the entire toastmaster’s session, some people have the role of keeping an eye on grammatical errors, the timing of how long speeches take, and the most important one to give general feedback on what they felt went well and what could be improved. It also helped me to pay attention to another member’s evaluation, as they may have spotted something like an exciting technique they used that I would never have spotted alone. Evaluators have a challenging role as they don’t want to demotivate the member but show them what they believe could make their speech even better. Being an evaluator and knowing how to critique is so essential when aiming to become a great leader.

What Did I Learn From Toastmasters?

1. Use Facial Expressions and Gestures
   It’s not just about your voice that needs to send a message, but the way our body and face move sends essential information to the audience as well. When we consider our gestures and where our hands are, we realize that these are vital tools to help the audience understand what we are trying to say. By giving a little movement to our hands and face, we’re able to make the speech feel more personal, rather than like we’re listening to a robot.

2. Listen Closely to Feedback
   Toastmasters isn’t just about communicating with others but also improving our listening skills. We think that public speaking is just a one-way communication where the speaker flows their information to the heads of many, but that isn’t the case. By looking into the audience and reading their face and body language, the presenter can react and play towards their audience. As a presenter, we try to communicate what we want our audience to know. We can adjust our speech in ways we never thought about before by getting feedback on what went well and what didn’t go so well.

3. Give Constructive Feedback
   Listening is great, but retaining it and giving feedback is a complex skill that I am still learning to do. I’ve learned that we need to personalize our language by using more “I” phrases. We don’t enjoy when someone tells us what to do, so when they tell us that “you shouldn’t have..” or “you didn’t..,” we can take these statements as a personal attack on ourselves, rather than the speech. By being encouraging and promoting self-esteem, I learned that others have been taking my opinions more seriously. Whenever I give feedback, I now focus on providing ideas instead of telling others what they need to do.

4. Practice Improves Self-Confidence
   The most common mistake people have with low confidence is that they lack the training they need. With Toastmasters, I was able to practice on low stake situations. It was easier to gain confidence as I was improving week by week from listening to how more senior group members managed to captivate their audience from their speeches. I learned what kind of presenter I am and the types of note-taking, brainstorming and creativity needed to be confident enough to take the stage.

Would I Recommend Toastmasters?

I would recommend it, but there was no toast, so I suggest maybe you go to your local supermarket instead.