Wednesday, September 19, 2012

A Rookie’s guide to get the most out of Toastmasters Club

I joined the Toastmasters club five months ago as a guest and soon became a member. I had found a place where I could translate my thoughts into words and words into expressions. Here, people are there to patiently listen to whatever I have to say and the elaborate analysis of my speeches by various evaluators is an icing on the cake. However, you can’t benefit from it without your sincere efforts.

The Basic Necessities:

1. Be Regular: It is not too hard to take 60-90 mins out of your whole week’s recreational activities. Where there is a will there is a way.

2. Be Active: Not just regular, but active participation is also a must. You can’t benefit from just passively attending the meetings. Take up certain roles in the meetings.

3. Act on feedback: Note down critical feedback from all the evaluators and gradually work on improving upon those points.

4. Ask the Mentor: Your mentor was in your shoes someday. You can learn a lot from the experiences of the mentor and of course other senior members.

My Two Cents on Speeches:

Extempore: The toughest speech to deliver is an Impromptu. You never know what can catch you off guard in a real life situation. The Table Topics are an interesting way to overcome your fear of public speaking and to enhance your confidence. It takes conscious efforts to reduce your hesitation, Ahs, Ums and fillers. Browsing through newspapers or news channels lets you have the content and confidence in your speeches, which then becomes a habit!

Prepared Speech: The Ice-breaker gives you initial hiccups. It is not easy to express interesting parts of our lives, even the harmless ones that can be easily shared with the audience! One should go through the projects following the guidelines in the CC manual. This leads to make gradual but significant headway towards better communication skills. It requires some thinking and observation of our surroundings to choose the speech topics. Once the content is ready, get it reviewed by mentor. A good rehearsal is a must to deliver the content in the best possible way.

A final word:

Complacency: The road to better communication has no dead end. You should never get complacent, and should keep striving hard to better your skills. Even if you are one in a million, there are 7000 people just like you!

Care to give back: "Toastmasters International" has given us an excellent opportunity to learn by fun at not so great a price to improve our public speaking, communication and leadership skills. We should be grateful for everything that we get from the club. So participate, indulge, share and make the most out of this great initiative.

Work for a cause, not applause.
Live life to express and not to impress.

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