Fear of public speaking? You are not alone. 74% of people suffer from speech anxiety. (source)
How can you combat this fear and improve your public speaking skills?
The answer is simple: visit your local Toastmasters club.
How did I discover the club?
I was just flicking through my Facebook feed as usual when I noticed a page of Prague Speakers (a Toastmasters club in Prague). A picture of a microphone and an audience in the background. Hm, that looks interesting. Click, click and I am writing an email to the Officers of this club if I could join them on their next meeting as a guest. Step no.2 was to convince a colleague to go with me. It did work out.
The first meeting of Prague Speakers (at least for me personally) and there was Ondrej Stanek leading a workshop about body language. A very interesting one. And basically, since then, I am in love with the club. My colleague who joined me for the first visit is not attending the club anymore. However, I managed to convince another friend. And even if nobody from my friends had joined, the people here are so friendly, that I could just start alone.
What is a Toastmasters club all about?
I will use our very common sentence – no, we do not make toasts. Not ham or cheese ones. We have speeches that we give in front of the members of the club. In our club, the speeches are in English but there are clubs in other languages, too. In Slovakia and the Czech Republic, we have clubs in Slovak, Czech, English and German.
The longer I am in the club, the more I learn about it. A number of clubs form an area and numerous areas form a district. E.g. my club is in the division L (Czech Republic) and in the district D95 (where we are together with other countries, e.g. Poland or Croatia). Every year, we hold two division conferences where the best speakers from the Czech Republic meet and compete and then there are also district conferences, where you can find the best speakers from different countries. This year, the district conference will be in Athens, Greece.
The Toastmasters world is a microcosmos by itself. Below you can see a photo from the Residential Weekend - an event organised mainly for Czech and Slovak Toastmasters:
How does a regular club meeting look like?
Every meeting has a Toastmaster who is guiding the audience through the program and introducing the speakers, evaluators, etc. A typical meeting has three speakers that give prepared speeches. Then they are evaluated by evaluators.
After a break, we have table topics or improvised speeches where the speakers learn the topic only once on the stage. This part of the meeting is typically very entertaining. Especially new members, however, dread table topics as they fear that they could embarrass themselves and that they will not know what to say. That´s what it is about though. You grow the most when you step out of the comfort zone.
Everybody who goes to the stage for the first time needs to combat fear and nervousness. I have seen numerous speakers that were trembling when giving their first speech. Do you know where they are now? On the stage! This time, however, without fear and with a higher self-confidence.
Visit your closest Toastmasters Club
And these are the reasons why I love Toastmasters – they allow me to learn constantly and improve my communication skills, step out of the comfort zone and meet people, who share the same values and are interested in personal development.
If you can see yourself in this, I definitely recommend visiting your closest Toastmasters club. If you attend regularly, you will improve your communication and leadership skills and you will meet lots of new and inspirational people. It is totally worth it!:))
You can find your local Toastmasters club here.
Stay tuned, this is definitely not my last post about Toastmasters.
inspiranka