If you've been to the Toastmasters web page or heard about it from a friend, you already know that it's an organization intended to help people with their public speaking skills. But after a year in the organization, I've found that there's a lot more to it than that. I think of my Toastmasters club not just as a public speaking club, but as a personal development club. Every week, I can look forward to meeting with people who got their butts out of bed early enough to be there at 7:30 a.m. to give speeches or listen to them. (By the way, not every club meets early in the morning; there are other clubs that meet on evenings or weekends).

I joined the club in 2007, hoping that I would just get over my fear of speaking in front of a group. Alas, the fear still hasn't gone away. But I've learned how to get up there and "push" through the fear so that its effect on me is minimal. I've also gotten a lot of benefits that I wasn't expecting. I get the reality picture of how I'm being perceived at large, I've learned to continually develop my one-on-one communication skills, and I've learned to become a better listener as well. After all, the point of going to Toastmasters isn't just to speak; it's also to be heard and evaluated.

To get the answer to that question, the best place to start is by visiting a local Toastmasters club in your area. You can locate one on the Toastmasters website. As a visitor, you can give a "mini-icebreaker" speech that's 2-3 minutes long, and you can also participate in "Table Topics." The rules for visitors vary from club to club, but you can always visit a club at no cost.

Meeting Agenda and Format

A typical Toastmasters club meets once a week, for 60 to 90 minutes, depending on the size of the club. There are 2-4 speakers each week, and each speaker is assigned an evaluator. The evaluator's job is to write a formal speech evaluation on paper, and then present a spoken evaluation to the group. The evaluations are based on certain criteria based on the type of speech. There are speakers' manuals which have different projects to complete. Progress is assessed by how many projects have been completed. For example, if you're doing the project called "Your Body Speaks," your evaluator will pay attention to how well you use body language during your talk.

Timing

All speeches are timed and assigned a minimum and maximum length. The "Time Keeper" uses a stopwatch and also has a traffic light signal that is used to let the speaker know how they're doing on time. The green light goes on when they satisfy the minimum requirement, the yellow light goes on when they're halfway between the minimum and the maximum, and the red light goes on at the maximum time. Thirty seconds after the maximum time elapses, all three lights go on, and the speaker is disqualified from winning an award.

Table Topics

There's also a section called "Table Topics," where club members will be selected in an unannounced fashion to speak extemporaneously (without preparation) on a given topic. One club member is designated Table Topics Master and is in charge of coming up with topics for the people they select. For example, one member of our club brought in a grab bag of random items from her house and had members give a "commercial" for each item. This section of the meeting is often the most amusing.

Other Roles

There's also a "Grammarian," or designated individual whose job is to monitor the use of language during the speeches. The grammarian is also known as the "Ah counter" because they pay attention to use of "crutch words" or phrases that are often used to fill in awkward pauses (such as "um," "uh," "you know," "so," etc.) Finally, the member who is assigned to be the General Evaluator has 2-4 minutes at the end of the meeting to make any comments about how well the meeting was run, give feedback to the evaluators, and make suggestions for the Toastmaster (the person who runs the meeting). The General Evaluator does not evaluate the speakers a second time, but evaluates the rest of the meeting.

Cost

If you decide to join as a full member, it costs $45 for every six months. I'm not sure if the cost is exactly the same everywhere, but that's what my club charges. If you decide to join more than one club, the cost of joining the second club will be less, since a portion of the dues go to the international organization and you would be paying only the club's portion.

Using video is the single best thing you can do to find out what you look like in front of a crowd. It's also a good tool for rehearsing your speeches ahead of time. Video makes for a good reference, too; you can use your videos to look back at your old speeches and assess the progress you've made. Finally, video can be used as a means of promoting your club, or getting additional feedback on your speeches from people who don't attend your club.

The camera doesn't lie. You may see some things, after watching yourself on tape, that other people didn't notice or tell you about. For example, I saw that I had a tendency to smack my lips in between silent pauses; it was a nervous gesture. Other people in my club had mentioned it before, but I had no idea how frequently I was doing it, or what a big distraction it was, until I watched myself on tape. I have also been pleasantly surprised by watching myself on tape a number of times. During a couple of speeches, I felt nervous and felt a tightness in my throat that I was sure people must have noticed. But after watching myself on tape, I saw that it didn't look nearly as obvious as I would have expected.

In the short time that I've been recording my speeches on video, I've also been uploading them to YouTube. I will be embedding these videos into this hub, and also including any future speeches that I tape. I noticed awhile back, that traffic tends to build up fairly easily when you put videos on YouTube. For example, there's one video that I only e-mailed to my club and a few others one time, and since then, over 350 people have watched it. The number continues to grow. Typically, what I do when I video tape a speech is e-mail it to our club's mailing list, and also e-mail it to some other Toastmasters in the area. I typically get good feedback from doing this.

So far, I'm the only member of my club who is currently putting speeches on video. If you're like the rest of my club, and the idea of having your speech immortalized on video sounds scary, consider that there's a big opportunity you're missing out on. There may be things that come out on tape that you don't like to see, but everybody else is already seeing those things and you're not aware of it.

Don't take my word for this; ask any Toastmaster who puts their speeches on video about the difference that it makes.