I'm a CTM!

Today I've given my 10th speech and completed my CTM (competitive toast master). It's a first basic level of a qualified speaker consisting of 10 speeches.  I've done it just before my long travels when me and the family will be out of the States (and I'll miss all the meetings of the club) until August, the 14th - we're flying to Israel this Thursday.

I really love the club and will be missing it those days. Today, though, I wanted to take this opportunity and explain why I love it.

I found the club when last year I identified public speaking as a skill of mine needed additional development. I seriously decided to invest into it, meaning I was after a program or a plan to achieve something tangible and practical. Merely reading articles and someone's piece of advice on how to present, speak, and deliver messages didn't work for me. I was looking for an environment to immerse myself into and qualitatively grow.

Particularly I needed:

• A playground to practice regularly;
• Coaches (or at least reviewers) to address weak areas of my speaking skills;
• A methodology to study and follow;
• A road-map with detail steps and objectives;
• Live examples to learn from;
• Convenient meeting time and location;

I have to confess that Toastmasters International satisfied all my requests 100%! Here is how and why:

• Every toastmaster meeting takes an hour and planned deliberately with a minute granularity. A typical meeting consists of a number of prepared speeches (about 5-7 minutes each) that lately are being evaluated (another series of short 2-3 minute speeches). Besides that if the time permits there are, so called, table topics when somebody prepares a theme and invite spontaneously the club members to participate in a topic exposing their opinion on the matter. There are also many other opportunities to have a small (unprepared) speech that may vary from club to club but the bottom line is it is a place where you come to speak and learn to speak. There is nothing but speaking during this hour;
• As I said every prepared speech is evaluated by a club member. An evaluation takes 2-3 minutes and addresses positive aspect of a speaker as well as traits to improve. Anything from speech structure, opening and closing, body language and posing, eye contact, vocal variety, message clarity, proper English can be addressed and estimated. It is a very practical and efficient experience for a learning speaker;
• The program methodology is embodied in a kit you get for every program. It consists of a working book and a number of guides for specific traits that are evaluated from the above. Each of the speeches has its own objectives that you have to achieve and pay more attention. Again quite the same basic traits every professional speaker ought to possess but targeted separately with a great piece of preparation and studying materials. Speech organization, getting to the point, body language, convincing the audience, inspiring it - just a few of them. So every next step you take has clear target and plays its own role on the way to the finish line;
• A good club with a sound history and actively participating members definitely has a few masters to learn from. At my club we have usually 3 speeches but sometimes there are more. We don't lack of people to learn from;
• If you go to the site of Toastmaster Internationals and look for a  nearest club you'll be stunned how many options exist there (at least in the States). There are more than 10.000(!) clubs globally and I had a plenty of options to choose one depending on location and time;

The last point I was pleasantly surprised when I joined it was the environment in the club is very friendly. People are eager to give you pragmatic criticism (at the end of the day we come there to practice and hear the listeners' opinions on how to improve). It's not only true for my club but a general approach of the organization. It's a very friendly environment where you immediately feel safe to try, make a mistake, fix it, and try again. You can attend a club as a guest (which is free) as many times as you want to get a feeling on what's going on inside (in a particular club) and then make a decision whether it works for you or not. For me it works great and I'm waiting for my future programs to further improve my skills.

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