From Liam Mifsud.
When I worked in a technical role in a telecommunications company my company once sent me on “voice training” course. I duly attended and learnt a lot about Erlang theory, 30 channel multiplexing and audio compression. Meanwhile my partner had endured (or enjoyed) my being away for a week on “voice training” and come Friday night was eagerly looking forward to hearing me speak more eloquently, coherently and confidently.
Sadly for her, my attempt to explain Erlang theory over a bottle of red wine proved that in fact the opposite of her expectation had occurred. ‘Voice training’ had meant one thing to one person and something else to another, totally dependent on context. Her expectation was based on her knowing me as a quietly spoken expert in my field who lacked confidence in public speaking – hence my joining Maidenhead Toastmasters many years later.
So how does this relate to achieving Competent Communicator? Well, when I finished my 10th project, I considered telling the world via my CV, blog and website that I was now a….drum roll….Competent Communicator. Then my memory of the ‘voice training’ misunderstanding kicked in and the little voice in my head started up. “What do mean you are now a ‘Competent Communicator’??”, it said people would say, “Isn’t that what you learnt in the first 6 years of your life?”
At Toastmasters, CC is not only a significant achievement and the end of an enjoyable learning experience, but also a platform for the future. It raises your awareness of all those things we notice good public speakers doing week in week out and which make you think “Just how does she/he do that??” Finding out how much you have to learn can be a painful experiences. Along the way for me there have been ups and downs, times I’ve been elated and times I’ve considered giving up. But now at last it’s done and looking back over the 18 months it’s taken me, I can say that this is what I have learnt:
- How to stand up confidently in front of an audience and have my mind focused on my message and how it is being received so I can adapt accordingly
- The use of words and rhetoric in getting my message through effectively (and keeping the audience awake!)
- How to organise my thoughts into a strong opening, a structured body and a powerful conclusion, whether it’s a 40 second, 2 minute or 1 hour speech
- The differences between speeches to inform, to entertain, to motivate or to persuade
- The importance of visual communication: your dress, stance, body language, gestures and eye contact with the audience
- How to use visual aids effectively whether PowerPoint, flipchart or just objects to display
- The impactful use of tone variation, amplitude, speaking rate and even more importantly : silence and pauses
- The huge improvements one can make by practicing using a mirror and a voice recording device
So did I know all this after the first 6 years of my life? Absolutely not, not even after the first 40, and I don’t even know it all now. But at least I’ve made progress and can see a future where I continue to improve these skills. Toastmasters provides a structured route through the Advanced Communication and Leadership projects to continue to stretch oneself and develop. But achieving CC is the first step, and now I’ve done that there’s a whole new set of speaking challenges to take on.
Getting to CC has been fun too. There have been low points, as well as high points, but in the true spirit of Toastmasters I think I’ve learnt just as much from both. Here are one of each.
The Pizza speech. Way ahead of the ‘using visual aids’ project I made a speech about home pizza making. Eschewing the use of pictures and diagrams I decided the best thing to do was to demonstrate with real ingredients and, to close, to produce from under the lectern a real pizza I had baked earlier that day. It worked a treat! I won my first Best Speech ribbon, although whether it was for the speech itself or just the quality of the home cooked pizza I will never know.
Shackleton speech. I decided to present the story of Shackleton’s epic Antarctic journey, in my view the greatest story of personal leadership ever. So much scope for dramatization – the cold, the icy wastes, ships sinking, crew despair, Shackleton leading from the front, the storms, the epic ice and sea journey, near death experiences around every corner, shipwrecks, struggle, joy, relief – the story has it all. Yet when I told it, the other speaker that night delivered a speech with so much more passion, enthusiasm, tone variation, gestures and flamboyance that you would have thought she was the one describing an epic. Her topic ? “A history of English desserts”. My lesson was clear: that feeling passionate about a topic is one thing, demonstrating it quite another.
Towards the end of my CC program I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to attend some professionally delivered presentation training that concentrated on use of the voice, breathing, projection and so on (all the stuff I should have done 20 years ago , see opening para to this article!). It made me conscious of the distinction between what such a course offers versus what Toastmasters does.
I would summarise it as:
- If you are preparing for a one off occasion in the near future where it is essential you speak well, and you have lots of money to spend –> go on a 2 day Extreme Presentation Skills course
- If you want to gain speaking skills that will last you a lifetime, develop confidence and the ability to communicate better in any situation, meet other people doing the same thing, and have more time than money – -> Toastmasters is for you
Of course, in an ideal world – do both!
One thing that is unique to Toastmasters is of course the supportive atmosphere within the club meetings. There is criticism but always constructively delivered and let’s face it – it’s only by getting that feedback that we learn from our mistakes. So my final thought on achieving CC is one of thanks to all the MSC members who give feedback so freely and generously at every meeting. Finally, thanks to them, I can, as my partner had expected me to all those years ago, speak to an audience eloquently, coherently and confidently.
