First words

Public speaking was never something that I was all too good at. There really is no need to make speeches when your work involves sitting in front of a computer all day long. The requirement is to be a worker bee, not Martin Luther King.

That said, there have been opportunities for me to stand up in front of people and deliver information, the most recent being a few years back when I taught English to Chinese students. That never went well, despite all my preparation I spent half the class winging it and not always speaking with confidence or authority.

Before walking into the Toastmasters meeting I was expecting a very stern officious atmosphere, after all, when an organisation describes itself as a training and educational establishment whose objective is to enhance its members’ communication, leadership, training and management skills, you don’t automatically think of fun, instead it reminds you more of bad days in school so my expectations weren’t high….

What I found was something completely different, a very inclusive, welcoming group that gave people their time to speak and even encouraged them to speak, it was a pleasant surprise. Another pleasant surprise was during the prepared speeches part of the meeting I discovered that not everyone was a great speaker, they were still learning but there they were standing up in front of everyone trying their best.

In a strange way, it was seeing the “learner” speakers that made me interested in becoming a toastmaster myself. If everyone had been brilliant then I wouldn’t have been “like them” and wouldn’t have seen a place for me there.

Even though everyone was nice and welcoming, when the meeting began, it became quite formal with a detailed agenda where the members are updated on events, people are given roles for the meeting such as time-keeper, evaluator, grammarian and the “ah-counter”. There seemed to be a lot going on.

And there was clapping, a lot of clapping. These people clap for every little thing, stand up – clap, sit down – clap, it certainly took a while to get used to the clapping. It actually is quite a smart idea, it welcomes you up onto the stage and adds a little extra encouragement to someone who might be nervous about speaking. Then, no matter how good or bad your speech is, at the end of it, you will get a round of applause because everyone there appreciates the fact that you got up there, you spoke in front of them and getting a round of applause feels good.

My other main memory of the evening was the Table Topics, if you thought getting up in front of a group of 20 people and giving a speech that you’d prepared in advance was scary, well that’s nothing compared to Table Topics! It consists of people being called up to speak for 1-2 minutes on a particular topic, and quite often a topic they know nothing about, what could be worse than that?

Yet people got up there and did it, they found something to talk about. How? I’ve no idea, they just spoke, and I did too.

I’d thought that being a guest would make me safe…

It was incredibly nerve-wrecking walking from the back to the front of the room. It was even worse standing there in front of everyone, not really knowing what to say or how to fill my 1-2 minutes. It wasn’t exactly perfect, I filled the first 30 seconds with enough umms and ahhhs to keep the ah-counter very busy but then halfway through something clicked and I found myself talking about a subject that I could talk a little about and it flowed a little better, I relaxed a tiny bit, I delivered something that approximated a speech, I talked.

That said I was incredibly relieved when it was all over and I was safe once again in my seat!

It was good, it was awful, it was terrifying but I’m glad I was chosen, it was the type of challenge I needed, being shy at the back wasn’t going to going to improve my confidence whereas being thrown in at the deep-end is scary but effective!

It was that terrifying moment standing in front of everyone that made me decide to visit Toastmasters a second time.