About two years ago, I joined this Toastmasters club in downtown Chicago. Lots of things happened to me during these two years - my second boy was born a year ago; my job gets more and more pressure since my company decided to go for IPO. With two young boys in the house plus a job with 2-hr commute, my life could not be busier. What is it that keeps me stick with our Toastmasters club meetings? What is it that makes each of us here show up in today's club meeting? (Pause) The reason is that we all want to be successful, and we all understand having good communication skills is one of the major ingredients for success. Why is it so important to have good communication skills for us to succeed in a human society?
At work, good communication is essential to a successful career. It could be pitching a sale in front of your clients, giving a presentation at a workshop, organizing committee meetings, motivating your team to reach a goal and negotiating with your boss on a deadline.
At home, good communication is essential to a successful family life. It could be motivating your spouse to do the laundry on a Saturday morning or change baby diapers in the middle of the night, maintaining the order in a house occupied by toddlers and teenagers, making everyone happy including yourself during a in-laws visit.
At community, good communication is also essential, no matter it is coaching a junior soccer team, voicing your concern in a PTA meeting, organizing a block party, protesting against Metra for a bad schedule, or raising building funds for your church expansion.
Joining Toastmasters club is a great way to improve my communication skills. Toastmasters gives me all the necessary tools, a safe environment to practice and learn from each other by example, a supportive team to encourage me at every step. It reminds me my neighborhood in Chicago suburb. In warm sunny weekends, my block is filled with kids and their parents. Babies crawl around on the green grass, toddlers waddle about with their oversized diapers on, and older kids zoom by with scooters and bikes on the driveways and side walk. It is amazing to see how fast kids learn from each other. My five year old just learned to ride his bike without training wheels. It is a big deal for kids of his age. As Daniel was at first time riding on his own with me running behind, my neighbors cheered him up: “Hey, he is getting it, he is getting it.” It all started with Talen, a four year old down the block. Since he took off the training wheels, in a couple days we have a big turnover among the kids in the block. This is the perfect neighborhood that I don’t want to move out.
Just like my neighborhood has kids of different ages and their parents, Toastmasters club meetings have many roles that you can take on. As you can see on our meeting agenda, you can be a speaker to give a speech, an evaluator to evaluate a speech, a toastmaster to run a meeting, a general evaluator to observe the whole meeting proceeding, a table topic master to give table topics, a joke master to enlighten us, a word master to give the word of the day, an ah so grammarian to count the ahs and ums and do grammar check. You can gain leadership skills by serving as a club officer. You can be the President of the club, VP Education, VP Membership, VP Public Relations, Treasurer, and Sergeant at Arms. Being an officer of the club, you will get club officer training and a manual for the officer position. Beyond your own club, you also can serve at the division level and even the district level, like our Lieutenant Governor, Mike Raffety of Chicago Toastmasters district 30.
Toastmasters offers two proven tracks for communication and leadership. As a new member, you will be challenged with 10-speech program to become Competent Toastmaster (CTM). From there, you can select either communication track or leadership track. Both tracks lead your to the black belt of Toastmaster, Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM). In CTM program manual, you can find the formula preparing you to be a successful speaker, such as how to organize the speech, how to choose right words, how to use your voice and body language. I remember in my ICE Breaker speech I was frozen like a statue and didn’t look at my audience at all. Now here I am to give my last CTM speech.
Toastmasters provides everything you need to be a good communicator like a safe neighborhood, the green to try your baby steps on, the scooter you can learn how to balance, the bike with or without training wheels, and lots of help from club members and Toastmasters International. However, to be successful, we can need two extra major ingredients - determination and persistence. I call for everyone here to set up your goal for this year and take actions. If you are already a member, prepare to give a speech on the next meeting, or take on a role such as a toastmaster or an evaluator. New club officer election is coming. You can serve the club by becoming a club officer. If you are not a member yet, join a Toastmasters club today. Speak for success, and Toastmasters is the way.
