Toasted

Public speaking is not easy.

The fear of speaking in front of a group is one of the top fears in American society. Beyond simply overcoming the realization that all eyes and ears in the room are fixed on him or her (a realization that intensifies self-consciousness), a good public speaker must be interactive and engaging in order to be effective in delivering a message. Having to communicate under these circumstances can be daunting for anyone.

While I am generally comfortable around large groups of people, I am incredibly unconfident speaking in front of them. I don't mind the publicness of speaking, I mind the fact that I am oftentimes unable to communicate the message I want at the quality I want to deliver it.

In order to learn to overcome this life-long struggle, I went today to my first-ever Toastmasters International meeting. The goal of Toastmasters is to help you "become the speaker and leader you want to be," and these people aren't playing around.

Without going into too much detail about the meetings, the goal is to make attendees comfortable with public speaking by making them speak publicly. Then the rest of the group goes about dissecting the speech's content and delivery. Ultimately, the speaker gets almost immediate feedback on the shortcomings of his or her speaking ability. It can be nerve-wracking to have people pick you apart like that, but as long as you don't take things personally and you use the critiques to better yourself for the next speech, this group really seems to help.

Even though I was a first-time guest, the group gave me the opportunity to participate in what they call table topics. During this part of the meeting, members are all given a word of the day (ours today was goad). One person is then picked to stand up at the podium. On the spot, they are given a random topic to talk about for two to three minutes and they have to find a way to incorporate the word of the day appropriately in their presentation.

I was asked to talk about my first car, and I had to find a good place to use the verb goad. I started off fairly well and was enjoying myself until I said "ummmm" for the first time. Allow me to let you in on a little Toastmasters secret: they have a person at each meeting whose only task is to listen for "filler sounds" and then hit a desk bell each time the forbidden sounds are used.

The sound of that ringing in the middle of my speech was unnerving. In three minutes, I got dinged seven times. I could tell that the poor lady ringing the bell felt bad at having to keep picking on the new guy, but she was just doing her job. I was so frazzled at the bell that I kept losing my train of thought and I even forgot to use the word of the day. They were kind enough to let me know that everyone gets dinged a lot on their first try, and that I was nowhere near the group record of 17 dings.

Either way, I have a long way to go, and I'm sure I'll have more stories to come.

Pray for me.