No, this isn’t our group.
But, I am excited about the toastmasters group that I will be joining. Apparently, they like you to come as a guest for the first few times you visit, which is probably a good idea.
Our group is the oldest group in the North Bay. It has been in operation since 1949, I believe. It’s been established so long that it is remarkably numbered #182. To put this in perspective, the St. Helena club, established since 1975 is #756. further, the newest group, Top of the Bay club in Cotati is #744,706!
So, we’ve been around for a while.
I believe that Toastmasters is the fastest way available to make a breakthrough in your personal development as long as you carry forth the discipline to just attend. Just by attending Toastmasters, you will automatically exercise your public speaking presentation no less than two times in one meeting. To take this further, forcing yourself to speak in front of a group will take the fear away, help you develop your ability to speak with fluidity, allow you to more efficiently collect your thoughts to communicate them better, and to develop more connections with leaders in the community who are also dedicating their Monday evening to their personal development.
Because our Santa Rosa Toastmasters group meets on Monday evenings, we allow ourselves a generous amount of time to work on our skills. Other groups meet during lunch (the Tuesday noon club is excellent too), but this can often be conflicting for me working in my chiropractic and spinal decompression clinic.
What happens at a Toastmasters of Santa Rosa meeting?
I’ve only been once, but when you start a meeting, the president of the group addresses the group, goes over business of the week, has everybody introduce themselves with a predetermined topic, then turns the control over the week’s assigned Toastmaster. The Toastmaster (selected on a rotating basis) then runs the meeting through its proper sequence.
The first activity after the Toastmaster takes over is the “Table Topics” activity. Table Topics is an exercise designed to develop your impromptu speaking skills. The person in charge of doing the Table Topics (also selected on a rotating basis) uses some sort of prop or topic randomly selected. This is one of my favorite things to do in a Toastmasters group. This can also be one of the most nervous activities too. It is worth it, however; it is a very powerful exercise, and you never do quite as badly as you feel like you are going to do.
Of course, I have a strategy for Table Topics. I don’t know if some of the veterans of the group do this or not, but I think it is a very valuable thing to have a skeleton outline memorized for impromptu speeches. For instance, Monroe’s Motivational Sequence is effective for persuasion speeches:
• Attention
• Need
• Satisfaction
• Visualization
• Action
There may be some other skeleton outlines to use for other types of speeches. I’m interested in what the Toastmasters training manual says about this.
After the Table Topics, it is then time to do the regular, prepared speeches delivered by members. This group is structured to have three speeches an evening, but when I went this week, there were only two. Apparently, when you join Toastmasters, you have a sequence of speeches with various themes to do, and when you have run through this sequence of speeches, you advance to another level, and so on.
After the regular speeches are done, they are evaluated, and the evaluators are evaluated, and the Toastmaster hands control of the lectern back over to the group president, and the meeting is concluded.
I just realized that I should have used Monroe’s outline to write this post…
If you are interested in attending the Toastmaster’s group, we meet every Monday evening at Cattleman’s Restaurant in the Montgomery Village shopping center on Farmer’s Lane and Montgomery Drive. The meeting runs from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm. Guests are welcome to come for free. No need to RSVP, but it does take some guts to just show up…
Being able to speak in public is a great skill!