Category: Advice

3 Reasons to Join Toastmasters

We all have our reasons for going to our first Toastmasters meeting. Usually, they are some variation of “my boss made me come” or “I want to become a better speaker.” However, those statements don’t explain the benefits of Toastmasters.

Here are 3 reasons to join Toastmasters:

Reason 1: To boost self-esteem. Toastmasters is a friendly environment, which makes it the perfect place to overcome your fear of public speaking and become a confident leader.

Reason 2: Toastmasters rewards milestones and helps you set personal and professional goals. Recognition is earned after your first 5 speeches, after certain leadership roles are completed, and that’s just the beginning. You also get satisfaction from knowing you play an important role in your club.

Reason 3: To meet different people, network, and be part of a community. You’ll make lifelong friends in Toastmasters.

Secrets to a Successful Toastmaster Year

How was your last Toastmasters year? Were you able to achieve the goals you set for yourself?

Let me give you some tips and tricks I used to achieve and exceed my goals which made a difference in my past year as a Toastmaster and gave me the opportunity to be one of the 6 speakers in the New York Spring Conference 2017 (Page 20).

    • Write down your goals and set dates to achieve them. Would we ever submit assignments if our teachers didn’t give us deadlines? Turn your inner critic to an inner coach and use the inner critic to guide you to keep to your promises to yourself.
    • Have a mentor/coach. It always helps to have a coach/mentor to guide you. All successful people constantly learn.
    • Visit other clubs and have maximum face time outside your club – get to know people and network with them in Toastmasters settings. The more doors you knock give you a better chance of having more doors being opened for you. Your potential is too big to be confined to your club alone.

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Why You Should Participate in Contests

Print out this flyer and hand it out at your next meeting!

When your Vice President of Education asks whether you want to participate in the club contest this August, resist the impulse to turn away. Instead, say “yes.”  You’ll thank yourself for doing it! I’ll tell you why you should participate in your club’s Table Topics and Tall Tales contests.  


Table Topics is tailor made for busy people. No speech preparation necessary. You are asked a question and you answer it in 1 to 2 minutes.  Simple, right?  The question is designed to be open ended, so every answer is the correct answer because it is just your opinion. The response needs to be at least one minute in length and no more than 2 minutes 30 seconds.  You can speak for a minute or use all your time. Every member in good standing is eligible to participate, whether they have 2 months experience as a Toastmaster or 2 years. By the way, “good standing” means the member has paid his or her dues. So what’s the catch?  
 

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Meet the Area Directors: Frank Schuck

Name: Frank Schuck  

Position: Area 61 Director

Club(s): AT&T Middletown, Red Bank Toastmasters, and Talk of Monmouth

Other positions: Education Vice President of Talk of Monmouth and former Sergeant at Arms at AT&T Middletown.

How long have you been in Toastmasters? Four years currently and two years in the late 70s.

What are your plans for Area 61?

As Area 61 Director I plan to encourage greater participation of members and clubs. Speech Contests, multi-club parties, the Blue Claws Baseball outing and conferences will help individuals grow and expand their Toastmaster’s Network. The goal of every Toastmaster should be to complete their CC and CL and then focus on completing the advanced manuals that suit their interests and personal development objectives. Letting members know that joining multiple clubs enhances the Toastmaster experience exponentially.

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Why Hold a Club Contest?

Joe Plahutnik introduces John Connors at a Freehold Phraser’s speech contest.

For most people, the seasons are Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring. For Toastmasters, the seasons are Officer Training, Contest Season, Officer Training, and Contest Season. For Fall 2017, District 83 is holding two contests: Tall Tales and Table Topics. Club contests are traditionally run in August. Winners move on to Area contests in September and Division contests in October, eventually culminating in the District contest at our Fall Conference on November 18.

But why hold a club contest at all? Here are four great reasons:

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One Level Up- Module 1: Planning for Success

Our District 83 theme for this year is “New Beginnings”. This means a new way of acting to move at a much faster pace, a new vision to take our members to new educational heights exploring our resilience, to acquire new abilities no matter what obstacles or hurdles appears on the way, and find consistent  practices to overcome the distractions trying to disrupt our advancement.

For everyone to achieve my challenge to move “one level up” in your educational and/or leadership program, we need to come to the realization that if we don’t plan the year-end outcome, we cannot arrive there.  Or as Zig Ziglar used to say, “You can’t hit a target you cannot see, and you cannot see a target you do not have”.  

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Twitter for Toastmasters

Twitter is an invaluable tool for Toastmasters today. It lets you interact with other Toastmasters all over the world, sharing ideas that make the organization as a whole stronger. However, for non-digital natives, once you create an account, it’s easy to get lost in a sea of hashtags, @ signs, and 140 character-long thoughts.

Hashtags are used on both Twitter and Facebook and are used the same way for both. They are used to highlight key words. Don’t hashtag minor words. #the is meaningless. What words do you want followers and potential followers to find your content under? In the Toastmasters Twitterverse, the most popular are #toastmasters, #leadership, and #publicspeaking.

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Got Goals?

As we start the new Toastmasters year, it’s a great time to “reset” your goals, especially if you’ve stalled in your advancement.

Before you think of what goals you want, first think of last year. What were your goals? How did you do in accomplishing them?

One of the best ways to attain your goals is to have clear, specific goals. Write them down. And look at your goals daily. When you think about something often, you are likely to work toward that.

I’d like to tell you how this worked for me last year.

After 30 years of owning a business, I sold it last year. As a dedicated Toastmasters member since 2012, I used my newfound spare time to make a plan and set some Toastmasters goals. In the past, serving as a club president meant putting newer members first and sometimes forgoing giving speeches.

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