I attended my first Toastmasters meeting on public speaking today!
Toastmasters is a group of people that get together regularly to give speeches on random topics for up to two minutes and graded on your performance by the other members. It helps you with your elevator pitches and thinking on your feet. It tracks how many filler words or stutters you have throughout your speeches and gives you feedback on how you do by unbias individuals.
Unfortunately, due to Covid, the group wasn't able to meet in person and so had to convince over a zoom call.
They start with a group leader or "toastmaster" who organizes and leads the event for that day; they are responsible for keeping people on track and moving topics along. There are several other roles in the group as well for grading and setting of the speaking topics. Someone will open the meeting with a joke to keep things lighthearted, and one of the participants will give a short inspirational speech.
The table topics are a random assortment of questions that you have to answer and give a short 1-2 minute speech. During the presentation, one of the other group members will keep track of how many filler words you say, such as: "and," "um," "ah," "like," and yeah. There are also bonus points if you use the "word of the day" in your speech. Today it was "flexible." Each participant is given a topic and a few moments to collect their thoughts, then they give their speech
At the end, each participant is graded on how they did, how memorable they were, and how many filler words they used. And everyone votes for their favorite speech. I delivered two speeches today; one was on "What is one habit you have developed recently, and how has it affected your life?." I shared my weight loss story tieing into it some of the struggles I faced and the most important thing behind it (in this case, mindset). My second speech was on "what would the title of your autobiography be and why?" this is where I failed majorly; I shared my favorite autobiography briefly by R. G. LeTourneau and why, but ended with a defeat of "I don't know." Combined total, I had 11 um's/ahs and no incorrect grammar; my first speech lasted 2:15 and the second, 1:55. At the end, each participant votes for their favorite speech, and I got picked for the one I did on weight loss.
There were four participants (a far cry from their usual meetings of 16-18 due to COVID) and got to know each person before the meeting started. I am looking forward to the next meeting and will be more conscious of filler words and stumbling over myself.