People who are getting into making public speaking may have asked themselves, what is Toastmasters?
For those of you who have given a speech before, you know too well that it is not an easy task.
The palms start sweating, you feel your temperature rising, and you may also mumble in your speaking patterns sometimes.
This is all because of the millions of thoughts racing through your mind. This is all because this activity is new to you and you are not used to it.
Toastmaster is an organization that helps people break this boundary.
Keep reading to learn more about toastmasters and how they can help you achieve greater heights in your experience as a speaker.
What Is Toastmasters?
Toastmasters is a non-profit organization that enables people to develop leadership and communication skills.
Toastmasters international works globally and own many branches that are working throughout the world.
Toastmasters is headquartered in Englewood, Colorado, and has many branches spread throughout the world.
Toastmasters has over 300,000 members, and it has around 15,800 clubs in over 149 countries spread throughout the world.
Through the network of clubs, Toastmasters enables people to have a great learning experience and grow their communication skills.
Toastmaster teaches people to polish their communication, leadership, and interpersonal skills so they can tackle any problem with ease.
Toastmaster is a great organization for people who want to do public speaking, grow confident, and become better leaders. Now you can confidently answer the question, “What is Toastmasters?”
Who Is Toastmasters For?
You don’t have to be a public speaker in order to join Toastmasters. Anybody can join Toastmasters.
Toastmaster helps people improve their confidence, speaking skills, and leadership skills.
These skills are really beneficial to everybody as they allow us to become a better communicator and an empathic person.
Being a great leader and having good communication skills can help us get our thoughts across to people and solve the problem much efficiently and quicker.
If you want to improve any of your social skills, then Toastmasters is for you.
How To Join Toastmasters?
If you are looking to join Toastmasters, then worry not, as we’ve compiled all the required information you need to become a member.
The first step involves finding the nearest Toastmasters club. You can always google the local Toastmasters club if you don’t know its’ location.
You can also visit the Toastmasters club locator and find your Toastmasters club.
Now you need to go to the club you’ve chosen, and the staff there will guide you through the signup process.
Keep in mind that you need to pay $45 for international dues and $20 for becoming a new member.
While Toastmasters is a non-profit organization, it still needs some sort of fee from members to keep functioning and providing you with insightful lectures and guidance.
How Does Toastmasters Work?
Toastmasters consist of clubs, and each club contains around 20-25 members. Meetings are held at these clubs, usually only once a week.
Toastmasters meetings occur mostly in the evenings, but some clubs also keep their meetings in the morning.
In the club meeting, each member is tasked with speaking to a group of people, who are their members.
After a speech is done, other members give their feedback on the speech and how it can be improved.
It allows people to completely relax and learn in a very supportive environment.
Another activity done at Toastmasters club is something called table topics. Table topics involve talking about random topics on the spot.
It allows members to develop to tackle any problem or speech on the spot without any sort of preparation. This random topic is assigned by the topic master, who leads the meeting.
The environment provided to members is very friendly and supportive, which eases the mind of the speaker.
Members also engage in brainstorming that allows them to learn from each other.
The worldwide network of Toastmasters enables people to have a positive learning experience and keep in sync with all the best tips of leadership and communication in the world.
One more thing we should mention is that Toastmasters is not a social club; instead, it is an educational organization.
It gives the best environment for people to work and grow.
How Toastmasters Can Help Your Career
Having good communication skills is a must to do good in the world of business. Toastmasters does just that.
It helps you build better communication skills, so there are more confident speakers in the world.
The international organization helps people in many ways, and some of them have been listed below.
Toastmasters Help Build Leadership Skills
If you want to start a business, then you need to be a good leader. You need to be able to make the best decisions and handle all the hassle of dealing with employees and clients.
This can be a challenging task if you’ve never communicated with people a lot before. Toastmasters can help you break the barrier and become a better leader by increasing your leadership skills.
Becoming A Better Communicator
It is essential that we must be able to communicate properly in order to do good at a job.
We often feel uncomfortable with some tasks at work, or we may want to raise a point on something that can improve the quality of our work.
People shy away from doing such things as they don’t have the adequate communication skills to handle such situations.
What this means is that being good at communication can help you do good at your job.
Toastmasters does a great job of increasing the communication skills of people by having them involved in speaking events at the weekly club meetings.
Learning To Think On Your Feet
When put on the spot, people often forget to think and don’t deliver the best they have to offer.
This is all because of the anxiety of speaking unusually.
Many times, we find ourselves having to talk with a client or our boss about a certain reason, and we may not have all the answers.
Toastmasters teaches people to talk about stuff on the spot. Say you are meeting a client and you want to really impress them.
If you can keep them interested by talking about anything on the spot, the chances are that you’ll get the deal.
Some other situations where we need to think on our feet are when we are brainstorming ideas and want to get our idea across the room.
This is often hard to do as people aren’t confident sharing their point of view in a room full of people.
This is why all the activities of Toastmasters try to teach you to become a quick thinker and get your thoughts across the room.
Growing Your Professional Network
Being good at interpersonal skills and having good communications open so many doors for us that we just cannot imagine.
If you are a good communicator, you are likely to grow your professional network than a person who doesn’t communicate very well.
Toastmaster instills the idea of good communication in the minds of the members. Toastmasters teaches people to become good at communication through public speaking at the weekly club meetings. This allows members to become great communicators and leaders.
What is Toastmasters Public Speaking Championship?
Toastmasters holds an international tournament for the public speaking championship. This championship is held annually at Toastmasters’ international convention.
It started back in 1938 and has been going on ever since.
Every year, there are over 33,000 thousand participants who come from all over the world, and it can take up to six months for the competition to reach the semi-finals. This is why it is considered the world’s biggest oratory content.
At the end of the competition, there are 10 positions, and each of these positions is considered an honor to achieve. The participants are judged based on their delivery, confidence, gestures, and speech material.
Toastmasters Holds The World Record For Speaking
Toastmasters is not known to many, but it is still considered the best speaking club out there. The Toastmasters of New Zealand participated in a speech marathon in April of 2019, and it got the Guinness World Record by speaking for 127 hours straight. It is regarded as one of the best feats of the Toastmasters ever, as holding a speech 127 hours long is no easy task.
Conclusion – What Is Toastmasters
We’ve discussed in detail about Toastmasters and have answered the query “What is Toastmasters?”
Toastmasters is a global non-profit organization that helps people to build better communication, leadership, and speaking skills.
There are over 15,800 thousand branches of Toastmasters called clubs, spread throughout the world. People can join Toastmasters and become members of the organization.
There are weekly meetings held at Toastmasters that enable members to learn and grow more in the field of leadership and speaking.
We hope we were able to explain what Toastmasters is, and now you have a better understanding of it. Also check out “Burger King onion rings“, “is chocolate candy?“, and “does starbucks take apple pay?” for more interesting articles.