How to get the most out of Toastmasters

Toastmasters is a great organisation to join to get lots of speaking practice and increase your confidence. I was in Toastmasters for eight years and it made a huge difference to my life – I became a confident speaker, an effective social networker … and I met my husband there!

It makes a huge difference in many people’s lives. I saw shy, withdrawn people become chatty and confident. I saw unremarkable people transformed into inspiring leaders. If you’re thinking of joining Toastmasters to develop your public speaking and social confidence, I do recommend it. Find a club near you using Toastmasters club locator.

But when it comes to developing presentation skills for the business world, the Toastmasters programme suffers from two flaws: [Read more]

15 baby steps to overcoming the fear of public speaking

In the three previous posts (Overcome your fear,  No perfect presentation, Seven thinking sins) I have talked about the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) approach to overcoming the fear of public speaking. I’ve focused on the cognitive principles on the basis that if you’re reading this blog, you’re probably doing presentations (the behavioral part of CBT). But maybe you know somebody who gets so nervous at even the idea of presenting that they avoid it whenever they can. This post will look at what they can do to help themselves, using the behavioral principles of CBT. On the assumption you’ll forward this link to them, I’ll now start talking directly to them.

Here’s the important thing about the behavioral approach. It’s not about just going out and doing it. You need to take a gradual approach. In psychology this is called systematic desensitization.

Imagine if you were frightened of birds. A therapist working with you would gradually expose you to a bird. They might start by showing you a small picture of a bird and keep it far away from you. You’d be nervous at first, but gradually you’d realise no harm was going to come to you and your symptoms of fear (heart beating, sweating) would die down. Then the therapist would bring the picture closer and wait again till your symptons faded. The therapist would then repeat the process with other pictures, then a feather, then a stuffed bird, then a bird in a cage, and finally a live bird flying free. So the process is slow, graduated and systematic.

[Read more]

Unlearning presenting

In my last post I wrote about conversational presenting. Conversational presenting builds on the skills most of us already have and use in normal day-to-day conversations. But for many of us, conversational presenting is hard. That used to be the case for me. I was in Toastmasters for many years and developed a formal style of public speaking. I planned my vocal variety, my body language and my rhetorical flourishes. And it wasn’t really me. Nor was I connecting with my audience – they were a backdrop for my performance.

With the help of a great coach, I learnt about being myself in front of the audience and seeing and engaging with individuals in the audience. That’s conversational presenting.

However, it took time and effort to change my style. Every time I got up to speak it was a trigger to go into my “public speaking mode”. It was a hard habit to break.

[Read more]