12/5/11

Dear Kayla,

One piece which I found invaluable to my growth and development is Toastmasters.

Toastmasters is a club designed to practice public speaking skills. The club is designed to make people better and more confident speakers. People can start with very basic activities such as telling a joke or introducing a new vocabulary word. When you are ready, you will give a 4-6 minute speech where you basically tell the club about yourself. After that, you do more speeches working on different points such as organizing your speech, body language, vocal variety, and using visual aids. You can go at your own pace and give speeches whenever you are ready. There is also the opportunity to practice speaking without preparation; an extremely important skill which many people are lacking.

There is another part of Toastmasters which is less known. Toastmasters also provides a manual to work on your leadership skills. Like the speeches, you can work on most of the skills one at a time while fulfilling club roles. You start out with very basic roles and gradually add more and more complex tasks. Some people don't like to work on their leadership skills, but I have found that to be extremely useful -- probably more important than the speeches. There were many essential pieces of leadership which I had never had the chance to practice before. I was able to accept feedback of my work, but at first I found giving good feedback to other people's work to be very difficult. When I started practicing that I became better. I also slowly learned to facilitate sections and keep people interested, to run meetings, to run special events, and to mentor other people. All those are skills I would never have had the opportunity to do otherwise.

I am writing about what worked for me. Toastmasters was incredibly helpful to me and to many other people.