Yow Kia

Last week, Saturday night, I had my dinner with two Toastmasters, Bernard and Terry. I just got to know them not more than one month from other Toastmasters Club. When we were having our dinner, we talked about Toastmasters.

Bernard shared his experience that he knew about Toastmasters Club 3 years ago. During that time, he saw a guy’s giving a speech in a Toastmasters Club. I shall not disclose the name of that club. According to Bernard, his performance was not so good. After 3 years, which is this year, Bernard saw the same guy again. He listened to the guy’s speech; there was only slight improvement. Then, the question was popped out. Bernard asked, do you think Toastmasters Club can really help one to master communication skills?

That was actually my doubt before I joined Toastmasters Club. The scene of the first club that I visited is still very fresh in my mind. As usual, the president would give an opening speech. To be honest, that speech was very badly presented. He showed no confident, his voice was so monotonous, his eye-contact was so… Enough, I don’t want to criticize someone so badly. I thought, perhaps he was quite new in Toastmasters Club. During tea break time, I got a chance to chat with the president. What? He told me that he has been in Toastmasters Club for 3 years. That was 1.5 years ago when I had a chat with him. He told me that Toastmaster Club has helped him a lot to build up his confidence in public speaking. Then I thought, before joining Toastmasters Club, perhaps he couldn’t even utter a word in public. Recently, I still occasionally saw the Mr. President. Again, I saw his presentation, and there was no much improvement. After I shared this with Bernard, then only we noticed that we were actually talking about the same guy. What a coincident!

However, by looking at that Mr. President’s performance, I didn’t stop signing up as a Toastmaster. I know that to progress, besides having a good environment and system, individual’s attitude and expectation play quite important roles. There are a lot of people who go for self-development workshops, for example, is just for the sake of going. They don’t really apply the theories that they’ve learnt, they don’t follow the instructions. This is the reason why a lot of people don’t advise you to join those workshops or read books. This is because they didn’t see any improvement after attending the workshops and reading books. They blame the workshops and books…

To conclude that whether the Toastmasters Club really helps to improve one’s communication skills, I would see it in this way – One who has participated the Toastmasters Club, for example, 5 years, I would ask myself, whether he has 5 years experience or he is only 5 years old in Toastmasters Journey. Do you see the difference?

To really see yourself as a 5 year-experienced Toastmaster, rather than a 5 year-old Toastmaster, you really have to do something to keep on improving yourself. You can’t just purely attend the chapter meetings by doing nothing. You have to apply whatever that you’ve learnt in the chapter meeting in your future presentation. At the end of the day, if you don’t see any improvement on yourself, it’s because you didn’t take action to improve yourself, please don’t blame the Toastmasters Club.
=> ATTENTION: This theory applies to any learning process.