Failing With Toastmasters
July 21st, 2005 by Steve Pavlina
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John Richardson of Success Begins Today made an excellent observation about how the “You Have the Right to Be Wrong” concept applies to Toastmasters.
I was at a Toastmasters meeting on Monday, and since we had five guests that evening, we all did a round of introductions. One of our members introduced himself by saying that he comes to the club meetings to be bad. He’s a professional speaker and uses Toastmasters to test material and delivery.
I find Toastmasters to be a great environment for making mistakes and taking risks. I’ve done purely humorous speeches, gave a speech in film noir style, opened a speech with juggling, had the audience pretend to be superheroes, and incorporated wacky props like Barbie dolls and a ghost made from Kleenex and cotton balls. The supportive atmosphere of Toastmasters allows me to experiment well beyond the edges of what I’ve had the opportunity to do in front of other audiences. And I find that Toastmaster audiences appreciate a bit of wackiness and creativity, since they’ve already seen “the standard speech” a zillion times before.
This experimentation has greatly broadened my range as a speaker. I’d never given a humorous speech or used props or tried unusual delivery methods before joining Toastmasters. But now I’m convinced it’s actually less risky to to take risks. As a speaker I find I have a better chance of success if I stray a bit off the “safe” path. If I give a speech just like anyone else would, even if my content and delivery are excellent, the reception will usually be lukewarm. I’m not providing enough value to the audience. But if I do something a bit odd or unusual, it keeps the audience awake and attentive.
What Toastmasters has shown me is just how important it is to keep the audience entertained while you attempt to educate them.
July 21st, 2005 at 4:59 am
After reading your blog I booked into a Toastmasters event here in the UK (Remarkably it is held about 100 yards from my home in Cambridge). Fascinating evening and I will return – with the courage to speak next time. Incredible that some of the speakers had only be going forabout 9 months and where now giving very polished speeches.
July 21st, 2005 at 6:09 am
I have recently started with toastmasters as well. I was shocked at how random and funny most of the speeches were. I was terrified to go at first and I thought everyone was going to be droning on about their personal situations (i.e. lawyer talk, doctor talk) but I have been very happy with it so far. I really don’t see myself up there giving a speech like that, I’m not sure if I have it in me. But hey I’m up for a challenge
July 21st, 2005 at 6:38 am
Off-topic:
GAH! Please bring back full text feeds!
July 21st, 2005 at 6:57 am
Congrats, Geoff. I was also amazed at how polished some members seemed after only a year in Toastmasters. I’ve met several members who’ve been in TM for 20+ years, but I think most of the results come in that first year. I remember that after giving my first “icebreaker” speech last year, I immediately received feedback on ways to improve my gesturing and body language, which I was able to apply in my second speech. A huge benefit for me has been raising my awareness of obvious mistakes I was making, mistakes that are easy to correct but which I never even thought about.
Noticing the number of verbal pauses (ums, ahs, you-knows) is an eye-opener for many people. I probably had around 10-20 in my first speech. Now I’ve got them down to about 0-2 per speech.
July 21st, 2005 at 8:01 am
my biggest takeaway from this post, which you have implied but maybe not stated explicitly: it is invaluable to have places where we can try risky things and ‘fail’.
sometimes i think this means signposting for people we normally interact with: ‘this isn’t a real idea. i’m not suggesting it. it’s just brainstorming. it’s off the wall. dial down the critique-o-meter.’
July 21st, 2005 at 9:15 am
Can you please enable full text RSS ? This one did not have it…
July 21st, 2005 at 10:58 am
“I think most of the results come in that first year.” — That is to reach a 7?
Or at less the illusion of the result 
*jk*
Another thing to consider… it is usually easier to learn something new than change something you have acquired since some year. I am being general, but you probably get the idea there. Anything people do routinely (even if wrong), they will have an hard time changing their habit. Personal growth – the topic you mostly attack overviewly — is probably a constant assessment and change in your way to do — that is probably why it is very hard often
July 21st, 2005 at 11:28 am
Please can you restore the full-text RSS feed? Please!!!
July 21st, 2005 at 4:06 pm
I opted to test summary feeds for about a week to see what effect it has on bandwidth. Because I tend to write some fairly long posts, the full text feeds are beginning to chew up significant bandwidth, and I want to see if bandwidth requirements will be reduced with summary feeds.
July 21st, 2005 at 5:26 pm
Although some people do very well upon completion of the CTM, I have found many people make almost as much growth attaining their ATMB. There are also other positions that require much growth – Toastmaster and Evaluator come to mind. I find it a challenge to be the Toastmaster of the evening in that I want to make the program seem fresh and not pendantic.
I find the real challenge is in giving good evaluations. As an evaluator I am constantly tring to figure out how I can best help the member grow in their speaking skills.
On thing we do that I think helps guests is we have name tags for everyone. Since my experience is people will forget them, we print out name tags (first name only) for evryone at each meeting. I use 2″ x 4″ shipping labels. It only take a minute to print out name tags for everyone and the cost is minimal. I feel it really makes guests feel more at home as they don’t have to try to remember everyone’s name. For guests we fill out a manual name tag for them.
July 21st, 2005 at 11:24 pm
> Because I tend to write some fairly long posts, the full
> text feeds are beginning to chew up significant bandwidth,
> and I want to see if bandwidth requirements will be
> reduced with summary feeds.
I am not sure I get the point of this experiment.
The way I see it, going from a full-text feed to a first-para-only feed could either increase the bandwidth, because people would both get the first-para via RSS, click on it and get the full-text via the website, or it could decrease the bandwidth, because people would get the first-para via RSS, refuse to click on it and not read the article. In the first case, going to a first-para-only feed is a bad idea because it increases traffic and irritates people accessing the blog via an RSS reader. In the second case, going to a first-para-only feed is a bad idea because it reduces the number of people who read the articles.
Am I missing something?
July 21st, 2005 at 11:58 pm
It’s great to see a bit of blog buzz building up around Toastmasters – maybe it will become the next GTD? I agree completely with the idea of using the Toastmasters club as a testbed for new ideas and approaches, and I agree with Ted too, a lot of the magic is in Evaluation.
The mission of every Toastmasters club is the same, and it bears repeating here:
The mission of a Toastmasters Club is to provide a mutually supportive and positive learning environment in which every member has the opportunity to develop communication and leadership skills, which in turn foster self-confidence and personal growth.
Quick plug for our club: if you live or work near Liverpool Street Station in London, the nearest TM club is City of London Toastmasters.
http://www.cityspeakers.co.uk
PS Bandwidth notwithstanding, I vote for full feeds too. If you cannot stretch to that , I prefer to see a summary of the post in my feed reader, rather than the first few words, arbitrarily cut off with …
July 22nd, 2005 at 7:06 am
Steve, I would suggest you stay with summary feeds. If I remember correctly, you use the website traffic data as a yardstick for your progress. Some services, such as Bloglines, may distort the numbers by caching the same feed for many people. By requiring people to actually visit the site you get a more accurate count.
July 22nd, 2005 at 8:08 am
Steve – I enjoy your site very much and recommend it to my friends. I monitor it daily via a RSS feed. It will pain me but I will unsubscribe from any feed that is not full text. Its just too annoying for a snippet to drop off mid-sentance. I understand you’re probably doing this to drive traffic to your site. However, I think this will backfire as people like me will unsubscribe and forget to check the site.
July 22nd, 2005 at 12:28 pm
I have to agree with the pro-full text advocates above. I love the site, but I’d unsubscribe from a summary feed. I’m guessing one motive might be to increase traffic to the advertising, which makes sense to me. If so, how about offering a full-text feed that has ads unobtrusively located within the full content? Seems like the best trade-off to me.
July 22nd, 2005 at 1:39 pm
Steve, I too would appreciate a full text feed. For some reason, my office “content filter” doesn’t allow me to visit your actual blog, so when I’m away from home, I need to make do with the Bloglines feed.
July 26th, 2005 at 11:00 am
Hi Steve,
If you don’t already read it, I recommend Kathy Sierra’s Creating Passionate Users blog for her insights into how to engage the brain for an optimal learning experience.
Her topics are often about software or books, but the underlying ideas should translate well to professional speaking.