Whether it’s in your professional or personal life, speaking with confidence is a beneficial skill.
A group of residents who realized this came together to start a Toastmasters Club – Huntsville Speaker Spotlight – in 2014. Toastmasters International is known for its ability to help people learn to communicate effectively and become great leaders.
“For a lot of people they know what they want to say, but they can’t get their mouth and mind connected,” said Gloria Schimmel, past president of the Huntsville club. “A lot of people are really quite shy about coming forward. With our agenda and program, everybody is asked to take a role in the program during each meeting. It helps you get over your shyness.”
The Toastmaster motto is ‘we provide a supportive and positive learning experience in which members are empowered to develop communication and leadership skills, resulting in greater self-confidence and personal growth.’
“There’s a lot of these small skills that will help you in a job or family scenario in which you need to have a bit more self-confidence in what’s going on,” said Schimmel. “So by learning how to say what you need to say in a manner in which people hear you and learning to take charge of small situations you learn to take charge of large ones.”
She said some people stay in the program for years while others stay for a year or two after they’re confident enough to move on.
“You can take from it what you need,” said Schimmel.
Current president Marike MacDonald noted the program isn’t just about teaching people how to speak, it’s also about getting some people to speak less and become better listeners.
Part of the program includes evaluations on members speeches.
“You need to listen very carefully to give a good evaluation,” said MacDonald. “The evaluation needs to be kind and worthy.”
The club was formed after a few members were tired of making the drive to Bracebridge during the winter months. Currently the Huntsville club has 12 members with three or four prospective members.
“It’s vital to have new members,” said MacDonald. “We have a core group that meet regularly but because we invite other people, at any given time you may be speaking to people you’ve never seen before. So you have this combined experience of speaking in front of people but also speaking to strangers.”
“You have an opportunity to push yourself in a controlled situation,” added Schimmel.
MacDonald said the club has a lot of fun together. She first joined because she was quite shy and found it difficult to make small talk.
“I was very comforable being very shy but it wasn’t who I really wanted to be,” said MacDonald. “I was better at giving a small speech in front of a group of people instead of approaching someone and saying, ‘hi’. This program is great for that.”
There are a couple of components in each meeting where members are required to stand up and speak about a topic, without prior notice of what the topic will be.
For Schimmel, as a real estate agent she needed to learn to communicate with different types of people.
“I needed to learn how to change my dialogue to suit each person,” she said. “It was important to learn to communicate better, both with listening and speaking.”
One of the prospective members is Kai Rannik, who has a speaking engagement at the end of the month and is looking to get some practice.
“Left to my own devices I tend to turn red and stutter and babble. If I can turn that all the way down to just turning red, which is probably the best I can ever accomplish, that would be great,” said Rannik.
She’s found the few meetings she’s attended to be positive.
“It’s a combination of a very positive atmosphere with a routine, which for me those two don’t necessarily go together but they work here,” she said. “I can definitely see how a person would become better spoken in all areas of their life by attending. The part that I didn’t think of coming in, is it’s not just learning to speak, it’s learning to evaluate, which is another life skill people need.”
The club is having an open house on May 9 at 6:45 p.m. at the Huntsville Public Library’s Annex.
“Come and see what the program is all about,” said MacDonald. “We will have a sample program running so people can see what happens at a meeting. It will be a chance to also talk with us and see if it’s a good fit.”
In the meantime, visit the Huntsville Speaker Spotlight website for more information.
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