A Toast!
It was painful to watch. The team had done great work and their project had been selected to be presented at the company’s annual OpEx conference. The CEO, COO, CFO…all the C’s were in attendance.?The team lead that was presenting was smart, hardworking, and funny…but as he started, he fell apart.
It was clear he was nervous as he stammered through his presentation. He was reading from index cards which he fumbled and, unfortunately, dropped. They were out of order as he gathered them up and he spent a few awkward silent moments trying to sort them out but gave up. Instead, he turned his back to the audience and basically read the PowerPoint slides. From my position in the wings, I could see his face redden with embarrassment and angst. He bolted as soon as the last slide was read.
This was the worst of the presentations, but I don’t think any of the 10 presentations that day were any good. It was a shame. The projects were all good practical applications of process improvement. They increased efficiency, saved money, and improved the workplace. But they were all overshadowed by the lackluster presentations. It got me thinking…how can we improve the presentation process?
Not one to reinvent the wheel, I looked for existing programs that help people with presentations and public speaking. One popped up to the top…Toastmasters. I’d participated in Toastmasters a few years earlier.
Many think Toastmasters is just for public speaking, but their mission statement is:
We empower individuals to become more effective communicators and leaders.
Leadership is an essential part of the organization as well. This becomes clear in the meetings. A typical meeting has 2 people giving a speech. They are then given feedback by evaluators.?There is a “Word of the Day” and “Table Topics” (an impromptu speaking exercise) and then reports by timekeepers, grammarians, and it’s all run by the designated Toastmaster. The roles rotate among members, so everyone gets chances to lead and take ownership of tasks.
My relationship with Toastmasters years earlier had gotten off to a rocky start. Most clubs will allow you to attend a meeting as a guest, to see if you like the club. When I became interested I visited several clubs.
One was so large it was held in an auditorium with 80 people in attendance. With that many members, you wouldn’t get many chances to participate. It could take you months to get an open slot to speak.
Another chapter I visited was so small that they had me, as a clueless guest, do the timekeeper role. While it’s not rocket science, it’s daunting to have a vital role as a newcomer.
In my quest for a good club, I felt like Little Red Riding Hood…this one was too big…this one was too small…
I finally found one that was just right. And was quite active in the chapter until I got a new job and moved.
It’d been over a year since I was at a Toastmasters meeting when I thought about them after the OpEx conference. I got on https://www.toastmasters.org/ and looked for a local club we might partner with. None were close enough to be convenient. But next to the “Find a Club” was a “Start a Club” link. So that’s what we did.
With company leadership approval, we started a Toastmasters Club within the company. We met with Toastmasters Divisional Leadership who explained our different options. We decided to create a “closed” club.
A “closed” club means you may restrict membership: anyone joining had to be an employee of the company. We did this to allow our members to speak freely; letting them use work projects as speech topics. And not have to worry about disclosure issues. Also, we wanted the club to be a bonding experience, and we thought a closed club would help with that as well.
It took some work to get a club started. We had to get a minimum of twenty people committing to be in Toastmasters. We held sign-up drives in the company cafeteria, and within three days we had 26 members. Then there was paperwork that needed to be submitted to Toastmasters. Then club officers needed to attend training.
Toastmasters is strict on protecting their brand, and mandate training for offices, reviews of club activities, etc.?
We also had to get a club mentor: an experienced Toastmaster to help us with early meetings. Fortunately, the Toastmaster’s Division we fell under was very supportive and we had two members.?I also happened to have a neighbor who was an advanced Toastmaster. He was a tremendous help, attending our first meeting and gave the first speech to show us how it was done.
The club was an instant success. We had a consistently good turnout, word spread, and membership grew. We participated in the annual competition and sent our winners to a divisional competition where we had winners in areas of table topic and international speech. This helped us establish a reputation among the other Toastmasters clubs.
While all of that was great, what was truly satisfying was the changes Toastmasters was making with our people. There was a marked improvement in Operational Excellence briefings (especially from folks who were Toastmaster Members). But it did not stop with the briefings.
Toastmasters, as mentioned, is more than public speaking, it’s also about leadership, and that aspect became noticeable. People were kicking off more improvement events; many of them initiated by Toastmaster members who were stepping up.
There were also several Toastmasters that got promoted. And while it could not be proven that there was a causal effect from Toastmasters, it was noticed by many that it was folks in Toastmasters getting promoted.
There was also an instance of Toastmasters rescuing a member. As a Director, I participated in the company’s annual “rack and stack” of employees. We were all discussing various employees when the focus turned to a guy on the engineering team. His Director mentioned his lackluster performance: that he was not living up to expectations. The Director recommended ranking him at the bottom, which could have likely led to his dismissal. While I had not worked with the individual, he had joined Toastmasters. I knew him from the club. English was not his first language, and he struggled with that. He joined Toastmasters to help with the difficulty of learning English and the anxiety he had because of it.
I mentioned the engineer joining Toastmasters and how good his last speech was. I mentioned how he’d stepped up to fill the various roles during meetings: timekeeper, table topics, and others. He’d even volunteered to be a grammarian (that’s a person during the meeting that counts “ums” and pauses, and points out good, or bad, grammatical choices). He was terrified of doing that role as he didn’t feel qualified. But he did it, and did it well.
As I told all of this at the review session, the Director wasn’t aware of any of it. He didn’t know the engineer had joined Toastmasters. Given the new information, the Director put him in the “meets expectations” group. As the engineer became more proficient in English, speaking in public, and taking leadership roles, he stepped up more at the company. Taking on more responsibilities and ultimately flourishing.
Toastmasters helped with the OpEx teams as well. We had 5 projects present the next year, 2 of which made it to the finals. Granted, it was more than Toastmasters that got the teams there. But as they presented, they were so much more polished than the previous year. This year, it was a joy to watch.
Find out more about Toastmasters at https://www.toastmasters.org/