Farmington Hills

Toastmasters take the terror out of public speaking

By David Wallace
C & G Staff Writer

» Click on image to view full size « Photo by David Wallace A yellow light tells speaker Julie Keros that she is approaching the time limit for her impromptu speech during the Windbaggers Toastmasters Club meeting at Kerby’s Koney Island Feb. 9. Photo by David Wallace A yellow light tells speaker Julie Keros that she is approaching the time limit for her impromptu speech during the Windbaggers Toastmasters Club meeting at Kerby’s Koney Island Feb. 9.

FARMINGTON HILLS — How great would it be to stand before a group of people and speak confidently?

How much would polished speaking skills help at work in training people, explaining projects to bosses or talking to customers?

Or just how personally satisfying would it be to stop saying “um” and “ah” and “you know” while talking?

All these things are possible, and they’re closer than you think. In fact, they’re at the Kerby’s Coney Island restaurant on Haggerty Road, north of Eight Mile, from 6:30-8:30 p.m. every Thursday, except for the first Thursday each month.

That’s when and where the Windbaggers Toastmasters Club meets in a private room to make its members better public speakers. The club is well- aware that public speaking tops many lists of people’s worst fears, and the club’s humorous name is the first subtle clue for the jumpy that everything is going to be all right.

“I think one of the unique things about our club is we definitely like to have fun,” said Julie Keros. “We definitely strive to improve communications skills, and we have experts here in communication.”

Though the Windbaggers like to have a good time, they use a highly structured process for their meetings that member Diane Sands said looks pretty much the same across Toastmasters clubs. The club also has a structured process and manuals to acquire speaking skills, though people may progress at their own paces.

“There’s targeted speeches that focus on different skills,” said President Marc Chabot.

Lisa Roach, the Feb. 9 meeting’s toastmaster — leadership positions rotate each meeting — began with introductory remarks and introduced the meeting’s various helpers and their duties. For example, the “wordmaster” provided and defined a special word — “banal” on Feb. 9 — for people to try working into their speeches. The grammarian watched for grammar, plus those ubiquitous ahs and ums.

Other folks fulfilled assignments to evaluate the meeting, collect votes for best speakers, tell a joke or recite a poem, and keep track of details. The “roastmaster,” who kept track of the details, later asked questions about each speech to see if people retained what they heard. In that way the club teaches listening while testing whether the speeches were memorable.

The Windbaggers have about 25 members, but personal and professional obligations keep attendance to about half that number at any one time. The approximately dozen members Feb. 9 impressively showed their skills and an ability to think on their feet during “table topics,” a part of each meeting in which the “table topics master” provides each club member with an impromptu topic and two and a half minutes to riff on it. Each member spoke smoothly, entertainingly and ended on time.

“If someone asks me a question at work, I tend to peter out after about two and a half minutes,” laughed Chabot. But he pointed out that if he needs more than two and a half minutes, he probably isn’t communicating effectively.

After the impromptu speeches and a quick break, the meeting featured three members who each made approximately five-minute speeches. Each speaker had a corresponding evaluator watch them and record areas where they shined and areas that could improve.

“We try to say what people did well, maybe one or two areas where they might want to improve, and then encourage them to do well. At Toastmasters, we believe we learn by doing, and so we try to focus on what people do well to encourage them, and if they have a problem with ahs and ums, or they don’t have any eye contact, it might bring that out. It just slowly gets them to be more active,” said 19-year club member Joe Szafranski.

“What it helped me with personally was organizing my speeches,” said Keros.

Roach, who already possessed strong speaking skills when she joined two years ago, enjoys walking into her audience. Toastmasters evaluators made her realize that when she returns to the podium, she should back up and maintain eye contact with the audience, rather than turn her back and turn off the audience’s attention.

The evaluators Feb. 9 variously praised strong eye contact, memorable imagery, vocal dynamics, asking questions to get the audience involved and improvisation based on what happened earlier in the meeting.

One evaluator noticed that a speaker sometimes ran out of breath, so the evaluator, who claimed to have the same problem, urged work on pacing and — drawing a good-natured laugh — exercise. Others urged speakers to come out from behind the podium and avoid repetitive statements.

The dues are $6 per month for Toastmasters International and $1 per month for the Windbaggers. New members pay a $20 initiation fee that covers the cost of the first Toastmasters Competent Communicator manual.

The Windbaggers do not pressure people to join. Guests are always welcome and may come as often as they wish. The club has pages on Facebook and LinkedIn.

You can reach C & G Staff Writer David Wallace at dwallace@candgnews.com or at (586)498-1053.