A little over a year ago, I joined a public speaking club. I know right, not exactly most people’s idea of a good time. But it has turned out to be a lot more fun than I ever thought (particularly when I remember how I felt when I had to give presentations in high school).

You see, once upon a time, little Nikki was afraid of her own shadow. Homeschooled and unaccustomed to being in large groups, I was painfully shy and absolutely terrified at the thought of speaking in front of a group. But apparently my English teacher (who clearly worked for Satan (or whatever version of him you believe in)) didn’t care about my fear of public speaking and I had to give presentations to the class just like everyone else.

Nowadays, I have trouble convincing people I was a shy kid. A lot of this was just me growing up, but I also attribute a fair bit of my comfort in front of a crowd to the public speaking practice I get at Toastmasters.

For those not familiar with it, Toastmasters is an organisation dedicated to helping people improve their public speaking and communication skills. They have been operating since the 1920’s and have clubs all over the world.

New members typically start off with what the club calls an “icebreaker” because (and this is very original) it gives you a chance to break the ice and tell your new club something about yourself. It’s relatively short at 4 – 6 minutes and there are no rules, all I needed to do was talk about something.

I was terrified.

So terrified in fact that I canceled the first time I was scheduled to speak because I convinced myself I needed more time to prepare.

When I finally forced myself to go through with my presentation, my hands were shaking from the moment I walked into the room until I sat back down again after my speech. It is because of this that, as a general rule, my club always schedules new members as the first speaker of the day so they don’t spend the entire meeting as a nervous mess waiting for their speech to come up.

But that was pre-Toastmasters Nikki. Since I’ve been working on my public speaking skills:

People have complimented me on the quality of my staff training presentations.

I’ve gotten better at remembering names – don’t ask me how this works, it just does.

My critical listening skills have improved.

I am more willing to jump into conversations with strangers, where before I was much more likely to hold back.

Just as important as speaking within Toastmasters is the evaluation process. Every speech, whether prepared or impromptu is evaluated. Speakers receive feedback on what worked well from an audience perspective and advice on things we can improve.

When I first started, for example, I would speak very quickly. Because of feedback I’ve received, I have focused on that and have learned to slow my speech down to a more suitable pace.

My current focus is the expressiveness of my tone – turns out I have a bit of a monotone… Other things such as eye contact, filler words (um, ah, like, you know), distracting mannerisms, defensive body language, and basically anything else which might detract from the message a speaker is trying to convey are also flagged so that the speaker can work on eliminating them from their next speech.

On the face of it, being evaluated sounds like a negative experience, but it really isn’t. Everyone in my club wants the rest of us to get better, we all support each other, and we all understand that any evaluation comes from a place of wanting to help.

The other benefit to come out of the evaluation process is actually for the evaluator. When you are evaluating someone else’s speech, you need to understand what makes a good presentation. You learn about speech structure and pacing, and all the other little things that come together to make a great presentation.

It is no surprise to me that some of our best evaluators are also among our more accomplished speakers.

Improving my public speaking skills made sense to me, so I took steps to make it happen. I honestly believe that good communication skills can do more for your career and your relationships than any other skillset you can develop.

I’d love to hear about your public speaking experiences in the comments below.

Improving my public speaking skills has helped me on multiple occasions in just the last year alone. Imagine what good public speaking skills could do for you over a lifetime…