Speech! Speech! : Toastmasters Has Been Teaching Folks Speaking Skills for 70 Years Now
In meeting rooms across America, secretaries, engineers and executives gather regularly for sessions that often begin with a salute to Ralph C. Smedley.
They are members of Toastmasters International, and they still pay homage to Smedley, who founded the organization 70 years ago this fall in the basement of the YMCA in Santa Ana.
Toastmasters, started as a self-help group for people jittery about speaking in public, now boasts 8,100 chapters (with about 200 in Los Angeles County) whose members have for years been meeting weekly to practice making speeches and to critique one another’s oratorical efforts.
In the ‘90s, Toastmasters is finding a new niche: teaching professionals in technical fields how to prepare talks and deliver them effectively.
“Engineers are notorious for being bad oral communicators,” said William Womack, a professor of communications at Chapman University in Orange. “I have seen some who are great, but they are definitely the exception.”
They’re by no means the only ones. But technological experts are often called upon to meet with clients and give presentations; if they do badly, the employer’s image may suffer. To make sure that doesn’t happen, some of Southern California’s biggest corporations sponsor their own Toastmasters groups, among them Fluor Daniel Inc., Bergen Brunswig Corp., CalComp Inc., Rockwell International Corp. and McDonnell Douglas Space Systems Co.
Having employees become better communicators is also a way to prepare them for upper management, said Renee Christensen, an industrial psychologist and president of Employee Support Systems Co. in Orange. Even the brightest and most capable people, she said, will be unlikely candidates for executive positions if they cannot present themselves well.
Executives are blunt about the problem: “Engineers tend to be very introverted,” said Bob Johnson, director of contracts at Anaheim-based CalComp, a division of defense contractor Lockheed Corp.
Johnson, who has an aerospace management background, joined Toastmasters in 1960 because he suffered almost debilitating attacks of “butterflies” before every talk, he said.
“I was scared to death when I was called upon to speak at project meetings,” said Johnson, who was a business manager at Hughes Electronics in Fullerton at the time.
After a year at Toastmasters, he said, he not only overcame his fear but polished his skills to the extent that he has since had the confidence to seek jobs that require public speaking.
Anxiety about giving speeches is quite common, said J. Douglas Andrews, professor of business communications and assistant dean at the USC School of Business Administration. In fact, according to several studies, many people say it is the situation they fear most.
The best way to overcome that fear and to become a calm, effective speaker, Andrews said, is simply to practice and get feedback.
Toastmasters strives to help men and women do just that.
The meetings follow a strict schedule. To ensure that speeches end promptly--they are limited to about seven minutes--a timekeeper is chosen for each session to signal speakers who talk too long.
A member may play one of a number of roles. The Toastmaster of the Day presides over the meeting. A grammarian is appointed to monitor awkward and improper uses of language. And the “ah counter” is responsible for tallying the number of times a speaker pauses and says, “Ah . . . “
Everyone plays the role of evaluator. At the end of the “table topics” section of the meeting, when some members are called upon to give impromptu two-minute speeches on assigned topics, everyone else evaluates the presentations. Those giving prepared speeches also get critiques. Members also recognize one another’s achievements by voting on the best prepared speech, the most improved speaker and the best impromptu presentation.
Though the sessions are rigorous--each includes a brief business meeting and about 10 speeches plus evaluations, all in two hours or less--the atmosphere is comfortable and supportive. At the end of each speech, during recognition times and even during the business segment, members applaud one another often and heartily. The evaluations, even when critical, are couched in kind words.
A limitation to the method, said Womack, the Chapman professor, is that emphasis is on actual presentation of the speech, not on how it is constructed. A person might be a bad speaker, he said, because he or she is a bad writer who cannot organize material in a logical way that an audience can follow.
Andrews at USC agreed, saying he thinks the best way would be to hire experts to coach employees one-on-one. However, given the prohibitive expense of that method, he says, Toastmasters is a cost-effective alternative.
The organization, which charges $36 per person for annual dues plus a $16 fee for materials, gives novice speakers what they need most, Andrews said: a lot of practice and continual feedback.
Many chapters, he said, have volunteer advisers who teach others how to be good evaluators or who may even do most of the critiques themselves.
Toastmasters now has 170,000 members across the United States and 50 other countries, the organization says. Over the years, more than 3 million people have enrolled in the program. Women, excluded for the first 50 years of Toastmasters’ existence, now make up half the membership, and the organization this year has its second female national president in Pauline Shirley, executive manager of Sherman R. Smoot Corp., a construction management firm in Washington.
Among Toastmasters’ graduates are some of America’s top executives: Paul Orreffice, former chairman of Dow Chemical Co.; Peter Coors, chief executive of Coors Brewing Co., and Les McCraw, chief executive of Fluor Corp.
Most companies with their own Toastmasters chapters provide a space to meet and offer moral support. The employees themselves typically pay their own fees, though some corporations pick up part of the tab.
McDonnell Douglas offers another incentive for joining Toastmasters: Time spent in meetings can count as part of the continuing education each employee is required to complete every year.
Companies say they see a definite advantage to having Toastmasters in-house.
“We absolutely see them improve their speaking skills,” said Carol Sherman, executive vice president at Bergen Brunswig in Orange, which founded its chapter in 1989. “It benefits us because they are participating in meetings both inside and outside the company all the time.”
RAISING THEIR GLASSES ...
Toastmasters Tops Out
Membership in Toastmasters International, in thousands: 1993-94: 169,005
Source: Toastmasters International
Ralph C. Smedley
Here are some of the career highlights of the Toastmasters founder:
* Started a speaking club in Bloomington, Ill., in 1903 just after graduating from college. * Moved to California in 1924 and founded Toastmasters in Santa Ana that year. * Toastmasters grew large enough to hire Smedley as its full-time leader in 1941. * Was honored by Toastmasters International in 1956 at a national convention, where he was elected president and board member for life. * Worked for toastmasters as educational director until shortly before his death in 1965 at age 87.
