Standing Up to Public Speaking : Toastmasters clubs take the terror out of talking in front of large groups. Members say they not only overcome the jitters, but gain confidence in pursuing their careers.

Brian Thompson is a proper Englishman, crisply turned out in dress slacks and blue Oxford shirt. The Litton Industries engineer smiles wryly when he speaks, peppering his thoughtful comments with witty asides, and his eyes--framed by professorial wire-rim glasses--rivet squarely upon his listeners. He’s done this before, it is clear: He enjoys it as much as his audiences.

But don’t believe for a minute that he hasn’t been a nervous wreck about public speaking. Indeed, the Moorpark resident remembers the time he went to Amsterdam a few years ago to speak about jet-plane instrument panels to an audience of aviation engineers and executives.

“I was thinking of going chicken--you know, playing sick and not showing,” he says. “I wasn’t trembling; I was shaking. Making matters worse was that this was a very by-the-book, technical audience, so language was going to count a great deal. As I started to speak, I heard the nerves in my voice, I heard how fast I was going. They had to stop me and tell me to slow down.”

Things got even worse back at Litton’s home offices in Woodland Hills. On the day Thompson was booked to make a presentation to the company brass, he remembers thinking and feeling two terrifying things. First, he thought: “Don’t screw up, now, Brian, because you’ll truly regret it if you do.”

And he felt his heart slamming to a new violent beat: “I looked down at my company I.D. badge,” he recalls, “because I thought surely that it was moving, that my heart was beating right through my shirt and pushing the shiny badge in and out.”

He pauses.

“You know, not exactly the thing you want to happen,” he adds, erupting into laughter.

The laughter has been hard-earned.

Thompson has, on his own time on Thursday nights, found his way to a tiny YMCA trailer in a Simi Valley schoolyard. There, he is joined by seven or eight compatriots who constitute Simispeak Toastmasters, Club #6083. And there, he says, he has found the confidence that makes him think well on his feet and stand without fear before even hostile audiences. It has also, he feels, helped him advance at Litton.

Thompson made his gains by a sort of buddy system of speechmaking. Simispeak is a “family” whose member stories seem common but no less frightful for it.

Terry Heiser, a bookkeeper, found her way to Simispeak after rising to make a presentation to a group of attorneys. She found she had no voice--literally. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

“My bosses took over and finished out the presentation,” she says. “And it was after that that they said, very nicely, ‘You’ll take care of that.’ ”

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Toastmasters International is well-known as a social organization built around the common purpose of building speaking skills.

The California-based organization is worldwide, with 170,000 members and growing at the rate of 250 members a day. In Ventura County alone, there are 32 registered clubs, all adhering to a strict formula of Toastmaster training materials and meeting formats and some made distinct by appealing to a set of specific needs or common concerns among members.

Those interested in entertaining attend Humor and Drama Toastmasters in Ventura. Singles attend Singularly Speaking Toastmasters in Ventura. Those seeking camaraderie beyond the club join Good Neighbors Toastmasters in Westlake Village. And those seeking bilingual formats attend Los Amigos in Oxnard.

Increasingly, however, Ventura County Toastmaster clubs are encouraged and nurtured by corporations and government agencies that have found their own Brian Thompsons and Terry Heisers are strengthened by the experience and perform better on the job.

At the Minerals Management Service, up to 10 employees--geologists, secretaries, technicians--gather weekly around Formica-topped tables in a conference room. It is strictly casual, a brown-bag lunch with an extra half hour of free “lunch” time provided by the boss, Dr. J. Lisle Reed, regional administrator of the Department of the Interior.

These government employees do what Toastmasters everywhere do: assign to each other the specific tasks of timekeeper, grammarian, evaluator, a sergeant at arms who really acts as emcee and keeps things moving briskly. They munch Carl’s Jr. takeout and Tupperware leftovers and engage in the exercise called Table Topics, or surprise subjects that members must rise and speak about extemporaneously for at least one minute.

Like other clubs, too, the Minerals Service clan even has someone called the Ah Counter--the scorekeeper who sits, pencil in hand, scratching a mark every time someone stalls, buys time, or otherwise clutters up clear speech with annoying ahhhh, ahhhhhh, ahhhhhhhh. (Yes, ummms count as ahhhs .)

At a recent meeting, Barbara Voyles, Reed’s administrative assistant, gives her 10th formal speech--this one titled “The Importance of Believing in Yourself.” With a successful delivery of this prepared, 9-to-11-minute presentation, she will be declared a Competent Toastmaster, a milestone for most members.

After fumbling a few yellow note cards and battling back nerves that have her blushing briefly, Voyles settles comfortably into a rhythm that draws strength from current-day commentary. Lest her talk drift perilously into a saccharin Hallmark Card of inspirationalism, she deftly cites the difficulties faced by Judge Lance Ito in the Simpson murder trial.

Indeed, she cites Ito as a judge who initially showed a lack of self-confidence in the face of famous, at times rapacious lawyers. His problem, she says, was not with competence but with confidence.

“Early on, he let them get away with too much,” she says to nods of agreement. “But he was able to find more of a belief in himself, and his handling of the case shows it.” It is a key observation, as it plays upon observations everyone in the room has made in one form or another, and it acts to focus a collective sentiment that supports her argument.

If there is one familiar note--a note so familiar it risks being platitudinous--it is her exhortation that “nothing worthwhile is easily achieved.” But then Voyles has done what Toastmaster manuals and colleagues have told her to do so well--argued her case convincingly, incrementally, minute-to-minute--that by the time she utters the words they are, like her own newfound self-confidence, well-earned.

She is commended for bringing her speech in on time--8 minutes, 59 seconds--and, among other plaudits for clarity and organization, certified to be ahhh -free. She’s proclaimed a Competent Toastmaster.

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Reed, while not in attendance and not a Toastmaster, is pleased. He says that communication and presentation skills are among the key assets for anyone in government or business--particularly in a climate of technological complexity, mistrust of government, and corporate restructuring in competitive economies.

“We’ve found Toastmasters to be a very important instructional and educational tool,” Reed says, noting that in addition to providing extra time for employees to participate, he has arranged for the Minerals Service to pay the $36 annual dues of any employee willing to sign up.

“Whether the benefit is personal or professional, we don’t care,” he continues. “The people going through this are better able to present themselves, and that’s a key thing we wish to instill here.”

Even so, the original impetus to try Toastmasters was entirely professional. Reed’s large division--it oversees gas and oil resource management in Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo counties--had nothing to do with Toastmasters when it was situated in Los Angeles.

It moved to an office park in Camarillo four years ago in an effort to be more in touch with the region it serves, and Toastmasters quickly became one of the in-house training tools by which staff members--some of them in highly technical fields--could hone skills at speaking to all kinds of audiences.

“We had a problem in L.A.,” says Reed. “That was the lack of interaction of our people with the community. We have scientists here, and the community was having a hard time realizing who we are, what we are, and what we do.

“We got to the point where we realized: As a government agency with highly specialized staff, it was no longer good enough for us just to report to a building, do the work and go home.

“We want our people to communicate effectively not only with the government staffs of the counties we serve, but be able--and they are--to make presentations at Kiwanis and Rotary meetings or judge school science fairs in the surrounding communities.

“This is important in the long run, for when government has to do some things that are controversial, a more informed citizenry will be more receptive.”

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Dr. Ron Weinert manages facilities for the Oxnard public school system. He is the outgoing president of Ocean View Toastmasters, Ventura, and started in Toastmasters while still in the Navy at Point Mugu. His wife, Doris, an accountant for the Ojai Valley Unified School District, is also an active Toastmaster.

Weinert says he joined because he “always got the jitters” before speaking. A significant part of his job is making presentations to school trustees and committees, and he assigns substantial credit for his career success to Toastmasters. He said his wife, whose job also requires presentations with charts and visual aids, had great difficulty connecting with her audience.

“She would face deep fear,” he says, “and she was unable to look at anyone--she’d stare over their shoulders, which is a common thing.” She no longer does.

Weinert is widely considered to be a master speaker. Indeed, at a recent meeting of Ocean View, his speech--his last as president--was on being a competent speaker. He was calm, casual, effective, collected--and won uniform high praise from evaluators.

But speeches affect people in funny ways: at personal, seemingly chemical levels. Indeed, one Toastmaster publication titled “Vocal Variety” cites the work of psychologist Albert Mehrabian, who has shown that people are five times more influenced by voice than by the words uttered: “We are more influenced by how a speaker talks than by what a speaker says.”

That’s why, perhaps, a less perfect speech from a less experienced, newer Toastmaster member won Ocean View’s secret balloting for Best Speech on that particular night.

Bill Faulkner had struggled with nerves, racked up eight Ahhhs, and even, at one point, lost his place. But his impassioned-yet-rational argument in favor of saving the Endangered Species Act was coupled with a clever sales device--the placement of 16 cents in coins before each listener, the cost to each American annually for keeping the act--and a depth of knowledge of his subject. Whatever his pitfalls, Faulkner pitch and tone made for a powerful connection with his audience.

Faulkner’s success was ample evidence that communication comes in many forms, though the best are always practiced. It’s nothing that would surprise Barbara Voyles of the Mineral Service. Or Ron Weinert of the Oxnard schools.

Or the ever-entertaining Brian Thompson, who insists his rise at Litton is linked to Toastmasters--to the point that a company vice president, in Thompson’s last performance appraisal, quipped that Thompson was so nimble a speaker he was fit to run for political office. If he ever does, he certainly won’t chicken out when the cameras start rolling.