{"id":1545,"date":"2012-07-09T12:15:22","date_gmt":"2012-07-09T12:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/presentation-skills-blog.co.uk\/?p=1545"},"modified":"2012-07-09T12:15:22","modified_gmt":"2012-07-09T12:15:22","slug":"presentation-practice-at-toastmasters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/presentation-practice-at-toastmasters\/","title":{"rendered":"Presentation practice at Toastmasters"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 185px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Toastmaster logo\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/thumb\/0\/05\/Toastmasters_2011.png\/175px-Toastmasters_2011.png\" alt=\"Toastmaster logo\" width=\"175\" height=\"153\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Toastmaster logo<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I\u2019ve said it before and I\u2019ll say it again: Toastmasters is a mixed blessing.<\/p>\n<p>On the upside, you get stagetime and there\u2019s very little better for improving your public speaking and presenting skills than stagetime. Great. Value for money-wise it\u2019s variable but often pretty good too.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s more, it can be a lot of fun.<\/p>\n<p>But what about the downside?<\/p>\n<p>Well, there\u2019s artificial limits and rules on your presentation that are imposed: time for example. No doubt there\u2019s a great discipline to be learned by filling a four minute slot or a three minutes slot or a 45 minutes slot or a.. but in the real world it doesn\u2019t work like that.<\/p>\n<p>A lot of what you learn at Toastmasters doesn\u2019t move into the real world.<\/p>\n<p>Mind you, you get excellent feedback&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;don\u2019t you?<\/p>\n<p>No.<\/p>\n<p>You get the feedback the people in the room feel like you should have. Firstly, few of them are experts. If they were, they\u2019d not be at Toastmasters&#8230; Yes, I know there are brilliant presenters at Toastmasters, but you\u2019ve got to admit that most people are adequate at best, just like in the real world. :)<\/p>\n<p>In any case, what they say and what they think aren\u2019t always well matched, are they! Are you really going to tell someone that they should go back to the drawing board? Especially if they\u2019re a friend&#8230; or if they\u2019re going to be judging you in ten minutes? Or if they\u2019re nice and trying hard&#8230;.?<\/p>\n<p>Nope, didn\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n<p>Besides, as any teacher will tell you, giving feedback is a skill that very few people have. You need to be trained in it.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s more, some of the feedback is decidedly \u2018dodgy\u2019. The vast majority is (I\u2019m sure) perfectly well intentioned but it\u2019s given by amateurs and WIKI trainers. What\u2019s a WIKI trainer?\u00a0 What I Know Is&#8230; and what they know is what works for <strong>them<\/strong> as presenters, not what would necessarily work for anyone else.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve heard people suggest that taking (chilled!) water while you\u2019re presenting is good for your voice. It isn\u2019t. Ask any actor or other professional. It might be a useful \u2018prop\u2019 or a useful way of buying your self time to think if you\u2019re stumped by a question (in which case why not just say so?!) but it\u2019s <strong>not<\/strong> good for your voice!<\/p>\n<p>And yet I still recommend my presentation skills training clients to seriously consider Toastmasters &#8211; the stagetime is great!\u00a0 Just think carefully about who or what you listen to in the feedback&#8230;\u00a0 :)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve said it before and I\u2019ll say it again: Toastmasters is a mixed blessing. On the upside, you get stagetime and there\u2019s very little better for improving your public speaking and presenting skills than stagetime. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-presentation-tips","category-rant","category-reviews-case-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}