What Is Toastmasters and How Can It Improve Your Public Speaking?

What Is Toastmasters?

Toastmasters International is the world’s most recognized public speaking coaching organization. The organization has over 280,000 members in 149 countries. Members range from corporate professionals (60%+) to professional speakers and coaches, students, language learners, and more. In its 98 year history, Toastmasters has trained millions of people to improve their public speaking skills. Toastmaster members collaborate in groups called clubs that meet regularly, usually once every two weeks. There are approximately 75,000 clubs worldwide, each with an average of ~20 members.

World Championship of Public Speaking

Toastmasters hosts the annual World Championship of Public Speaking where members from around the world compete on a prepared speech. Former winners include renowned speech coaches such as Craig Valentine, Ed Tate, Mark Brown. The organization also helps members improve their impromptu speaking with fun improv games called table topics. A member is given a random topic and must speak for a minute without rambling or using filler words. They are also taken through guided learning modules, called Pathways, to help them uplevel their speaking skills.

Clubs Explained

During a club meeting, members take on various roles to start building their leadership and public speaking confidence. This includes an um-counter (someone to count filler words), a grammarian (to help provide feedback on grammar), timer to keep people accountable on timing, and a meeting organizer for the day called the Toastmaster. The Toastmasters experience is centered around inclusion, respect, and leadership — the biggest benefit is the safe space and community in which people can practice and improve their public speaking.

How Toastmasters Is Using Yoodli AI Speech Coach to Help Members

Toastmasters is now rolling out AI speech coaching to its members through a partnership with Yoodli. Members will be able to view an instant auto-generated transcript of their speech, receive AI analytics on their filler words, and pacing, and practice, record, and store upto 60 minutes worth of speeches. Yoodli augments the Toastmasters in person experience by allowing members to share speeches with one another and asynchronously collaborate. Think of Yoodli as a smart mirror — the proprietary platform allows users to track their progress over time and compare their speaking statistics to those of famous celebrities.

Toastmasters members will get access to a custom version of Yoodli built around the Toastmasters experience. Non members can sign up at www.yoodli.ai to start getting AI powered feedback to ace your next presentation, interview, or speech.

Sources:

PRWeek: Public Speaking site teams up with Toastmasters

Toastmasters Media Center