Many people would like to improve their abilities in public speaking, persuading, debating and ripostes. From this need, the concept of Toastmasters arose – a club where people can practice and hone their communication and leadership skills. The first Toastmasters club was set up in 1924 in California and today there are more than 12,500 across 106 countries conducted in a multitude of languages.
In 2008 Rafal Jaros – a project officer for Fine Gael at the time – started a Toastmasters club for Dublin’s growing Polish community. Anna Szewc, the current president of the club, was one of the first to join.
“I first heard about Toastmasters in Poland from one of my professors at college,” she recalls. “He studied in the US and told us about this idea of improving ones’ speaking and communicating skills.
“Later on I found out about a club in Dublin looking for participants, but I reckoned that my English was not fluent enough to start working on the fine details of my speaking yet. However, when Rafal put up an ad for the Polish Toastmasters club, I immediately thought: I’m in.”
The Polish club organises its weekly meetings according to the rules set by Toastmasters International. Participants each read a prepared address or give an impromptu speech, which is critiqued by the other members in a positive and constructive manner.
Impromptu speech – lasting for 1 to 2 minutes without any preparation – is one of Szewc’s favourite exercises. “It teaches thinking fast, identifying quickly in which direction you should develop your speech, how to buy time, how to delay answering the question until you’ll know what to say,” she explains.
“It brilliantly stimulates thinking and faster mental reflexes. Also, everyone in a group can learn at the same time by listening and observing the speaker, imagining how they could do it themselves.”
According to Szewc, skills developed at Toastmasters meetings can be applied in many different areas of life, and everyone can focus on what interests them.
”You can train in speaking to your family and friends, or how to give a TV interview,” she says. “Besides, many companies such as Pricewater-houseCoopers strongly encourage their employees to participate in Toastmasters clubs.”
Szewc currently works at an accounting company but she plans a career as a project manager. Because of this, co-ordinating the club has been a great experience for her.
“As a project manager you have to organise the group, have control over people, delegate tasks. Each of the roles we take during Toastmasters meetings allows honing different skills. I do loads of speaking at meetings at work; I need to present reports, and argue for my suggestions. Toastmasters helped me to learn how to organise my speech, how to start, and what arguments to give.
“I also learned how to give a constructive critique – I hadn’t been really a diplomat before!” she laughs.
The Polish woman has also attended Irish Toastmasters meetings, and sees some differences between the two.
“I think that Poles are good at improvising,” she notes. “Often they are falsely confident that knowing the subject is enough to give a good speech, therefore they are often not prepared well enough. At the Irish Toastmasters club, participants were much better prepared.”
The Polish Toastmasters club, which meets on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month at Siptu in Liberty Hall, currently has a high turnover of members, due to Poles’ mobility around the country, but Szewc is hopeful to soon have at least 20 regular participants, all following the rule of 3 Fs: fun, friendly and formal.
