During the past year, Toastmasters has been a gift that kept on giving. Whenever I traveled to different countries, I made sure to visit a club or two and give a speech. It’s probably the easiest way to meet new people who live interesting lives and know to create a good story around their experiences. While living in Qingdao, I made sure to visit as many Toastmasters clubs as often as possible and connect with the locals. A shared interest is the best way to turn from a tourist into “one of us”, and most of my favorite moments in China were experienced with the friends I met at the speech clubs.
One day I received a call: “I want you to meet a friend of mine – and if you’d like, you could give a speech at their meeting!” Now, I love the challenge of impromptu speeches and usually only prepare the first and last sentence and three key takeaways for my Toastmasters gigs. That works perfectly well for seven-minute speeches, and the best metaphors usually come up in the middle of the speech anyway.
Big day was coming, I met my friend’s friend, we had a fun day and later took a taxi to the venue. Five minutes before we arrived, she started to talk about the organization of the event, the photographer, the live-stream setup and how happy she was that they had an international speaker on board. I didn’t understand what she meant – the Toastmasters meetings I attend have around 20-30 visitors, why such a big fuzz?
In short, we welcomed a triple-digit audience on-site, the conference was streamed to all Toastmasters clubs in Qingdao and nobody told me that the speakers were expected to fill 20 minutes of time. What a pleasant surprise! It went surprisingly well and was the most fulfilling public speaking experience I have had so far. I gave a short introduction to the science of positive psychology and, using the PERMA model of subjective well-being, explained a few quick interventions that the audience could implement without much effort.
What a cool experience! My key learnings:
- Toastmasters is probably the easiest way to connect with locals all over the world
- Stay flexible with your speeches – know your waypoints, but walk freely
- If you can fill 7 minutes, you can fill 20 minutes as well
- And of course: always be open for a pleasant surprise