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Toastmasters boosts public-speaking skills
Cindy Kailburn, vice president for marketing and public relations for the UB Toastmasters Club, gives a cooking demonstration at a recent UB Toastmasters' meeting. Photo: LAUREN NEWKIRK MAYNARD
“I would now like to call to order a meeting of the University at Buffalo Toastmasters Club,” announces John Beltrami, his voice loud and clear. Inside a small classroom in Norton Hall, he and a dozen others take turns at the blackboard giving prepared and impromptu speeches, pausing in between to laugh, clap and shake hands.
Despite its name, the UB Toastmasters Club isn’t about happy hour cocktails. It gets its name from Toastmasters International, the parent organization, whose purpose is to help people learn how to speak confidently in front of others—whether that’s giving a wedding toast or a presentation at work. Founded in 1932, it now has more than 12,000 chartered clubs and more than 250,000 members in 108 countries.
According to Beltrami, a senior analyst for UB’s Administrative Computing Services, clubs adhere to Toastmasters’ formal rules and regulations but have their own unique characters. UB’s club was founded in 1987 and is especially popular with local professionals and the university’s international and postdoctoral crowds. Officers are elected each year and members pay dues every six months (about $35 total for UB’s club, plus a one-time fee for new members). In return, they receive basic communication and leadership manuals to help them structure their speeches around specific topics, like “Getting to the Point.”
Adrian McAdory, a 2008 UB graduate, is a financial advisor with New England Financial in Williamsville. He joined the UB club last June and says he found the environment “warm and supportive,” especially after trying more advanced Toastmasters clubs in the area. “When I went to my first UB meeting, everyone wanted find out who I was,” he says. The club also had the diversity he was looking for. “We’re from all walks of life, both ethnically and professionally.”
McAdory gives what he considers his best talk—a concise explanation of a Roth IRA, and his eighth speech. He sits down to loud applause. Cindy Kailburn, the club’s vice president for marketing, gives a vibrant cooking demonstration of a veggie wrap recipe. Then Adela Boniou, a postdoc at the UB Institute for Lasers, Photonics and Biophotonics, presents her final speech in the 10-speech Communication program. Titled “Heart Story,” she uses an origami kit as a visual aid as she cheerfully leads the audience in folding colorful paper hearts. “Your heart is a frame… you can put any picture into it,” she says.
In a typical meeting, a “toastmaster” serves as emcee of the meeting, while a “table topics master” asks members to volunteer for short, one-to-two-minute improvisational speeches on a surprise topic. There also are several prepared speeches lasting between three and seven minutes. Volunteers evaluate their peers, time the speeches, count the number of “ums” and “ahs,” and even provide a “word of the day.” (This week’s word was “cacophony,” and the “wordmaster” notes if any presenters incorporate the word into their speech. McAdory is the only one.) After the speeches and evaluations, members vote for the day’s best speaker and evaluator.
Beltrami, who is club treasurer, wasn’t always a great public speaker; he says he joined a few years ago to cure a case of stage fright. Others say that becoming a member has improved their ability to control fear, maintain eye contact, speak more clearly and concisely, and handle off-the-cuff speaking situations. “It’s all about encouragement and taking little steps in the right direction,” Beltrami says.
McAdory’s goal is to finish the Communication program and then move on to the Leadership program, which helps people learn how to manage, motivate and delegate others. UB Toastmasters also is looking ahead at reaching “excellent club” status, where a club must develop its own internal motivational process that reinforces members’ most basic public-speaking goal—to see improvements with every speech.
UB Toastmasters is open to the public and meets on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month from 6:30-8 p.m. in 216 Norton Hall, North Campus. Guests are welcome to attend meetings for free. Click here to find the club online.
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