Developing your Leadership Skills at Toastmasters

The majority of new members who join our club do so in order to develop their public speaking skills. At Toastmasters, there are actually two skill sets we develop. The first skill is obviously public speaking with the second being to develop a member’s leadership skills.

As a new member, you are provided two manuals. The first manual provides information on developing your public speaking skills and the second to develop your leadership skills.

Many new members of our club focus their efforts on their public speaking skills and tend to ignore their leadership development. I make an effort to remind our members not to ignore their leadership development. I believe the two skill sets augment one another and should be developed simultaneously in order to gain the maximum benefits from being a club member.

The leadership manual consists of ten projects focusing on many aspects of leadership.  Each of the ten projects focus on developing specific leadership skills that include listening, critical thinking, providing feedback, time management, planning and implementation, organization and delegation of tasks, facilitation, motivating, mentoring and team building.

The majority of these projects have the club member taking on various roles during our Toastmaster meetings. The meeting roles include being the Toastmaster, General Evaluator, Speech Evaluator, Grammarian, Table Topics master and Timer.

These meeting roles allow you to develop new leadership skills while also developing your communications skills, providing the opportunity to participate at a meeting even when not giving an actual speech. You will also be supporting our club as a valued member of the team.

Several of the projects develop organizational skills outside the Toastmaster meeting roles for example, organizing a club speech contest, working on a public relations team or becoming a mentor for a new or existing member.

This may all sound very intimidating to you but remember there are many club members, including myself, who are more than happy to mentor you along the way. When you join our club, you are among friends who share the same club goals and values.

By developing our communications and leadership skills simultaneously, we become stronger as individuals and as a club.

Remember that no club member is an island. We all become better members when working as a team together!

I hope to see you at one of our future meetings!

Paul Horvath

Cedar Hill Toastmasters Club

Sergeant at Arms