Don’t Stop. Double Up!

You’ve achieved your Competent Communicator (CC) designation. Congratulations! Now what should you do? There are two correct answers, and both are important: 1) Help others grow, and 2) Continue your personal development. If Toastmasters has helped you, then you may want to increase your involvement. To do so, join another club – particularly an advanced club. Consider the benefits:

Practice, practice, practice. Depending on the size of your club and frequency of meetings, you may have only a handful of chances each year to give speeches or speech evaluations. While that’s sufficient as you’re getting started, being a member of one or more additional clubs can help you grow faster, which may be appealing to you now that you’ve learned the basics.

Iron sharpens iron. International Speech champions have one thing in common: a commitment to excellence. They find and work with experienced mentors, practice continuously, and even record speeches for personal and peer analysis. They’re members of multiple clubs so they can work closely with others who aspire to be the best.

Special focus – and fun – opportunities. Some advanced clubs are also “specialty” clubs that focus on particular skills or feature fun or unusual meeting places and formats. In most such clubs, members are often highly experienced speakers and leaders. For example, The Evaluators focus on speech evaluations, with speech evaluators also evaluated. That club is just one of eight advanced and specialty clubs – each composed of experienced, talented members – in District 25. The others are Contest Masters, Highway to Excellence, Off the Cuff, Out on the Town, MotorMouths Toastmasters, Parliamentary Toastmasters and Speakers Exchange. A list of these clubs and more information about them appears on the D25 Website.  

We value Toastmasters because it pushes us outside our comfort zones. Have you gotten a bit too comfortable in your club? If you seek new challenges, want to continue and accelerate the exciting level of growth that occurred as you pursued your CC, or want to work with more top speakers and leaders, then now’s the time to join an additional club, and preferably an advanced one. When you joined Toastmasters, you took charge of your development. Don’t stop. Double up

Submitted By
Dean Lampman