Mel: 0:08

You're listening to the Talkative Toastmaster podcast. I'm your host, melanie Serplis. In this podcast, we explore how Toastmasters can help you to polish your public speaking skills, communicate with confidence and amplify your authenticity. You'll hear from my fellow Toastmasters and I how this global organization has impacted our lives for the better and how it could impact yours. Now let's get talkative. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to episode seven of the Talkative Toastmaster podcast. Today I'm joined by my guest and fellow Toastmaster, john Coorey. John and I met about two years ago at an Area 26 speech competition. Now he's a member of Sunnybank Toastmasters, based on Brisbane Southside, and has been a Toastmaster for five years. John, welcome to the show. Hey, melanie, how are you Great? Thank you Great, and I know that you're an experienced Toastmaster and have experienced many of the elements of this organization. But could we perhaps start by talking about why did you decide to join Toastmasters?

John: 1:21

Five years ago I decided to. What about getting structure, learning to put speeches together? I had no problem of standing up in front of people and talking. I'm a group fitness instructor, have been since 2011 and have been talking to groups of people since then. So to have that structure to do a speech on purpose was something which I lacked, and I also found out I had no vocal control, which I've learnt a lot about in the first two years.

Mel: 1:58

Okay, and what do you mean by you learnt that you had no vocal control?

John: 2:02

I had two levels Either I was not talking or I was yelling.

Mel: 2:08

Right, and was that reflected back to you in the feedback you got from evaluators at Toastmasters?

John: 2:14

Yes, it was very much so. And also and that's Sunnybank we have our official meeting but we also have the meeting after the meeting, going about the car park. So we can get caught in the car park for hours still talking about Toastmasters stuff. So we finish at nine officially, but I've been in the car park until 11 o'clock.

Mel: 2:38

I think this is a universal thing with Toastmasters clubs and Toastmasters generally. We love a chat, right?

John: 2:44

Oh, yes, yes, we do.

Mel: 2:47

Okay, so part of what you're saying there is that the feedback you got helped you to refine your speeches.

John: 2:55

Yeah, very much so. Look putting the pauses in there for the dramatic, or just to think about my arms, and arms have gone down. I still like so, so still my go to word, but overall it's dramatically changed. I'm a lot better speaker. I can go up and down and use my voice more effectively now.

Mel: 3:21

Yeah, it's amazing the nuances you find out about your speech when it's pointed out to you in a very kind way, as is the case with Toastmasters but sometimes we don't even realise what we're doing and how we're saying things and how we're breathing or speaking.

John: 3:39

Yeah, I know five years is a long time, but they were. They was gentle in the beginning. It wasn't, and sometimes it. Even now, after five years, it's still a little bit too gentle. Sometimes they don't like to hurt people's feelings so much, but they do it in a nice way and it's usually in the evaluation. They'll go so far, but that's that after, in the breaks and after there's that more of an in depth and more of a coaching. Because when I joined I was got a mentor and always talking to the mentor about how I was doing that and he'd also give me feedback and I'd ask him how that speech went and how that would go. And so, yeah, progressively learning along the way.

Mel: 4:26

And I think that's one of the great things about mentors or about Toastmasters, in that you are typically given a mentor and it's that person that you can ask the questions to, and it's quite challenging to find mentors in the workplace and in our professional environments that actually have the time and are interested in helping out, and I think the mentoring program in Toastmasters is fantastic like that, and you don't need to just have one mentor either. There's often a number of people that you could ask a really honest opinion for who are there to help you out, and so how often did you meet with your mentor, or could you talk a bit about that experience?

John: 5:07

Yeah, so my mentor is Colin McFarlane and it was only when I needed help with that. Overall, I sort of understood what I needed to do, so we didn't necessarily catch up. I'd ring him up a lot of the time. He's retired, so if I needed help I'd just ring him up and chat to him. One of the biggest things I do remember asking and your laugh at this is about evaluations. Evaluations is the one thing in Toastmasters which I probably should do more, but I'm not an evaluation fan. I don't like evaluating and like you, being the queen of evaluations.

Mel: 5:49

Why don't you?

John: 5:50

like them. I just give me fitness. I'll evaluate your fitness and tell you what's happening there. But just with speeches, yeah, I'm not a fan. I've done my share. And that and timer, they're the two roles which I avoid Timer and evaluating.

Mel: 6:10

Well, fair enough, I guess we all have our favourite roles and our preferred roles and our least preferred roles.

John: 6:19

Yes, yes, I love table topics. Table topics is my favourite.

Mel: 6:24

So what do you love about table topics? Can you tell us what it is and what you love about it?

John: 6:29

Table topics is where you get given a phrase, like you mentioned on the competition a little ray of sunshine, so you rock up, they'll go Melanie, little ray of sunshine, little ray of sunshine.

John: 6:43

And you get to speak for up to two minutes and you just write a line about anything you like that's related to that topic. But it's just thinking off the cuff, it's creating that story very quickly and it's a challenge to come up with something that has a beginning, a middle and an end, that makes sense, and still using your voice, reflection, still looking at everybody. It's just a lot of fun. But we do table topics every single day. Every time anyone opens up their mouth, they're doing table topics and people don't realise that that's right, it's practicing in life and people are so scared of table topics and then I mentioned to them this is what you do in life and then they go oh, and it's like you see the penny drop and they get it. They still don't like it very much because it's a particular phrase that they've got to make a story on. But if they can do that effectively, speeches their normal speeches become easier.

Mel: 7:46

Yeah, because I guess they're learning how to structure a story very quickly and using that basic beginning, middle and end structure that can be applied to any speech.

John: 7:56

Yeah, and if someone wants to go get a pay rise, they've got to talk to their boss. They've got to speak off the cuff. They already know what they're going to say, but they've got to just all of a sudden do it and do a pitch. There's a lot of learnings that can come from doing table topics and learning to like it.

Mel: 8:16

Yeah, absolutely. And have you found that practicing table topics has helped you in the workplace and those situations where you may have been put on the spot?

John: 8:28

Oh, yeah, yeah, and even me putting people on the spot. I got in trouble for it in my last position, where I wanted to know the answer to something and I went up and asked the question and it didn't work out that well, but I got my answer. But yeah, I'm a lot more confident with being able to do a lot more things like that.

Mel: 8:47

Yeah, and I guess it's just that practice and repetition and evaluation cycle that we get at Toastmasters. That just helps with the confidence, because when we're doing something over and over, as terrifying as it can be, I guess that's where and how Toastmasters can help to improve confidence.

John: 9:04

Yeah, and if someone wants to practice table topics, they can open a page to any book, magazine, whatever, put their finger on a page that's got words, read the sentence and then continue the sentence on whatever it is that they want to do it on.

Mel: 9:20

Yeah, that's a great idea and it's always interesting to see how different Toastmasters present their table topic session, like we've had. People at our clubs bring fortune cookies and you get to crack the fortune cookie and then talk for two minutes on whatever the fortune cookie message is.

John: 9:36

Yeah, and someone else also brought along a couple of different pieces that were abstract pieces and had that given out to people. And then they said here, create a story. And I remember at your club you had ads one time. It had the ads and it had this what's the stress reliever? And the shape of a poo, right, you had that and you had to sell that or you had to come up with who you would give that to somebody.

Mel: 10:11

Oh yeah, so we were pulling things out of the bag and then, yes, that's right.

John: 10:17

And it was not used to be a projector at this time and you had actual ads up on the screen one time. It was great, it was very different and there was really different topics there. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

Mel: 10:30

Yeah, it's always interesting to see how creative people can get, but also how much it then tests you in a speaking environment that you really have no idea what's going to come out as a question and then how are you going to answer it.

John: 10:46

It's really the true nature of the cuff speaking, oh yeah, and especially when you have, like at the competitions, when they give you one topic, when you do one topic in the clubs and just see how different everyone takes that, the different way. There are so many different ways you can go on a topic. It's not funny and like as you said before, we hopped on the call. But don't necessarily take your first thought, take your second thought. That's probably going to be more fun. The first thought is obvious, the second thought not so obvious.

Mel: 11:20

That was a tip I picked up quite recently and when I put it into practice in the last competition I was in, it worked out quite well, and sometimes, you know, I've lurched straight into a table topic and I don't actually even have the idea formed, but so it's always a bit of a mystery as to what's going to come out of my mouth. Sometimes I'm sure you feel the same with table topics it's like God, I don't know what's going to come out here Only when the questions aren't necessarily worded the right way.

John: 11:54

So in the clubs sometimes the questions don't necessarily have an answer that's short enough or even understanding what the question was sometimes. So sometimes it is an all in the delivery of the question too.

Mel: 12:11

Yeah, but I think that also reflects life, Like if we're on the phone to a customer or a client or whatever the situation is. Often we're not going to get a well formed question and we have to make sense of it and we have to then deliver some sort of an answer or at least ask for the question to be rephrased. But how many times in actual life do we come up against that same challenge of not understanding necessarily what the question is?

John: 12:38

Yeah, or not even being ready to understand the question or not wanting to. So this also helps us be prepared for a question a little bit off centre and be prepared for it.

Mel: 12:48

Yeah, definitely, or at least have confidence that we can string a response together with some structure and a conclusion, and sometimes that's the best we can do in those situations.

John: 13:00

I was just going to say. Another thing I used is what's called story cubes. They're little cubes that have like it's like a dice and has six pictures on them and you roll the dice and you create a story from whatever that picture says. And I've even got Doctor who one somewhere.

Mel: 13:19

Your Doctor who fans would love Love the opportunity to talk about that.

John: 13:23

We could actually just talk a lot just about table topics, I think.

Mel: 13:27

Yeah, it's a really strong skill to have and you can see people as they progress through Toastmasters how much more confident they do get in answering it, so it's definitely a great skill to have. So in my last episode I talked about what the Pathways program is, and I know that you've completed one full pathway and just about to finish your second. Can you tell us a bit about your experience of pathways and how you found working through this very structured educational program?

John: 14:00

Yeah, so my first pathways was effective coaching. When I went on there I did the questionnaire because I really wasn't sure which pathway that I should choose. So I just went along and did the questionnaire first and it came up with effective coaching, which worked out well because I'm a coach, I'm a fitness coach and I used a lot of those skills in doing that. I found the program pretty straightforward that I had the older version, so where you still had your icebreaker funny story with the icebreaker. I did my icebreaker before I was actually a member of the club.

John: 14:39

I rocked up, was planning on joining. I said, hey, but you're doing icebreaker. Someone had pulled out and there was no one else to speak to. I said oh yeah, and I just went up with what was it? 20 minutes notice to do my icebreaker, right. So yeah, and that doesn't happen all the time, but it just happened on this occasion. But overall I found the program fairly good for me. Everything was easy enough to understand what it was needed. I always say there's six levels to pathways. There's five official levels and then you have your sixth level which is going. This is what I learnt through my doing my level.

Mel: 15:20

And so what would be some of the takeaways, would you say, from that first pathway, from going through that? What did you learn about coaching?

John: 15:27

Oh, I can't remember now that was. I finished that two and a half years ago and started another one since then. Now I'm doing motivational strategies, so they're still in line with each other. But what I've learned was how to effectively use for myself the mentor, because there were some questions throughout that that I needed help with. That was what my biggest thing is to, and then the structure why I wanted to, why I joined Toastmasters in the first place is to learn that structure. So they're the two biggest things that I got from the first pathway.

Mel: 16:05

And how have you sort of implemented that structure? Has it changed the way you do your PT work or the way you structure speeches in your work environment now?

John: 16:19

I don't necessarily do speeches. I do more of the table topics. In what I do it's more of the calf, but it's more I was very much when talking about the vocal variety. I slowed my voice. I learned to slow my voice down, slow what I do down, so when I'm talking to someone I'm not trying to get my point across Like I slow down now to listen to what they're saying. It's more about listening to respond rather than to react.

Mel: 16:53

Yeah, and that's a skill too, I think. Yeah, it took me a while. Yeah, I think I'm learning that during this podcasting process as well. It's listening to understand and to hear what the person's saying and how to then go deeper into the questions and not just listening to respond. What's next?

John: 17:15

Yeah, and because sometimes questions that you wanna ask you may not even get to some of them, because the question or the answer that someone gives may take you in another direction to what you were intending.

Mel: 17:32

Absolutely.

John: 17:33

Like we spoke more about table topics than what we. I even thought we were gonna talk about.

Mel: 17:39

Yeah, but I guess it all comes down to the skills that you learn through Toastmasters and what becomes most prevalent, and also, I think, what you enjoy the most as well. You know when you're doing something you enjoy and you wanna do more of it. You become more aware of what you're learning from it.

John: 17:55

Yeah, well, the other thing too that not necessarily added to pathways but, like I've done a lot of the roles on the committee and that being through building up my experience and my confidence with speeches so with the confidence to do the speeches that has happened through pathways, Having certain structures like. The very first level is about learning about speeches. Yes, so you have to learn about the structure, body language, your icebreaker Icebreaker is always gonna be the first speech that you ever do and how to put that together. The next pathway is about the mentoring side of it. So there's a section that you learn, you gotta do a speech on the mentoring process and you give examples, and there's another mentoring. It's slightly different depending on which pathway you have, but they are changing some. There's a rumor going around that they are changing that. They're updating it. Some of the pathways.

Mel: 18:57

Yeah, I heard that they were going to be cutting some out and, yeah, it probably makes sense. There's quite a lot of them and I think I find that New Toastmasters can get quite overwhelmed about which one to pick.

John: 19:10

And that's probably one of the downfalls of the pathways is that the name is the only thing that necessarily changes. Four of them have the exact same structure of what they need to do. Same types of speeches, like level one and level two are the same. Level three, four and five are pretty much the same. There are slight differences in five, but three and four have one core subject and you get two or three electives yes, two electives and the electives are the one that's where you actually do the learning from. So and that's same and forth. But every level does get slightly harder with that. I know one, graham Cairns. He's doing, I think, four different pathways at the moment. Mind you, he's in five different clubs. He's retired now and that's. He's retired just to do Toastmasters.

Mel: 20:04

Yeah, being a member of five clubs, you would absolutely need plenty of time just to prepare for everything.

John: 20:12

He's been a fellow taskmaster on one of the overseas clubs, or DJs, and that was a great club too. Just timing wise, it was during the day and wasn't able to continue to do it.

Mel: 20:25

It's interesting that there are specialist clubs like that as well. So obviously there's the core Toastmasters clubs, which people are gonna have a fairly similar experience. But I do love the fact that when you get into the organization, there are always going to be specific clubs about whether it's DJs or storytelling or humor, or you can find something that really suits any particular niche you're interested in.

John: 20:51

And now with what we're doing now being online, a lot of the clubs are online and at different times, so there is probably a club somewhere in the world that suits your timeframe. So if you're at night or you can probably get one at 10 o'clock at night somewhere in the world.

Mel: 21:10

I think one of the things that lockdowns in all of that whole phase of our life made possible was online clubs, and it was great to see how Toastmasters pivoted towards that and a lot of the clubs kept going with hybrid sessions or hybrid options or full online options. So, yeah, it's great and flexible for that. For sure.

John: 21:32

Well, I know, when I was the area director, your club especially was doing much on hybrid. Yes had it all sorted, but us at Sunnybank we were only online, but no one really was a fan of it. They prefer the in-person.

Mel: 21:49

I think of course, a lot of us prefer the in-person, but we kept the hybrid going just so that people could attend if they were sick or not able to attend for any reason in-person. But yeah, we kept the hybrid session going for quite some time after it was necessary.

John: 22:06

And it worked. It worked for you, claude. So that's the important thing when you're looking for a club, you've got to make sure that the club fits you. You don't fit the club, the club fits you. There are so many different choices, like here in Brisbane, where we are right now. We've got Sunnybank at Holland Park, makravat at Upper Makravat, then we've got Upper Makravat and Brisbane leaders Brisbane leaders. I apologise if anyone from that club and I got it wrong, because I always got it wrong, but yeah, there's four clubs within a 5k radius of each other and you go 10k. There's even more clubs. There's somewhere people can find a club if they're very interested in that.

Mel: 22:52

Yeah, and at different times of the day. Some meet for breakfast, some lunch, some dinner, some online. There's no excuse, that's the point. There is no excuse not to find some time in your week to join a Toastmasters club, because there's clubs everywhere.

John: 23:05

But shop around too. The club's got to fit you. If you don't resonate with that club, you're not going to get the most out of it.

Mel: 23:12

For sure, and they definitely all have their own vibe and it follows similar structures and the roles are fairly similar at each club. But yeah, the vibe at each club can be quite different. So I agree, definitely go window shopping and trying them out and seeing how they feel.

John: 23:32

I chose Sunnybank. When I joined them they had 300 years of combined experience with the members. Three years Now we're about at 150 because some have left and lived down south. But also the club is in walking distance for me to go to it.

John: 23:51

Yeah, it's easy, yeah, perfect, and that's one of the things, too, is if someone who wants to join can make it easy for themselves to go, then they're going to go. If it's hard to get to, they're not going to make it Like, if you like, we had someone come and look at our club and they lived at I think it was Algester Right.

John: 24:12

And they came and looked at us and when you go to Crest, that was the closest club to them and they went ah, but look around, there's, there's. Toastmasters have a website which you can find clubs all over the world. So if you're traveling overseas and you're a toastmaster, you can go to find my club, find a club and you can find a club, and they've got them all there.

Mel: 24:35

I've been a member of a club in London when I lived there and I'll be traveling to Malaysia next year and I'm thinking I'll try and find a local toastmasters club and just just go and check it out. And I think what another thing I love about toastmasters is is how welcoming the clubs are wherever you go. You know that's that's one thing I think that we can find anywhere in the world is that toastmasters welcome other toastmasters.

John: 25:02

Well, funny enough, I think over the last month we actually had someone from Philippines, but he's now living here in Australia and he's only. He's only been in the place in Brisbane a week and he would take. One of the first things you want to do was find toastmasters club, Yep.

Mel: 25:17

Find that group of like-minded people Awesome. Now what would you say to people out there who are interested in toastmasters but are mildly terrified of going to their first meeting?

John: 25:30

When you come along. Come along, you do not have to do anything. You can sit there and say absolutely nothing for the whole meeting and just see and experience what it's like. But if you're going to come along, I recommend you have a go, because there is a number of times through the meeting you're going to have a chance to talk on the warm up. Where the warm up is, you just get a chance to get your vocal chords. And even if you stand up and go thank you for having me my name's Bla and I'm just here checking you out and then sit down. That's it.

John: 26:10

That little success will help you on your next one because you've already set up to speak. If you're a little bit more confident, you can have a go at table topics and we've had a lot of new play. New people come along and actually have a go at that. They got up, they spoke for 30 seconds and they sat back down again. The smile you can see the smile coming on their face that they actually did it. They actually got a fear because I don't know if in the past episodes, but you know people's greatest fear is public speaking.

Mel: 26:41

The second one is dying.

John: 26:44

They'd rather be in the coffin rather than giving the eulogy. Yes, absolutely, and people do public speaking, and I guess it's the term public speaking. People speak every single day. As soon as public speaking there, people get shy. But if you go, I just want you to speak to this person.

Mel: 27:05

Okay, it's funny, isn't it? Just the label.

John: 27:09

Yeah, and, like people, love their labels, but when they and the other thing I'd say to them is when you are going to talk to someone or if you're talking to a group of people, one of the things we like to do is look people in the eye and I asked them how many people? If you had five people standing in front of you, how many eyes can you look at at any one time? And the answer is one. So, really, when you're doing a speech, you're only ever going to talk to one person at a time. Yep, true, so if you look at that one person and then everyone else goes away and you look at someone else, then you're still talking to one person, and when I've said that to people, then they've gone. Oh, it's the way that we pre frame it sometimes, or frame it that can actually help people be at ease.

John: 28:00

In my roles, I've been Treasurer, I've been Vice President of Education, vice President, membership, vice President of Public Relations, so I've done a few different roles and all these roles have one thing in common it's all dealing with people and dealing with people as they come in. My favourite one is probably the membership. I like membership. You just got to talk to people about signing up.

Mel: 28:24

Absolutely, and that's you know. By the time they're actually in the door and they've seen what Toastmasters is about. They're getting a bit of a feel for how it could help them.

John: 28:34

Yeah, and that's one of the things I think sometimes that we don't do it well enough is find out what people really want. It's a bit superficial I've got a speech coming up that I've got to do at a mate's wedding or something but digging that little bit deeper and finding out what it is that they want, I think, is where we've got to be a bit better and following up with people as well.

Mel: 29:02

Yeah, for sure. I know that if some clubs do that well and some not so well. So, yeah, I think that's that lies on the VP of PRs and membership to be doing that work, just to ensure that people feel welcomed and that they feel welcome to come back as well. So, yeah, I think that's a big thing. Now, is there anything else you'd like to share before we wrap up? Just anything about Toastmasters that we haven't covered?

John: 29:30

I think it's anyone's listening to this. If it's something that has always been of an interest for you to improve, like whether it's for your workplace or for your job for your business, then come along, have a look and see what Toastmasters is all about. Come and experience what it is, but don't just experience one club. I suggest someone go to three, four, maybe five different clubs, because they are very different, with who is there and why that they're there. That's one of the key things is talk to people about why they are there, because that's something that people don't necessarily get asked is why did you join New people? Come along to your club, ask different people why they're there, because there's something to fit everybody.

John: 30:27

If you're not sure, ring up a club and ask the question, that's the best one. I've also been an area director, so helping clubs to do all this stuff as well has been interesting to me.

Mel: 30:41

I guess you get to see how the different clubs do it, which, to your point, is go see different clubs, because they're all going to handle things in a slightly different way and some clubs will resonate, some won't, so just check it out.

John: 30:56

Speeches isn't all that Toastmasters do. Like I've mentioned, I did Treasurer. We have presidents, treasurer, secretary, everything that takes to run a club and you can learn how to do that. You can learn what a Treasurer does, what a Secretary does. You can be that for 12 months. There's also the area director, which is one person helps four or five different clubs with the stuff that we've been talking about. It goes on and on, but I'm sure you'll cover that, some of that stuff, in another episode.

Mel: 31:32

Yeah, the leadership opportunities that the organization provides is as long as the speaking opportunities. I guess I think a lot of people are probably surprised at how much Toastmasters can encompass and how many opportunities it can provide, if you want. The opportunities are endless to speak and to learn and to develop your leadership skills, which, yeah, we'll definitely be covering that in future episodes.

John: 32:00

We only touched a little bit on competition. There's competitions as well. Like in sport. You can actually go to area and districts and I don't know what the name of it is there, and then even to worlds and international. You can represent Australia as well. There's a lot more to it, especially if you like being competitive, you can do as well, and you don't even have to be an athlete to do it. We do debates as well with clubs and we do debates in our club and things like that. They've got to come along and just investigate, find out what it's all about.

Mel: 32:44

Then it all begins. The adventure begins, yes it does All righty. Well, thanks, John, so much for your time today. It's been inspiring to hear about your Toastmasters journey and I'm sure you'll continue to find new ways of challenging yourself as Toastmasters do. So thanks very much.

John: 33:03

You're welcome and good luck with the podcast. Thank, you.

Mel: 33:08

If you're ready to unlock your potential, consider joining a Toastmasters club near you. Check out the Finder Club link on the Toastmasters international website at wwwtoastmastersorg. It's worth visiting a couple of different clubs as a guest to see which club best suits you. If you do take the leap and visit a meeting, I would absolutely love to hear your experience. Feel free to message me at talkativetoastmaster at gmailcom or tag me in the comments if you found this podcast on YouTube, facebook, instagram or Twitter. Thanks for listening to today's show. Head to talkativetoastmastercom, where you'll find the show notes for this and all other episodes, as well as links to some awesome Toastmasters resources. If you found value in today's content, I'd really appreciate if you could share it with friends and colleagues who may be interested or leave a review on iTunes. This helps more people to find us. Until next time, remember the words of Seth Godin If it scares you, it may be a good thing to try. Have a great week.