Toastmasters: Start of a Leadership Journey

When I was in Germany, I found a local Toastmasters club and I joined to improve my public speaking skills.

Little did I know, this would be the start of an adventure in public speaking, leadership, and crisis management.

Although I was in Germany and the main language is German, the Mannheim Toastmasters Club is an English speaking club. This made my life easier, because my German wasn’t that good. 😅

As a smaller club, the opportunity to speak and help out with the meetings are abundant. I had time to spend developing speeches and accelerate through the speaking program.

Toastmasters’ speaking program is a gradual progression of speaking on complex topics with structured feedback throughout. There is an assigned role just to count “Ah” for everyone (including the speaker!) and a dedicated person to focus on your speech.

At first, I only started the on the speaking track - but with the opportunities at a smaller club, I got more involved.

One of the biggest adventures starts when the owner talked about our meeting arrangement