I recently attended a meeting of Toastmasters and plan to join the organization. I intend to blog about my Toastmasters experiences occasionally as they relate to storytelling.

I have been wanting to join Toastmasters for about 15 years. Some people join the organization because they are terrified of public speaking. That’s not my issue; shy as I am, I am far more comfortable speaking to hundreds of people than I am with, say, meeting one-on-one with a casual acquaintance, making a phone call, or attending a party. I’ve done a bit of presenting in my time, and, of course, as a college instructor for more than six years, I honed my speaking skills a bit. But I know my presentation skills could use a lot of improvement. I use far too many “pause words” (um, uh), for example.

I was curious about the extent to which storytelling would be emphasized in the Toastmasters instructional materials and how story-rich members’ speeches would be. I don’t yet have the instructional materials that come in the New Members Kit, but material about members’ expected first speech, The Icebreaker, is included in the application packet I got. “Once you have the highlights of your talk in mind,” the piece reads,” weave them into a story, just as if you were telling it to friends around the dinner table.” I also did a search on “story” on the Toastmasters.org site and got 233 results; the first page of results looked promising, with articles about, for instance, how to put storytelling to work in your organization and how storytellers and Toastmasters can learn from each other. The site also offers a section of funny, embarrassing stories about speaking experiences. So I was happy to see that storytelling is well represented in the organization.

Almost all the speeches delivered the first night I attended were indeed story-rich. The first story of the evening was especially effective. A meter reader for the local power company delivered it, and she told tales of life as a meter reader that would not occur to most of us. The meat of her talk was about how she learned to keep dogs on her route from biting her, a particularly traumatic notion because a dog had bitten her in the face when she was a child. She wove fascinating tales of the techniques she has developed for fending off dogs in a humane way.

Would I have shunned Toastmasters had it turned out not to be a storytelling haven? Probably not, but I’m very glad that stories are exalted here. As I become a member and plan my first speech, I’ll blog again about my experience.