Public speaking is to many humans what sunlight is to gremlins.

As in, lethal. OK, it’s not exactly deadly for humans, but for many it feels like it might kill you, what with the heart palpitations, pouring sweat and desert-like mouth.

But not for the attendees at today’s 21st Century Toastmasters meeting, where public speaking seems to invigorate the speakers, much like a parched plant swells beautifully after gulps of water.

First up to the podium is Lisa Lowdermilk, a longtime member of the public speaking club, who gives a speech about her former co-worker, Betty, who has cancer. They once worked at a place where they had to check items for bed bugs.

Lowdermilk gets a lot of laughs as she stands at the head of a long table piled with candy, cakes and cookies at Library 21c, where the club meets on Fridays.

Three-quarters of an hour later, fellow club member Karen Kirshenbaum must give her evaluation of Lowdermilk’s speech. That’s how it works at Toastmasters. You give, and you receive, all with the hopes of making you a better communicator.

“I love storytelling,” Kirshenbaum says. “You reflected not only about your peers and your workplace, but one person who stood out, with clear graphics, body movements and body variety.”

She has a few suggestions for Lowdermilk: possibly use props, music or a quote from her co-worker that shows her humor.

“There’s always something to improve upon,” club member Ken Lewis later said. “Once you’re OK with the feedback, the evaluation portion, that’s where all the growth happens. Until you go and seek it, you’re not going to know your own blind spots, and that’s what this helps do – show those blind spots.”

Feeling comfortable speaking to groups isn’t a modern-day quandary; it turns out people in the early 1900s were also consumed with conquering what is often deemed the No. 1 fear of humans, along with death, spiders and heights.

More than a century ago, Ralph Smedley hosted a group of young men during the first meeting of The Smedley Chapter One Club at a YMCA in Southern California. They came with one hope – to improve their communication skills.

Smedley named the group Toastmasters because, according to the Los Angeles Times, “the format was like that of a banquet, with a leader chosen at each meeting to act as master of ceremonies and introduce the speakers.”

The meetings took off, eventually becoming Toastmasters International, which now boasts almost 14,000 clubs around the world, with 15 in the Pikes Peak region, including 21st Century Toastmasters.

Each meeting features prepared speeches, impromptu speaking called Table Topics, and feedback from members.

Today’s Halloween-themed Table Topic: spooky and mystified.

Table Topics is a free-for-all; first come, first to speak. You get one to two minutes to riff on the topic at hand.

“Everyone in a Toastmasters room wants you to succeed, so we try to help each other out as much as possible,” said Dori Rinehart.

Rinehart joined Toastmasters in 2008 and 21st Century Toastmasters in 2019. Her job as a credit officer at a bank required her to do presentations.

“I’d rather have my fingernails pulled out by the roots than do that,” she said.

But that was then. Now she’s been an officer and a director at different levels on Toastmasters’ ladder of leadership. She still gets a little nervous, she says, but overall, she feels comfortable talking to a group.

“It helped me to learn to relax,” Rinehart said. “I can stand in front of people, and know they’re not going to crucify me. I learned how to pause and breathe instead of trying to go through it so fast and thinking I had to memorize everything. It gave me confidence.”

After Lewis joined in 2019, as a way to explore what he might pursue after getting out of the military, he was surprised to get feedback about one of his speech patterns.

“I was ending a lot of my sentences with the word ‘right,'” he said. “I didn’t realize I was doing that. It was brought up to me in this room. I don’t want to be distracting if I’m speaking for influence or some type of change. I want to pass on some kind of message.”

His experience at Toastmasters has been so positive that he intends to become a motivational speaker.

It’s not necessarily a fear of public speaking, he thinks, but of being negatively evaluated by the audience. But if receiving feedback on speeches becomes normalized, you can begin to focus on adding value with the content of your speech, versus worrying about how you look on stage.

“This is a great place to practice that,” Lewis said. “Come in here and focus on the content of your message, and subdue that voice we all have that says do I look OK? Is your zipper down? Am I stumbling? That’s not the point. Focus on the message. You can come practice that here, mess that up, and know that it counts for showing up as your best self out there.”

Details

21st Century Toastmasters, hybrid meetings, Zoom link also available, 1-2 p.m. Fridays, Library 21c, 1175 Chapel Hills Drive, free for guests to check out the club, $60 biannually for Toastmasters International, $6 biannually for 21st Century Toastmasters, $25 one-time new member fee; 719-304-6111, 21c.toastmastersclubs.org