Episode 21: My Toastmasters journey - with Leonard Scuderi

These sessions are tending to go from , you know , 30 to 45 minutes . So just you know , there's no sort of that makes sense . Yeah , makes sense so it's just a consumable amount of time . So , yeah , it just depends , and that's typically , once we work through all the questions and the stories , that's how long they're taking .

So if it goes longer , it's not a problem , if you know so . But that'll be my last question , so that'll be a signal that we're wrapping up . So , oh , ok , let me just have a drink , ok , alrighty , so we're recording . This is good , ok . So welcome , ladies and gentlemen , to episode 21 of the Talkative Toastmaster podcast .

This week I'm speaking with my guest and fellow toastmaster , leonard Skadiri . Leonard has been a toastmaster for 30 years this June and is currently a member of both the Karina Toastmasters Club and Leading Edge Advanced Toastmasters Club in District 69 . Leonard , welcome to the show .

You've done a lot of club officer training and I think it was one of those sessions that we met if not a competition a couple of years ago . So you've squeezed a lot into your time at Toastmasters so far . But do you perhaps want to start by telling us why you decided to join Toastmasters ?

I had sort of dabbled a little bit of public speaking through high school , and my father was also a toastmaster at the time . He'd been a toastmaster for almost 50 years . He was a toastmaster , so I think the toastmasters is in the blood and so , yeah , I was 18 .

I was able to join a toastmasters club and I joined there and I enjoyed it and I've stuck with it Excellent .

But no , he's really really positive in encouraging from it and I sort of saw all the fun stuff that happened in Toastmasters as a child Dad was a .

I can remember dad being an area governor at the time and being the area conference and everybody would come around to the place after the area conference and they'd do a bit of a barbecue and a social thing and all the kids would play with each other and all the toastmasters would talk to each other .

So there was really a lot of that social aspect of toastmasters outside the club which I had vague memories of , and so , as someone who just moved to Brisbane recently , it also helped to extend the friend circle of meeting other people .

Yeah , it's great that it's available like that . How many different clubs have you been in ?

So I had the opportunity to visit it there and it was a great experience to meet other data geeks and it was interesting of how they incorporate data and doing data presentations in their Toastmasters clubs . I also visited a club in New York , which was a coincidental story of how I just recently received my DTM back in 2002 .

And I received a random letter from a guy in New York who was congratulating people on their recent DTM . They wanted to find out a bit about toastmasters . I got into correspondence with him and said that I was actually going to be in New York in a period of time and I'd said I'd like to come visit your club .

So he invited me along to his club and I can remember arriving at Staten Island there and being picked up and driven to the club meeting and I got to meet some amazing people in there .

We got to actually find out about some great things to do in New York and I was also lucky enough to meet a Toastmaster there friend who had at the time finished eight distinguished toastmasters and 46 corporate communicators and had been very much involved in toastmasters over there , and a very incredible woman .

So , yeah , so it's amazing how when you are visiting any country , you can always pop into a Toastmasters club and you meet people and you meet friends and making new friends and also had one of the experiences of when I was in America I visited World Headquarters in Denver .

Oh cool , I in-law lived in Denver and World Headquarters is only 20 minutes down the road , so I thought I'd pop in and meet the World Headquarters staff and I met it's name . It's Dan Rex , thank you , sorry , I'll try again .

I met Dan Rex , who is the CEO of Toastmasters International , so it was good to actually base it to names and it was a really good , great experience there .

They do actually have a Toastmasters Club that meets at World Headquarters , but unfortunately the timing didn't quite make it that I couldn't make that meeting there , but that would have been really cool as well .

Also visited clubs in Sydney when I was working down in Sydney and again , it's a good opportunity to meet people socially and find out more about the local areas . If you want to do travelling or break wine bars etc . Oh that's great .

Did you have to book a meeting ? How'd that work ?

We had a bit of a chat about , you know , from Queensland I think I did drop that . You know , I knew Mike Storky , who was an international president , which he'd obviously know quite well .

But yeah , it was a very , very quick conversation but it was good there and I met people from the membership team and people from the finance team and my people , the IT team . So it was actually , yeah , it was a very good experience .

I mean , I've got a passion for education , I've got a passion for teaching people and I was just yesterday I was chatting helping out my graduate who is this was a second or third day in the office there and I jumped on a whiteboard and I was drawing diagrams and going through some IT concepts and just seeing the eyes light up when they get a concept .

And the same thing with Toastmasters is seeing members come along to their first Toastmasters meeting delivering a table topic , struggling to make 30 seconds , and then after two or three months their confidence has increased dramatically . Their table topics are going for two minutes .

You see , their speeches are more confident and I feel like because of the sometimes because of the evaluation that I've given , the feedback I've given them , I've seen the improvement there and I feel like you know I have contributed to this growth and that's what I . That's why I keep coming back . Just seeing people come go , I'm really nervous .

Catapillars and bloom in the beautiful butterflies .

I'm having the younger , junior members which are coming into our team and we're going to have to teach them and train them concepts and get them up to speed with how IT principles work and good IT principles . From that point of view , I also like that .

Toastmasters gives me the confidence to get up and present in front of peers and especially table topics is fantastic because they are just really many , many job interview questions I've been on . I've been on someone who's on both sides of interviews , being an interviewer and interviewee . I do see that I'm through through Toastmasters .

I'm very confident when it comes to answering the questions and very articulate . And I see some candidates who I know that the thought is in their head . They are struggling to get it out because they are the nervous or haven't got the ability to put together their thoughts in their head of what they want to talk about .

That is where , giving you an avenue of Toastmasters to practice , that You've got the opportunity to learn how to think on your feet , how to have your brain still work while you are nervous it's all those things that constant repetition and practice helps you in the real world .

I always say that public speaking is a skill just like riding a bike or driving a car . When we used to start driving a manual there , how many times we stole the car ? We'd be nervous about what lane we want to be in , and it would just be an awful experience .

But after many , many hours of practice you become unconsciously competent when it comes to drive and you can change lanes and change gears , put your makeup on , sing a song , change the radio station . Your muscle memory just continues doing that . Toastmasters and public speaking is exactly the same thing .

Through repetition and constantly turning up to the club , it becomes second nature , it becomes muscle memory and you can draw on that whenever you need to .

necessarily get in the real world until you're really under the pump to do it .

I want to win . I want to beat the contest . You did beat me , but that's okay . I put a little bit of extra pressure on myself and I sort of get to myself where I'm in an unfamiliar situation where I'm really nervous and scared before I get up and present . But when you get up on stage , you start talking .

All that previous hours of training just take over and you just deliver it and it just , it just , it works . Yeah , it's the same reason , as you know , when you look at one of those keynote speakers and you say , oh , my god , amazing . Oh , they just sound so natural and so fantastic , because all you're seeing is that one hour of presentation .

But you don't realize there's been ever hundreds of hours of practice that have been going on In the background to be able to enable them to be able to deliver that one hour keynote Without notes and to move the audience and entertain them , and for us toast masters , is that hours of practice that we can then draw on when we need to .

I can sit and enjoy the meeting and listen to speeches and learn from some from people , other people . The beauties about the advanced club is that Everybody in them in the club has something specific that they're better than you at Mmm , and so you can always have one area of your speaking that you can learn from .

Like we've got one member of our speak yeah club who's very fantastic at off the cuff humor and one line and dad joke , so I can sort of learn from that point of view . You've got another person who's really good at Getting on a whiteboard and and track teaching concepts there .

Another person who's got these fantastic concepts and speeches where he Mocker , mocked up some lights in a box to be able to show us all the different types of of lighting and the different LED's and the cool white and warm white , and it was just such a different way of delivering a speech and I'm thinking .

That and another member who's actually deciding to do a whole path on Taylor Swift . She's going to be delivering the 14 speeches of a path all about Taylor Swift , and that's just a very much an innovative approach of of taking one concept and and working in different ways . There's , there's you learn , everyone's got these brilliant , different ideas that you can .

Actually , I like , I like , I'm going to take that and and try to to improve that myself .

They haven't been in Toastmasters that long so they haven't seen how everyone else does it and they'll come with there especially , I think you know younger generations coming through . I'm noticing a really putting a different spin on it , which is great .

So when you've got members who are , you know , early 20s up to our oldest member in in Mount Gravatt is is 89 , is 90 this year you see a massive range of experience .

So they look at you with a different eyes and sometimes can give you a piece of advice that Regular Toastmasters would not give you , because , oh , that's the way we do it in Toastmasters , so you're doing it well , well , they will say well , actually I didn't like that . I found that really confusing or whatever it is . And it wasn't Toastmasters in , yeah .

And then I do like that because you know the real world is not Toastmasters and therefore you know you need to be adaptable , for for a Bunch of people don't know .

I think a better way to saying that , a One you're going to learn , is that a good communicator is able to be able to speak to all age groups , whether it be , from that you know , the generation X , generation Y , the alpha generation , the boomers .

Communicating to the different generations , each has their own unique way , and being able to be able to connect with all of them is very important to learn .

It's Certainly lots of opportunity to practice , you know , in speaking in broad environments , and so you've sort of touched on some of the skills that you've learned during your time as a Toastmaster . You like the training and the confidence that it's given you , but is there any other particular skills that have been invaluable for you ?

And he was telling me how , at the time , he promoted one of his his managers to the deputy CEO , with no direct reports , because he wanted him to develop the skill of being able to get people to do things for him , not because they were he was their boss , but because of the fact that he could motivate them . And Toastmasters is kind of the same .

We are leaders in a volunteer organization and with volunteers , everybody has a different amount of time and commitment towards they can get to the organization . So a good leader has the ability to motivate people , you that aren't directly reporting to them . In this case of a volunteer organization , you're motivating volunteers .

So if you can learn how to get the best out of your volunteer base , when you apply this to the corporate world , it should be a lot easier , because more often than not , they are directly reporting to you and so they have to do it .

So , but if you can get them to do it because they want to do it , not because they have to do it , and get them excited , that for me is that nugget of leadership , and Toastmasters teaches you that .

There is so much more work that needs to be done , so you have to learn to delegate . Yeah , that is where you learn . It is that learning how to delegate and delegating to the right people , effectively communicating what needs to be done and getting them excited that they do a good job . So I think that's the thing .

The further down the organization you move because most of us we have the inverted pyramid where the membership is the most important , yes , and then , as you work , your way down , down , with all the roles there , into the seven roles .

And the fact is , as a parliamentarian and your responsibility is to make sure that you're actually following the rule book or doing things properly when you're running meetings or as a chairman , your job is to not to actually control the meeting .

Your job is to find the will of the meeting , what the people want , and so you've got to , and to do that you follow the rules and the procedure . So in case of Toastmasters , we use rentends .

You've noticed in parliament there they have all the different standing orders with Australian parliament there and the rules are there to make sure that everybody gets a fair say and things are done properly . So the parliamentarian's job is kind of like the speaker , not actually not really like the speaker of the house . Try again .

The parliamentarian's job is to make sure that the chair is following the procedures properly . If there is actually any contention on the rules , the parliamentarian will assist the chairman on what the correct ruling is , and there might be a situation where you know you will have to quick .

There might be a motion of dissent or a point of order on something , and then this is where the chair will refer to me and I'll quickly , if I know it , I'll answer the question . If I don't , we'll quickly pause the meeting .

I'll pull out my little rentence book and look up what the ruling is , and it's essentially just to make sure that we are following the procedures correctly and we're doing what's right . There was also , when I was a parliamentarian for the district director a couple of years ago , anything to do with district policy .

He would always run things by me and say what was your understanding of this governing documents there ?

And so it was my job just to read the governing documents and interpret what I think they are and hopefully that him and I agreed with it , so that way you know he was getting a second opinion on anything , just to make sure that we were doing things correctly as per the governing documents .

From a point of view of Toastmasters , yes , probably not the end of the world , but understanding that sort of stuff when it comes to corporate law et cetera is probably very valuable . Things that you're not actually breaching any corporate guidelines or any in the case of my workplace . Are we breaching any Australian Privacy Act ? Are we breaching any ?

I was working for debt collection . Are we breaching any debt collection guidelines or APRA rules , knowing we're having the ability to be able to read legislation interpreted to make sure we are complying with it ? So for any handy , so you don't expose your company to risk .

And that can seem a little bit dry when you're doing it in a Toastmasters club , but when you realize the application of it out there in the world and how group decisions are made , especially body corporate , it's not quite volunteers but people have a financial interest and those meetings can get really fiery .

So having that forum that provides for a way that people can have their voices heard and then voted on , and yeah , that's where I think it becomes relevant .

And then for me that's when it made it become interesting in Toastmasters because like , okay , all right , this is not just some going through the motions , of working through a rule book , it's practice in actual running proper business meetings to a time and an agenda .

I've got one of our members , one of my members , trikm . I've got one of my data engineers who's very motivated . She loves to do study and she's really keen to take on your work and learn and sort of stuff . She contributes in the meetings and likes to actually have to portray her opinion .

And then I've got another one of these data engineers who's very quiet and very timid and very difficult to get him to speak at the meetings . He doesn't really say much and there's like in that confidence there , and so they both have different communication styles .

So as a leader , I used to be able to be able to try to encourage the shy or timid one to be able to be able to express their ideas .

Some times those quiet introverts are the ones that actually have that nugget , that pearl of wisdom , and when they say something , they say something profound , and so it's a lot of managing that the person who's more dominant doesn't overtake the conversation or over control the meeting there and trying to facilitate them appropriately so that everybody gets that equal

opportunity to contribute in ideas and designs there . And I think from facilitating in club officer training and training sessions there I can then utilize that skill when it comes to in our meeting there . I think that's the thing . As a junior engineer I was more of the listener .

Now as a senior engineer I'm the one that's actually trying to facilitate , trying to get the best out of the team .

And there are these different groups of people and being able to identify them on the fly and handle them appropriately to be able to get the best out of your meeting , and I appreciate it . It's a challenging skill and I think that's where Toastmasters has definitely helped me with .

I find that a very valuable project to do in the Toastmasters Club , because not all audiences are well-behaved like a Toastmasters meeting , and so being able to practice that difficult audience is a skill and a challenge , and it's good that Toastmasters realizes that gives you that real world opportunity of destructive people .

It could be somebody who is having a bit of a side conversation with their friend , or there's other people who want to interrupt you to be able to ask a question , or there's other ones that want to correct you when you say something wrong , and there'll be those sort of people in there .

So knowing how to effectively handle them without actually offending them is a very important skill , because you can easily tell the disrupting person to shut up and feel very much intimidated , whereas rather you're saying thank you , I really appreciate that feedback there .

I will be taking questions or comments later on in the meeting and maybe we can address that situation then , and so that way they felt heard and then I'll sit down and go .

Okay , I'll wait till the end of the meeting , rather than being told , if you tell them to be quiet , and then they'll actually feel offended and in a way , you may have alienated your audience and then they have a negative perception of you . And then , all of a sudden , they'll switch off and not necessarily want to learn what you're teaching them .

So what would happen is we gave real life situations of I gave a slide deck and notes to one of our members 10 minutes before their speech and saying , hey , you're delivering that in 10 minutes . I get the second one where they had the slide deck , but all of a sudden , a couple of slides were missing or they're in the wrong order .

So , having to learn to be able to handle wait a minute , that's not the right slide what do I do ? I remember it was halfway through their presentation . The fire alarm went off and so I just I just basically set my my phone to a random time and it started beeping . I said , okay , that's fire alarm , I'm sorry , but we've got to stop your speech there .

And then that was the end of the speech . We went to , we went , we went to have our break and then when we came back , they continued on or they started again or whatever it was . So they had to learn to pick up from where they left off , and in the real world .

That sometimes happens , you know you do get interrupted by it's external influences , and knowing how to handle those situations effectively and and they cool , calm and collected under the surface , under the surface , gets under the surface . Yeah , on the outside be cool , calm , but you're nervous on there , and handling that situation there is is , is .

That is something that , um , you know , that separates the , the the good presenters , from the , the great presenters .

I was who have worked in PR for a long time and working with executives doing TV interviews or radio radio interviews and just seeing how they respond under pressure or , you know , being asked questions , that they're a bit curly and knowing what they can actually talk about at any time , or what , what , what they have to keep quiet because it's sensitive information

, or what they actually can , and you can actually see their brain ticking over in real time as they're working out what they can say and what they can't say , and that is a skill . Or it might be a microphone piece coming out of their ear or microphone dropping off or sound glitching at a conference .

Yeah , I , there's not too many safe places you get to practice those kinds of interruptions .

It's that you know learning that that you know that that impromptu speaking would be able to think on their feet . I think it is a skill that they , that they should have . They come across better .

You see , I always encourage a lot of our guests to go and visit other clubs around the local area and find the club that suits you as a person , because there will be people you you you gel with . I think , like I mentioned earlier in the interview there , one of the clubs I visited in London was the data scientist club , full of data geeks .

So if you are a data person , that's great . But we've also got another club , one of our online clubs in America , which is a Dungeons and Dragons club . There's also a golf club . There's a whiskey club . There actually are clubs where you have people of similar interest groups , as well as your community clubs there .

So toast masters is not a one size fits all . Try that again . Toastmasters is not . The Toastmasters Club is not a well . Every club is the same . Each club is unique and has their own personality there . So find the club that suits you the best and that will help get the best out of you .

The problem is that when you do say yes , sometimes you over commit and therefore don't do things properly . Or by saying yes , sometimes you're taking away the opportunity from somebody new , from being able to take on that learning experience there , and so I'm hoping for the next 12 months to learn to actually say no .

So I want to have a year where I'm not on any of the club executives and I can just be an ordinary member and I can focus on myself and focusing on just delivering speeches .

I came very close to making the district final for international a couple of years ago , pipped at the post , so I really would like to be able to spend time focusing on improving that speech to the stage where it does wins . Hopefully I'll be on the district stage this time next year or 25 . I think that's one of my goals there . And yeah , so they focus .

So they've been focusing on me rather than focusing on other people for 12 months . I'm not saying that not to not help everybody , but I think sometimes you got to find that balance of looking after yourself and looking after other people and it's time for me to give back to myself .

Ok , I'll do it , because if there's no one stepping up , but at the same time , sometimes , if you know , in those voting situations where there's a role available and you just absolutely be quiet and don't say anything , yeah , it's who's going to , I suppose , step in to fill that void , and sometimes the most unlikely people do , which is great , which is exactly

what we want to see .

I mean , that's the nature of this organization , it's one of continuous improvement , and when you can see other speakers doing amazing things , it's like right , I really need to hone that skill , yeah .

I was actually trying to stay silent for so long and so for me that's what I'm saying there is always something to learn on , and watching myself back on video is what you actually think you happened on stage to what actually reality there is very different .

So getting that that's my focus is definitely focusing more on the actual speech craft and the delivery and putting you know , almost working on each sentence at a time to get the wording right , the actual words in the right order , the you know the pace correct , the gestures correct for it to all come together , because I think that's what was missing from the

last time there .

So focusing on that I think that's whenever I , whenever I hear past district champions and they do educational sessions about what they thought process , about delivering their creating their world champion speech they always talk about how literally , it's probably one hour or more for one minute of text that they're actually focusing their time on when it comes to writing

something . So it's , it's . There's a lot of effort that goes in and they will rework lines and present it at different places and and just deliver the same speech , just change one sentence to see whether that was so effective or not .

There's so many more , so many other hours of of refinement to be able to deliver that seven minute speech that you just don't see . So for me , have the time because I'm not hearing to be able to put it into my own speech and deliver that . That , that , that speech .

For me , that's what I want to focus on for the next , next , next , next 12 months of my life there , and that's where I feel like Toastmasters is really going to benefit me in that situation . There , I like , I'm going to focus on being a better leader , being a better communication , getting the best out of my team and hopefully achieving goals .

That's my one of the things and that's what Toastmasters is one of , that aspect of my life . Look out , that's shit .

So , whether it be wanting to eat healthy , whether it be exercising more , becoming a better communicator , better leader , better speaker , that's what I really want to focus on and that's what I love about Toastmasters is that it takes a lot of those boxes of better , of helping to improve myself . You get that social aspect from going to meetings .

You get the communication skills to be able to communicate better , whether it's with your partners or whatever your colleagues . You get better leadership skills about getting the best out of people and all around . It's pretty good fun .

For me our advanced club one of my favorite bits is finishing the meeting , heading upstairs to the pub and debating speech or getting feedback , and that's sometimes like a better feedback at the pub than I do actually in our meeting there .

So , yeah , so that's for me , that's what I love about Toastmasters and sort of done 30 years now and hopefully it'll be at least another 30 more years .

30 years is a long time to have seen the changes and where the organization has gone from the Pathways program in books now to online , and it's going to keep innovating , so I'm sure you'll continue to smash your goals , leonard , so thanks again for joining me today .