I joined Toastmasters in 2009 to become a better public speaker. What I didn’t expect was that the skills I developed while working through the Toastmasters materials would help me publish a book.

After more than two decades in the Canadian Armed Forces, including deployments to Afghanistan, I carried a collection of experiences and lessons I wanted to capture. The challenge was not the content; it was organizing those ideas into something clear and meaningful. That was where the Toastmasters curriculum helped unexpectedly.

Although program titles have changed over the years, the fundamentals currently taught in Pathways have remained the same: clarify your message, structure your ideas, and close with a purposeful conclusion. As I began writing the book, I realized those same fundamentals taught in Toastmasters could be applied to a book by treating each chapter like a Toastmasters project:

• What is the message of this chapter?
• Which stories support that message?
• How do I structure the chapter and close in a way that reinforces the message?

By applying the same structure I had learned creating speeches, writing the book became a process of completing one project at a time rather than facing an overwhelming task. The curriculum also provided a system for turning a variety of experiences into clear, structured messages, and it helped transform a long-held idea into a finished memoir.

Toastmasters teaches effective speaking skills, but its impact doesn’t end at the lectern. As you improve your public speaking by advancing through the Toastmasters curriculum, you may also develop broader communication abilities that can lead to becoming a published author. 

For those curious about how Toastmasters’ skills can scale from speeches to a book, Unconventional: A Combat Engineer’s Road to Afghanistan is available on Amazon.

John Hallett
MVP Advanced