Toastmasters Harp On Communication Skills In Leadership

A non-profit organization, Toastmasters International Club, has stressed the need for leaders to scale up their communication skills.

In an interview with LEADERSHIP yesterday, the district director for Toastmasters International in African countries (District 94), Mrs. Mikina Nadine, advised leaders to possess communication skills as leaders with great communication skills are better at leading successfully.

She said the Toastmasters 94 district is so passionate about enhancing leaders’ communication skills which also informed the focus of the ongoing conference of the organisation in Abuja themed “Building Bridges With Words.”

Defining communication, she said, “I think communicating with someone is building a bridge, but in building that bridge, you have to be able to use the correct words, talking and the words you are using can be a weapon, they can make or mar the bridge.

“Communication is not only talking, it is also listening actively to people, when someone is talking to you, you listen to everything the person has to say, at the time you are listening, you are not only hearing, you are actively taking note of important things. It is very rare for a good leader not to have communication skills. As a leader, you can understand people, understand what they want, and know the correct words to say to them.

“Communication is the key, you cannot be a leader if you are not a good communicator, being a good communicator means you being able to listen closely, and secondly is being able to explain to people what your vision is, why you want that so that people can follow you, the philosophy of toastmasters international is to empower people to be able to speak.”

She stated that communication is an important skill everyone needs in life, not just leaders alone.

Toastmasters International, she said, “Toastmasters International empowers a lot of people with communication and leadership skills, in our programme, we have 300 skills to gain but the principal ones are public speaking confidence, leadership, interpersonal speaking, and then the soft skills, how to work with a team, conflict management, how to do an interview, emotional intelligence.

“Our method of training people, which is peculiar to us, is that we learn by doing, it is not a school, people don’t come and listen to someone, and there is no teacher. I have been a Toastmaster since 2011, we all learn by training, people are afraid to speak, but by trying again, it boosts confidence, so it is a self-training method,” she said.