60 Seconds Movement

Last year I joined Toastmasters Club to improve my communication skills. It is a wonderful platform not just for improving communication skills but also for thinking & leadership skills. Meeting with members, having a positive attitude of encouraging and helping others is bonus after being a part of the club.

In this club I met one of the members, Puneet Surana who is passionate in speaking and he is a part of the club for a quite sometime. Recently he has thrown up the idea of creating a group of people in WhatsApp for improving communication skills to group memebers. He created the group called '60 seconds movement'. Idea of this movement is to record your 1 minute speech on topic given by him and upload it in group everyday. All the members are not just encouraged to speak but also evaluated by others. I am also a member of the group.

Initially response to speaking offline was not good but he encouraged a lot to group members. I also pull of my socks and tried myself to speak for almost everyday. This is almost for a month and I observed the changes.  Going forward, I must appreciate and thank Puneet for his wonderful effort and initiative.

So I would like to highlight the benefits of participating in this movement.

1. When topic is given, our mind starts thinking on finding relevant stories or anecdotes from different walk of lifes, sharing experiences, connecting dots. So mind gets busy towards positivity everyday. While listening the speech of others also increases no. of ideas & style of speaking & vocabulary. So everyday we can occupy our mind with 5-10 nos of speeches to learn & improve.

2. Recording on WhatsApp and uploading it to group, I can listen what I spoke about. I can have immediately reflection on  self evaluation. What are areas I can improve upon, it may be grammar, content, flow, pauses, vocal variety. The scope of improvement is always in next speech.

3.  In this forum, members are freely evaluating the speech of the others. I am also trying myself to observe the speech attentively and find the best part of the speech and also take out areas of improvement. This exercise helps me to improve on observation and evaluation skills as well.

4. Evaluation by others is the best part of this movement. Many a times, we feel what I am speaking or doing the best. More than that no one has time for others to give instant feedback. Having a genuine feedback by evaluator creates a lot difference in improvements. Just emphasis the point. In my speech, I usually make mistakes in grammar. Although I am trying for it to improve. But one of the members, Naveen Indala suggested me that I should try it again  by writing the speech with correct grammar then speak. I followed the same and I find that my mind is more cautious while speaking now and gradually I am trying to overcome the mistakes.

I think such evaluation is nowhere is done except at Toastmasters club and at this forum in particular. Yes evaluation happens at time of performance appraisal in the organisation but evaluation are much delayed and even it may have some element of subjectivity.

5. This forum is very much safe and secure place to improve communication skill. Everyone is on the group to learn and improve. So even if you have shyness while speaking that may go away gradually and build the confidence in ourselves. Even you fail, there is a someone not to judge you but pat on back for coming forward to speak. It is like at every corner someone is there to hold your hands to pull out to support and push you further at next level.

So life is the name of continuous improvement and this movement is trying to make this happen. So I am hoping to see the immense change in each members of the group in meeting it's objective. I am sure this 60 seconds movement may make us 60 times change in ourselves.