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cousin_it comments on Open Thread, August 2010 - Less Wrong
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Toastmasters?
General social skills are needed in business, a lot of places teach them and they seem to be quite successful.
From my limited experience with Toastmasters, it's very PC and targeted at median-level intelligence people -- not the thing people here would be looking for. "PUA"-like implies XFrequentist is considering something that is willing to teach the harsh, condemned truths.
I went to a Toastmasters session, and was... underwhelmed. Even for public speaking skills, the program seemed kind of trite. It was more geared toward learning the formalities of meetings. You'd probably be a better committee chair after following their program, but I'm not sure you could give a great TED talk or wow potential investors.
Carnegie's program seems closer to what I had in mind, but I want to replicate both the community aspect and the focus on "field" practice of the PUAs, which I suspect is a big part of what makes them so formidable.
The clubs vary in their standard. I recommend you try a few in your area (big cities should have a bunch). For 2 years I used to commute 1 hour each way to attend Victoria Quay Toastmasters in Fremantle, it was that good. It was the 3rd club I tried after moving.
I've heard smart people speak well of Toastmasters. It may be a matter of local variation, or it may be that Toastmasters is very useful for getting past fear of public speaking and acquiring adequate skills.
My impression could easily be off; I only went to one open house.
It wasn't all negative. They seemed to have a logical progression of speech complexity, and quite a standardized process for giving feedback. Some of the speakers were excellent. It was fully bilingual (English/French), which was nice.
I don't think it's what I'm looking for, but it's probably okay for some other goals.
I belonged to TM for many years and I would still if there was a club near me. I found it great for many reasons. But I have to say that you get what you put in. And you get what you want to get. If you want friends and social graces - OK get them. If you want to lose fear of speaking - get that. Ignore what you don't want and take what you do.
I've mostly heard them damn it with faint praises, as being great for polishing presentation skills, but not being particularly useful for anything else.
Interestingly enough, of people I know who are actually professional speakers (in the sense of being paid to talk, either at their own events or other peoples'), exactly none of them recommend it. (Even amongst ones who do not sell any sort of speaker training of their own.)
OTOH, I have heard a couple of shout-outs for the Carnegie speaking course, but again, this is all just in the context of speaking... which has little relationship to general social skills AFAICT.
Interesting, that jibes* pretty well with my impressions of Toastmasters.
There are other Carnegie courses than the speaking one. This is the one I was thinking of.
*See comment below for the distinction between "jives" and "jibes". It ain't cool beein' no jive turkey!
Nitpick: "jibes" means "is consistent with".
"Jives" means "is talking nonsense" or (archaic) "dances".
{Tries looking it up} Wikipedia says "jives" can be a term for African American Vernacular English. The Urban Dictionary gives it a bunch of definitions, including both of mine, "jibe", and forms of African American speech which include a lot of slang, but not any sort of African American speech in general.
On the other hand, the language may have moved on-- I keep seeing that mistake (the Urban Dictionary implies it isn't a mistake), and maybe I should give up.
I still retain a fondness for people who get it right.
I'd be interested in specifics...