Why young professionals are paying to learn public speaking

Eric Karani was one of the faces. The 30-year-old works in financial services at an investment bank and walked in as a guest, brought along by a friend. He has heard about Toastmasters before, but never joined. He came because something at work was not working and he has been trying to figure it out.

“We all have degrees and technical skills. But the moment a meeting room is quiet and all eyes turned on you, the words that felt so clear in your head stop making sense when they come out of your mouth,” says Eric.

That gap, the one between knowing something and being able to say it in a way that moves people, was the reason the room was full that night.

“I could pay interview coaches when I had an interview coming up. I was planning to join a group called Engage Kenya and their speaking training fee was about Sh50,000 for three months.”

The coaching helped each time. But the problem kept coming back because the root of it had never been fixed. According to Eric, the cause is something he has watched across his professional circles.

“The biggest challenge actually is being able to learn how to lead, influence and take your own space,” he said.

“I don't think we have a challenge of opportunities. When you go into forums where you find founders, hiring and recruiters, they actually have a challenge of hiring. So it is not that we do not have jobs. It is just that we are not able to articulate ourselves, to show the sort of value that we can offer.”

He also points to social media, the very thing that was supposed to make this generation more connected, has quietly made real conversation difficult.

“Before, with less social media, we would easily interact, even just having one-on-one conversations,” he said.

“With social media, it is a good tool but also a bad tool when you are not able to manage it. I believe that is the biggest thing that we have as a challenge among we young people.”

Eric is not sure what he will get from Toastmasters or how long it will take. But he knows he came looking for something that will stick. “I feel that I will get to learn and grow my communication skills.”

While Eric is a first timer, Wangari Kamau had already been in that room for three years. She remembered what it felt like to be new, because her first days were not what she expected either. Wangari is 31 and runs her own small business, working mostly from home.

“I was looking for an excuse first to dress up, to leave the house, and also an opportunity to meet new people who are inspiring.”

But she draws a line that most people walk past without noticing. Being a good communicator and a good public speaker are two completel different things. She considers herself the first. The second one terrifies her.

“I feel like I have always been a good communicator but I have always struggled with public speaking because that requires an external confidence and I am more of an introvert,” she said.

“Toastmasters helped me develop the art of public speaking. It is not just learning how to communicate but learning how to perform and that is what I’m here for.”

Her first speech made that gap impossible to ignore: “I froze...it was a mirror for all my insecurities.”

She has thought a lot about where that fear comes from. She does not think it starts in the office.

“I am not talking about the scary big traumas that people imagine, but just the way we were raised, the behaviours that were reinforced, the messages that we got growing up shaped us as adults,” she said.

Three years in, she still gets stuck sometimes. A speech she prepared recently went wrong on stage, and she had to face the disappointment.

“There is no point A, B and C. It is like a muscle that you just have to keep exercising. You cannot say I have been to the gym, I have big muscles, I will stop. You have to keep going.”

Frank Tsuro has served on the Toastmasters International Board of Directors from 2023 to 2025 and was in Nairobi as part of a listening tour across East Africa. He sits in these rooms to find out whether the programme is reaching people where they actually need it.

“The biggest communication gap I see is the ability to think on our feet and speak without a script,” he said.

“Universities teach students how to prepare presentations and rehearse speeches. What they rarely teach is how to respond when someone in a boardroom asks an unexpected question and every senior person in the room is subconsciously assessing how you handle pressure.”

He explains what is happening inside the mind in those moments. The person is not just thinking about the idea they want to share. At the same time, they are asking themselves whether they are wrong, whether people like them, whether they are senior enough to speak, and whether they might embarrass themselves.

“The brain naturally prioritises what it perceives as a threat, and in that moment the threat is usually social embarrassment, not articulation,” he said.

“So the idea does not disappear. It gets suppressed. That is why communication under pressure requires practice, not just knowledge.”

He says this is where many careers quietly fall apart without people ever understanding why.

“A young professional who lacks situational awareness will often make the right moves at the wrong time, with the wrong audience and in the wrong tone, then wonder why nothing lands.

"Nobody usually explains what is happening. The individual starts believing they are not smart enough or talented enough, when the real issue is that they were navigating organisational politics without understanding the rules.”

Remote and hybrid work, he says, did not create the communication problem but made it difficult to hide.

“Screen-based communication removes much of the non-verbal information people naturally rely on to read a room, build trust, and sense engagement,” he said.

“Many young professionals become professionally invisible in hybrid environments not because they lack intelligence or ideas, but because they have never been taught how to claim digital space effectively. Over time, that invisibility compounds quietly, and the career consequences follow.”

Follow ourWhatsApp channel for the latest business and markets updates.