Talk to the Human™

At the Toastmasters International Convention, I was fortunate to hear and later meet Carolyn Kepcher, founder of workherway.com, star of NBC’s The Apprentice, and author of Carolyn 101 Business Lessons from The Apprentice’s Straight Shooter.

When Carolyn accepted Toastmaster’s Golden Gavel Award at the convention, she gave an amazing, entertaining, and memorable acceptance speech for the award. Because of her presentation, I decided to to purchase and read her book.

As I watched the International Speech Contest at the 2010 Toastmasters International Convention, I noticed a few things that, in my opinion, truly contributed to the best speaker being recognized as the World Champion.

First, without a doubt is have a message. This may be a no-brainer, but in two years of watching the finals and three years watching regional/semi-final contests I have seen some speakers miss this one all together. You may ask, how do they miss something so critical? Good question. It’s simple, they only think they have a message. You have to, have to, HAVE TO  be sure that the audience will walk away with your message, and better yet with it worded the way you meant it. See Craig Valentine’s work on Foundational Phrases – No Phrase, No Stage.

Tell your own, compelling story. It has to support the message, and in my experience the strongest messages are the ones learned from someone else, like a parent or sibling.  In David Henderson’s speech, The Aviator, his lesson “losing people is a part of loving people” came from a powerful discussion with his mother. His use of dialog was strong, and it helped us relive those moments with him.

By now you know there’s a big speech contest every year at the Toastmasters International Convention, right? But wait, there’s more. There’s a whole Convention going on during the Convention! And. It’s. Fun.

Here are my tips on the best way you, fellow toastmaster, can (and should!) experience the convention next year.

1. Go (duh). You can’t get the tremendous advantages from attending the convention by skipping the whole event.
2. Divide and conquer. You can’t attend every session, but you can learn from every session. Make friends, take notes at each session and trade notes with others (or Blog them like I did)
3. Network. Did you know there is a district in Australia with two Lt Governors Education and Training (like me) and two Lt Governors Marketing? I didn’t until I met one. Turns out that’s what you do in a district is so big it needs to split next year. There’s a cool goal.
4. Mingle with important people. Our International President (Pat Johnson), Executive Director and others in the leadership and world headquarters (WHQ) staff love meeting members (even from Kansas). Did you know that if enough people ask for a certain item to be stocked in the TI bookstore, that they will add it? Me either, until I mingled.
5. Volunteer. Many hands make light work. I spent two hours as a Sgt at Arms at the door of the Opening Ceremonies. Met more people, had easy access to pop out to the restroom, and now at least one WHQ Staff member owes me a favor (another story)
6. Go to the Board of Directors briefing. It’s interesting to learn what changes are coming, and what’s being planned for our organization.
7. Write. Put your experiences down on paper (or blog). Last year I finished a CC manual in about 3 months after the convention. There are always so many topics to talk about.
8. Read. Buy at least one book from one speaker and get it autographed. For me it was Carolyn Kepcher, the Golden Gavel recipient. She is an amazing businesswoman, an outstanding speaker and wow-level pretty (not that that matters).
9. Meet the candidates. There are always candidates for International Director and the top offices. They have some amazing ideas, really useful handouts (many on data CDs now) and will take the time to talk to any member.
10. Dress up and dance. The final dinner on Saturday night is your chance to Tux-it-up. Look your best, eat great food and do some more mingling/networking/sucking-up (if necessary). Then, after dinner and the events, you can get some dancing in with 1,500 of your closest new friends.

It’s been a fast-paced week with a plethora of opportunities for Toastmaster from around the globe. Personally, I had a wonderfull time and accomplished a lot in this much-too-short Convention.

It all culminated tonight with the final dinner event, the International President’s Dinner Dance (ticket required). At this event, the new International President assumed responsibility and the current IP became the Immediate PIP (Past International President). Now, say that three times fast.

Two interesting topics of note:

Today, Toastmasters International held its Annual Speech Contest here at the convention (We also had a business meeting this morning, but an evil virus ate that post…sorry).

Crowned the 2010 World Champion of Public Speaking was David Henderson, with his speech titled The Aviators. Why did David win? I think that beyond the obvious speaking ability and outstanding delivery, he had one of the most touching stories and a powerful message.

David told of how he met and made friends with a girl when he was 7 years old. As friends they used to play aviator together (hence the title). But his freind was soon diagnosed with a potentially terminal illness. Without taking too much from his story, he found himself questioning why he should love someone that was just going to die, and that’s when he learned that losing people is part of loving people and the pain of regret would hurt more and longer than the pain of loss. The story of the next 7 years was so moving that there were actual sobs coming from throughout the audience. He was that good.