Recently, I ran a brainstorming session (Facilitating Discussion manual, project #2) at my Toastmasters club. The problem we were discussing was “Toastmasters Training”, and I was looking for input on what they, our club members, were most interested to learn. Toastmasters has a plethora of prepared topics we can use, ranging from 10 minutes sessions to four hour seminars. Plus, we have some experienced members capable of creating some awesome sessions on their own.

As luck would have it, one of those members had just presented a Leadership Excellence Series module on Resolving Conflict, so I had a great example to point to right off the bat.

Did they ask for Team Building, From Speaker to Trainer, or Organizing your Speech? Nope. Nearly every idea in the brainstorming session centered on one theme: helping new members understand (and benefit from) Toastmasters. The topics?

1. Orienting new members to the club
2. How to run special events (contests, open houses and our annual Christmas Party)
3. How to use the club, district and TI websites
4. Toastmasters organizational structure (Area, Division, etc.)
5. How to be a Mentor (for new members)
6. Goal setting for members

Also, they mentioned a need for a more robust welcome packet and some type of display of our member’s progress (see an example here)

Next step: I need to turn this into usable information for my club. That is, how do we meet this need? Goal Setting, Mentoring, and Orienting New Members each have modules that can be downloaded (free). In fact, there’s even supporting articles for some topics, such as mentoring.

Here’s the initial plan I will submit:

1. Split Orienting New Members into multiple sessions
   1. The Toastmasters Education Program (successful club series)
   2. Meeting Roles and Responsibilities (successful club series)
2. Split How to run special events into two sessions
   1. 12-15 minute session on Club Contests – related article here
   2. We  will need to develop a 12-15 minute session on special events (open houses and parties) – there’s a related TI manual called, Put on a Good Show.
3. Split the How to use the club, district and TI websites into three sessions
   1. Using TI’s website to manage your profile, order items and find information
   2. Using the Club website
   3. Using the District website (calendar and resourses)
4. Discuss the Organization structure, including the service chart and WHQ Org Chart. Could be a 5-7 minute speech, including projects 7 or 8 from the CC manual.
5. Deliver the Mentoring module (successful club series)
6. Deliver the Goal Setting and Planning module (leadership excellence series)

We will need to get a volunteer for each session, and work with the VP Education to schedule these periodically, like one per month. I think this is very doable.

Running a brainstorming session with your club can be an eye-opening experience. In a short 21 minute session, I compiled enough information from my club to make the plan above.

Do this at your club, and you can find out what your members have wanted and it may allow you to better support them in their goals.

You may not find the same request in your club. But if you go in with an open mind, you’ll find what your club needs and you can make a plan to support your members. Give it a try! Leave a comment with the results.

Editors note: This has been reprined from the District 22 Blog

A lavaliere microphone
The audience needs to be able to hear the speaker on stage, and no matter how well I think I project, the fact is any room with more than 50 people in it should be served by some type of microphone/speakers.

A perpetually full glass of room-temperature water
It depends on how long I’ll be stranded on stage, but I know I can’t speak to a group for more than 20 minutes without needing at least a sip.

My notes
Of course I know my material, but I never know what kind of distraction might take me off course and require a quick glance to be sure I cover everything I intended.

My handouts
It’s nearly always a good idea to provide materials to the audience. Plus, I can include information on other services and I like to send out a sign-up list.

My Flip video camera (I still can’t believe they discontinued those)
I always want to record my presentations. As valuable as other evaluations are, nothing beats watching my own presentation to see what I really did.

Your list might be different, but these items serve to make a pretty sound presentation. What’s on your list?

1. Toastmasters has the flexibility to let you choose your path to success.

Many Toastmasters fall into one of three groups: getting over your fear of speaking, trying to become a better speaker, and enjoying the experience with friends. Note: you may be in one, two, or all three categories at different times or all at once.

If you’re working to get over your fear, there is some value in mixing up your topic selection more often than not. You need to focus on being comfortable, and finding your voice (and topic) is important there. Using a variety of topics can help you find your strengths and improve where you may not have known you needed to.

When you’re working to improve your skills, now may be the time to revisit some recent topics. Take what you’ve done before, work in some of your recent improvements (i.e. different opening, more audience interaction, etc.) and get more (fresh) feedback. This is especially helpful if you have something you need to do well at work, or even when you are competing in a Toastmaster contest.

Do you just like enjoying the experience with friends? It can be good to revisit some topics here too. I recently gave a speech on Fantasy Football to one club. It was fun for me, but the audience had very few football fans. I knew another club had some sports fans, so I modified the speech a bit and gave it again. I added five jerseys to my wardrobe, and pulled one off per main point. It added some humor and made it fun for me and the audience too.

2. Great speakers and leaders aren’t born, they’re made.

Two things amaze me. One is the person who make a dramatic improvement by working on their skills, integrating feedback, and continuing to want to improve. Second is the person who hides behind the “great leaders (or speakers) are born” myth.

3. Someone is glad you are (were) a member.

If you are a member, chances are really good that at least one person is glad you are. In fact, there are probably three, four or maybe dozens who are glad you’re taking the time to come out to meetings, speak, evaluate, and be involved.

If you stopped going to Toastmasters, I’d make some good money betting that at least one member misses you. Maybe it was your unique take on the Wicked Witch of the West (probably copyrighted), your great tips for their speeches (or blog), or perhaps just your smile. Don’t hold it against them if they were to shy to say “thank you” or just mention that you are great. After all, they’re there to get over their fear too.

Think about this: what brought you here? Specifically, what were you looking for when you first visited a Toastmasters club? What were you looking for when you joined? Are you still looking?

Another safe bet? You can find it. That confidence, that skill, that greatness you’re looking for. Next time you go to a club meeting, ask for it by name. You’ll find people there that are ready in willing to help you reach your goals.

What are your three lessons?

A couple of the objectives of this CC speech include being specific (i.e. no “stuff” or “things”), using words economically (i.e. “many” instead of “a large number”) and avoiding jargon. This last point, jargon, was especially important to me. This speech was about what people do for a living, which means one audience member’s answer is by definition jargon to most everyone else.

Because I made this very interactive, the audience was involved and provided a lot of input. Especially the engineers in the club.

Here’s what my evaluator said: “[You] gave a lot of power to the audience to control ‘how’ things were said. A lot of technical jargon was involved in details of what people answered.”

Say it ain’t so!

While I worked had to make examples relevant to the majority, I neglected to make sure to keep the audience from overdoing it on the jargon. Of course I cannot (and would not want to) control what they will say.

The lesson here is how to handle working with the audience. Anytime an audience member goes too technical, it’s my job to rephrase the point with less jargon. That’s it. It’s a lot like handling Q&A from the audience, where you need to be sure to repeat (and sometimes rephrase) the question for the rest of the audience to hear. In this case, since I was asking them questions about their jobs, I needed to make a point to repeat and rephrase their answers to reduce the jargon, and improve the understanding for the audience.

I’ve mentioned it before, but it can be a tremendous benefit to repeat Toastmaster manuals. In fact, I’m finding even more value now in taking parts of longer presentations and giving them as CC or advanced speeches to get feedback and tighten them up – piece by piece. I did that a few weeks ago by telling a story that I’ll use as the opening for a 30-45 minute presentation. I presented it as a 4-6 minute speech from the Advanced Manual on Storytelling and received some useful feedback.

If you haven’t done this yourself, you may find this to be a useful way to prepare for other presentations, regardless of length. Craig Valentine says to take your story to Toastmasters to get help if you can’t think of a phrase. I agree, but also take pieces of other presentations there too. Tighten up your professional speaking with the basic manual. Say it ain’t so!

Only one person will win at the next contest you are in. The rest will certainly not win, and that could be you. These are the strongest reasons why you won’t win:

You want to win a contest. This means your focus is in the wrong place. Just like in any presentation that you want to give successfully, contest speeches have to reach your audience. Focus on them. Even in longer presentations you have to capture their attention and interest quickly. But, in contest speeches you also have to reach them with your message and wrap it up quickly. Time is the only real difference in contest speaking.

Your message sucks. When you reach your audience, you need to leave them with something they’ll remember. Be explicit. If you think that you are so good that they’ll get it from the story, you lose. And yes, it’s that simple. Be explicit. That means have a phrase they can walk out of the room with – 7 words or less. Explicit. As 1999 champ Craig Valentine says – No Phrase, No Stage. Note: I’ve seen this done at every level of Toastmasters contests. At district and above, it’s a one-in-a-million shot to win (or even place) with a crappy/unclear message.

You have no story. Or worse, you have 3 main points. In 5-7 minutes. No. One point (see message above) and best is one story to support that one message. It works to have a sub story or two - nothing too complicated – to support the main story.

You aren’t checking in. Keep your audience involved. Ask a few questions, even rhetorical ones. Get it? Another example: you just finished a piece about that time where your girlfriend said “it’s over”. You might ask the audience, “have you ever had your heart broken?”

You are making assumptions. “We all…” haven’t done anything you can count on, except breathe. Don’t tell your audience why you are like (similar to) them. Ask them if they are like you.

You aren’t funny, or you are too funny. Balance. If they are laughing throughout the speech, save it for the humorous speech contest. If they don’t laugh at all, you lose.

You are standing still. Use the stage (or whatever space you are given) to build a scene. Be deliberate. Practice your staging. Pacing is only slightly better than standing still (i.e. you still lose).

It’s all about you. Don’t preach to your audience about why you know they shouldn’t smoke, drink or whatever. Show them (see story, above) how you learned that lesson and how they can apply it if they want to.

You aren’t taking advantage of feedback. Don’t assume that someone will be or won’t be able to help you just because they are another contestant, a District Officer or not in Toastmasters. None of those factors prove anything.
1. Give your speech wherever/whenever you can. Don’t use all of the feedback you get, but some of it will be helpful.
2. At the contest, seek feedback in advance. Hand your CC manual to a non-judge and ask them to evaluate you (projects 2-6 are best). Don’t concentrate on just one area (i.e. vocal variety) but look at the feedback after the contest. If you come to me after the contest and ask, “any feedback?” without telling me up front to pay attention, then you are just one of the many speakers I watched. Sure, I noticed something. But it isn’t the same. If you want me to give you real feedback, tell me before you speak.
3. Record yourself…and watch…and listen.

You aren’t getting good coaching. Get the best coaching you can afford. Can I help you? Yes. Can others help you? Yes. Are there previous World Champs that can help even more? Yes.  Affiliate link alert: World Champions EDGE. This link will take you to the Edge website, where you can see some free materials or sign up for just $1 for the first month. This is the best low-cost option to getting help. Personal coaching will cost more. Caveat: Other Toastmasters may be willing to mentor (help) you just because you ask. Don’t expect 24/7 access, but there is a lot of experience, expertise and talent out there.

You are still reading this post. Stop reading and get to work!

Last weekend I attended our District’s Toastmasters Leadership Institute (TLI) training in Kansas City, and I spoke during our “Lunch and Learn” session.  The topic was Team Building. Including the lunch itself, the session was in a 50-minute block. Although I did receive a lot of positive feedback, there were a few things I could (should!) have done better.

First Lesson: Start Strong
Mistake I made: Starting too soon after the lunch was provided. When it comes to a lunch and learn event, you want to give your audience enough time to get through most of their food. Especially if you are like me and you build a lot of audience interaction into your presentations.
Why I did it: No good reason; I just started a bit too quickly. My excuse was trying to make sure we had the most time possible for the presentation. Looking back, I think that 3-5 fewer minutes with a more effective beginning would have led to a better session.
Effect the mistake had:  People were not very responsive to early questions. This caused the energy in the room to stay lower than I would have liked.
Possible fixes, on-the-fly:
Ask rhetorical questions – I could have said “I know you’re eating so this is rhetorical…does anyone like working for an autocratic leader?” This would allow them to participate in their own heads without feeling bad about not responding with their mouth full.
Switch from an audience-interaction opening to a storytelling opening. Since storytelling has not been my strongest method, this is the one I continue to work on myself.  Note for fellow Toastmasters, I’m starting the Storytelling manual as my next Advanced Manual. Craig Valentine has some great material on the subject.
Fix for next time: Allow a few more minutes to finish the main course.

Second Lesson: Get them back after an exercise (or break)
Mistake I made: I tried to get their attention after an exercise by simply talking (i.e. ” can I have your attention”). You’ve seen it before, just plowing ahead with my material as they slowly quieted down. It was not very effective…
Why I did it: I’ve seen quite a bit of the “Clap once if you hear my voice” technique, and I thought (poorly) that I wanted to avoid doing it again.
Effect the mistake had: It took folks time to get on board, also those ready to listen couldn’t hear me clearly over the murmuring.
Possible fixes on-the-fly:
Use the “clap once if you hear my voice…clap twice if you hear my voice” method. The nice thing about this method is you can switch to it anytime without materials.
Fix for next time: Lesson I learned from Ed Tate - Use other items to capture attention, like a toy clapper, chimes or other “polite/cute” noisemaker.

Third Lesson: Set expectations for group exercises
Mistake I made: I ran an exercise for the group. The idea was to get into pairs and ask each other a couple of “get to know each other” questions. I didn’t tell them that I would call on a few of them to share the results.
Why I did it: I initially planned to run the exercise and not include audience response due to time. As we went through, I looked at the clock and saw that I indeed had time to allow a couple of examples from the audience, so I made the change.
Effect the mistake had: Many of the folks simply did the exercise without taking notes.
Possible fixes on-the-fly:
Don’t change the exercise on-the-fly. This would have avoided the issue completely.
Walk up to one or two people during the exercise and ask them to be my “volunteer” when called upon. If I had tried this, I could have had two people with notes ready and my change would have worked more smoothly. 
Fix for next time: Provide a handout with the exercise defined and stick with it. I could always trim down the exercise, but adding to it on-the-fly was a mistake.

Learning lessons from your speaking doesn’t do much good if you don’t make the changes based on those lessons. Worse still if you (like I did) choose to fall back into an old habit (or three) when you’re in front of an audience. Lucky for me, the Toastmasters audience didn’t beat me up too bad. Had I misused those techniques in a paid environment, I may not get asked back.

The trick here is to develop habits that work in your chosen speaking enviornment. Since that includes lunch sessions and group interaction, my speaking checklist needs to include the three “fixes for next time” from above. If you don’t have a checklist, now is the time to get one started.

Have you ever heard a timer briefing that included this line: “…and when you see the green light, that means you are good to go…when you see the red light, that means it is time to wrap it up”?

I’ve noticed this too, and it seems to lead to one of these primary outcomes:

1. Speeches going over time
2. Ridiculously short conclusions
3. Both

What is my idea to fix it? Simple – let’s change our normal timer briefing and use the Go To Your Conclusion approach.

“As Timer, I am responsible for helping the speaker stay within their time requirement. There are three lights [cards] to assist you, one green, one yellow and one red. To stay within time, treat the green light as your signal to ‘go to your conclusion.’ Yellow means your time is almost up, and red is your signal to return control to the Toastmaster.

For a 5-7 minute speech, you will see the green light at five minutes, yellow at six minutes, and red at seven minutes. The red light will stay on until you finish your presentation. For Evaluators the times are two minutes for green, two and a half for yellow, and three minutes for red. For Table Topic Speakers, The green light will come on in one minute, yellow in one and a half, and the red at two minutes. To be considered ‘in time’ you must be within 30 seconds of the minimum and maximum time controls.”

By defining green as Go To Your Conclusion, you can help you member meet their time goals and help to keep your meeting running on time too.

I have, and I find it very confusing. With the exception of some very specific types of speaking, such as debates, I can’t understand why people have trouble translating great contest speeches into great speaking in general.

In a previous post, I wrote about some lessons I learned from watching contest speeches, especially at the top level. In this entry, I’ll describe how those same lessons apply to “regular speaking” (if there is such a thing).

First was, Have a message. In contest speaking, I think this is the single most important aspect of a winning speech. This is such an obvious need for any presentation, including project reviews, performance discussions, and any training that I can’t imagine how you wouldn’t see the correlation. No matter when you talk, without a message you are just blabbing. Right?

Next was Tell your own compelling story. While much of our corporate-style speaking may seem to be devoid of storytelling, the fact is that it is still the best way to make your point stick. It may be true that your boss only wants the brief facts without anything “extra”, but the fact is this is still an invaluable skill to have. You should be ready to back up your point with a story in case the boss wants more detail.

Use humor appropriately. I’ve had a couple of rare bosses with no sense of humor, but in a majority of cases even the most stoic of bosses like a little humor thrown in. Appropriately for those circumstances does mean to use caution and keep it professional, but it doesn’t mean you can’t elicit an occational chuckle.

Finally was Set the stage with grand and normal gestures. In this case, you may stay with more conservative gestures, but again the watchword is appropriate. Yes, it would be rare to use the type of stage presence that the Champs have used to win those awards. But knowing and practicing the appropriate gestures for your topic, audience, and stage is still a skill that will make a positive difference in any presentation.

The next time someone tels you that contest speaking has no bearing in “real” speaking (be sure you use the air quotes in your response), remember these tips. You can most certainly apply those skills you learn while competing. They wouldn’t just apply to professional speaking, but to corporate, volunteer and most other types of speaking.

Alan Weiss, PhD has a long list of successful books. The book Million Dollar Consulting is considered “THE definitive work to grow a solo consulting practice.” Just by itself, you can learn a great deal about the process of starting your own business. However, to take your learning and preperation a step further, there is the Million Dollar Consulting Toolkit.

In this work, you’ll find checklists, guidelines, forms, templates, examples, suggested reading material (referencing greats like Peter Drucker), and additional helpful resources. Also, there are links to downloadable forms and templates from the publisher’s web site. Of course, Alan’s website has some great information as well.

What’s great about this book:
You can read it cover to cover, or if you have some focused concerns you can work through the areas of greatest interest first. Alan covers all of the essentials, such as:
Managing your office or home practice – including checklists for equipment, insurance, and other professional needs (Tax, Attorney, Web Designer, etc.)
Marketing and Selling your services – including techniques and examples on how to make cold calling less “cold”
Traveling for Business
Managing your own web site
Balancing life and work
Finding new leads and repeat business
Forms – invoices, expense reimbursments, etc.
Article Writing – including a “letter to the editor” template
Advanced Marketing techniques – like interviews, book publishing and professional speaking
And – as it say on the back of the book – Much More!

Limiting Factors:
While you can easily use this without reading Million Dollar Consulting, it really does work better as a companion product.

Great Quotes:
Speaking and Consulting should be a synergy

Recommendations:
This is both a useful read and a critical reference if you are looking to consult or speak for a living.  Since I purchased it last year I’ve referenced it countless times as I have begun the process of my own business.

Rob’s Rating system (bolded, the rating is)
Buy now at full price
Buy if you get a discount
Wait for the paperback
Wait for someone else to be done with the paperback
If you’ve read my review, you got the jist of it

Think about three things that you are good at, and that the audience could have an interest in. It could be anything; doing taxes, car repair, designing aircraft, public speaking, fishing, car racing, bowling, blogging, Xbox…you get the idea.

Take those three topics, and come up with a single idea about each. For the above ideas, for instance you could use using a specific tax software, the best equipment for bass fishing, and how WordPress makes you a better blogger.

Give those three topics to the meeting organizer, and ask which topic would work best for that audience. Try to do this in advance. Then, when you have your answer you can prepare and deliver a presentation that works for you and your audience.

Now all you have to do is be good at three things, right?