Leaving my Toastmasters meeting today I had an interesting realization – my public speaking skills have atrophied in the past 6 weeks.

Through a combination of bad weather, the holidays, and a new baby, I have missed a lot of meetings in my 2 weekly clubs.  This all came to bear this afternoon as I was the General Evaluator.  I felt “off.”  It was weird but not terrible.

I need to go to the “gym” more often.  Go visit a “gym” near you.  Toastmasters is good exercise for your brain.

Andrew Dlugan gives a comprehensive evaluation of Obama’s inaugural speech, reminding us that we need to:

1. Start with a Strong, Simple Speech Outline
2. Craft Impactful Lines
3. Employ the Magical Rule of Three
4. Amplify Words by Drawing Contrasts
5. Thread Your Theme Throughout Your Speech

While most of us will not have the opportunity to deliver such a speech, we still have the opportunity to impact our audiences every time we speak to them.  Take Andrew’s evaluation and use it as a blueprint to improve your speeches.

Today’s blog entry is by Jennifer Anderson.  Jennifer is a Distinguished Toastmaster that I look up to and have learned a lot from her.

Are you challenging yourself to learn something from reading this?

Are you paying attention right now?  Really?  Are you challenging yourself to learn something from reading this?  Really????

The other night I attended a Toastmaster’s meeting.

The focus of the meeting was to give a speaker feedback about her speech.  Specifically, she wanted to know whether her stories were illustrating her points and whether we liked her stories.

Seemed pretty straightforward I thought.

As the evaluators spoke, one after the other, I noticed that many of them were straying off into things like how she moved around the room (which she didn’t ); her hand gestures (which were minimal); and her vocal variety (again, not much going on in this department.)

A few folks commented a little on her stories, but they didn’t say much that was different than what others had already said.

Did the speaker get what she was looking for?
Maybe a little, but mostly no.

So what’s the problem here?  What happened to these evaluators that took them so far off the intended path?

Going-through-the-motions syndrome!
Oh No!

Toastmasters is a learning environment.  As a participant, you’re meant to challenge yourself to learn something new.

Instead, many of these folks were falling back on things they already knew to evaluate. They weren’t challenging themselves to think critically about the content of a speech!

I doubt anyone realized this was what they were doing.  That’s the trouble with going-through-the-motions syndrome. You think because you’ve shown up to a learning environment, you’ll learn.

I don’t think so.

I think you have to be much more intentional than that.  I think you have to wake up every day (or at least most days!) and decide not to just go through the motions.  Challenge yourself to learn something and to give the process your full attention.

So ­ did you pay attention while reading this?  Did you challenge yourself to learn something?  Really ???

There are five frogs sitting on a log, three frogs decide to jump off the log.  How many frogs remain on the log?

The correct answer is five!  The reason being that deciding to do something is not the same as doing it.

If you have been putting off addressing your fear of public speaking, now is the time to do something about it.  Communication is a concrete skill that will help you in these hard times.  You can become a better interviewer, increase your network of people, and communicate better in general.

Will Toastmasters make you a better speaker?  The answer is no.  See here.  There’s only one person that can make you a better speaker… yourself.

Take this moment to tell yourself that you are going to become a better speaker this year.  Let Toastmasters be the framework for making that happen.

One of the most popular posts on this site is the evaluation advice given by 2008 World Champion of Public Speaking (WCPS) LaShunda Rundles.

Vikas Jhingran won the WCPS in 2007 and also has some advice about evaluations:

I discovered that the process of getting and giving feedback is highly underrated, but very critical to the speech crafting process. Toastmasters teaches you to spot your weaknesses and ask for specific feedback and then maximize that feedback by identifying what will work for you and applying it.

Vikas Jhingran Profile – Toastmasters International – Answering the Swami’s Question