World Champion Evaluator evaluating like a champion

We are now in the throes of contest season at Toastmasters.  My first recommendation when entering the evaluation contest is to get a copy of the judging criteria and study it.  How can you be expected to meet the judges expectations if you don’t know what they are?

The second recommendation I make is to check out Andrew Dlugan’s excellent series on speech evaluations.  He even gives pointers on winning the evaluation contest.

Now go and give the contests your best shot!

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Yet another thought provoking post by Seth Godin.  This time the post refers to using price as a competetive advantage.  It was the closing line that hit me though…

The scalable, profitable strategy is to change the game, not to become the most average.

If you want to become the best speaker you can be, you need to stop doing what everyone else does.  A New Year is fast approaching.  Use 2010 as an opportunity to redefine yourself.  Here are some ideas:

1. Compete in all the Toastmasters contests.  Yes, even Table Topics.
2. Prepare.  Prepare your speech.  Prepare for the contests.  Talk to the speaker before the meeting.
3. Join an advanced club.  Start a new club that pushes the envelope.
4. Present outside your club.  At a job group, Kiwana’s, Rotary, etc.
5. Push the limits of all of the Toastmaster roles.  Act out the Quote of the Day, do a backwards meeting, etc.

You left your comfort zone when you joined Toastmasters.  You regained it by being a member for a year or two.  Now is the time to push the envelope again.  Join me, and have fun!

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85 today and still going strong!

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Check out this short interview with Rory Vaden on Oprah.com.

Very interesting discussion.  To win the World Championship of Public Speaking, you only need to create a takeaway message, have a universal theme, have something that the audience can use and implement, make the audience laugh, smile, and think.  That’s all.  Do that, and you will have a great shot at beating out 35,000 other contestants.

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Excellent piece by George Orwell on Politics and the English Language.  I found myself seeing many parallels with public speaking.  It is well worth a read.  Here are the final bullet points:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never us a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

All excellent advice for speech creation.  In reading the piece, you can see how Orwell uses different figures of speech to add dimension.  I harp on about #4 a lot.  Stories come alive when you use the active tense.  Try it in your next speech and let me know how it goes.

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Mark Hunter was recently crowned the 2009 World Champion of Public Speaking in Connecticut.  There’s a great writeup of the contests by Angie.  You can also listen to Mark Hunter on ABC Radio.  Finally you can watch him as part of Darren LaCroix’s interview with the finalists this year.

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My favorite line is “Trust your gut.”

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At a recent public speaking seminar, I evaluated a number of short speeches.  There were a number of storytelling techniques I was looking for.  Here is the list I created from my evaluation:

1. Humor.
2. Show, don’t tell.
3. Use of metaphors and similes.
4. Dialogue.
5. Being specific with details.
6. Using more than one sense.
7. Using stories.

When you are creating your next speech, whether it is an elevator speech, a sales pitch, or a Toastmasters speech, incorporate one or more of the above techniques to make your speech come alive.

Of those techniques, I would say that the most neglected is dialogue.  Most speakers I have seen could do a better job of using dialogue to tell their story.  Give it a go!

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In a post directed at unemployed college students, Seth Godin talks about a fantastic post-graduate year doing the following:

• Spend twenty hours a week running a project for a non-profit.
• Teach yourself Java, HTML, Flash, PHP and SQL. Not a little, but mastery.
• Volunteer to coach or assistant coach a kids sports team.
• Start, run and grow an online community.
• Give a speech a week to local organizations.
• Write a regular newsletter or blog about an industry you care about.
• Learn a foreign language fluently.
• Write three detailed business plans for projects in the industry you care about.
• Self-publish a book.
• Run a marathon.

“If you wake up every morning at 6, give up TV and treat this list like a job, you’ll have no trouble accomplishing everything on it. Everything! When you do, what happens to your job prospects?”

Seth makes a compelling point.  I suggest you join Toastmasters and you will learn even more about communication AND increase your network, both of which will prove invaluable.

BTW, other than the possibility of running a marathon, there’s no reason why everyone that is unemployed could be doing this.

Posted under Public Speaking, Toastmasters

In You should write your speeches and presentations, Frank Adamo tells us that we should write out our speeches so that we can refine, massage, and condense them.  He quotes David Brooks, the 1990 World Champion of Public Speaking:

It is absolutely necessary to write a speech and refine the speech as many times as necessary.

It is important to have a speech written down so that you CAN edit it.  This does not mean that you have to write it first.  To keep your speech conversational, many experts suggest that you use a voice recorder to capture the speech and then transcribe it.

I agree with this advice when it relates to a 7:30 Toastmasters contest speech.  Every second counts.  When it comes to an hour long speech, I think being genuine and conversational is much more important than culling a few words here and there.

Packing more into a speech may not be what the audience really needs.  They may need to feel a connection with a real human being who isn’t concentrating on giving a highly optimzed speech.

My recommendation is to record your speech.  Transcribe your speech.  Then, take key areas of that speech and edit those.  Internalize, but don’t memorize.  Don’t edit the whole thing – unless it is for the World Championship of Public Speaking contest.  Even if it is for the contest, determine if highly edited speech is your style.

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