This is a mystery to me. At every Toastmasters meeting around the world, every week, for every speech, we give an oral and written evaluation for a speech. We want to hear and see the observations you as an evaluator have made. Is not a judge an evaluator? How valuable would it be for a contestant to be able to see what areas they need to work on to be as good or better than the other contestants? But, no, we want to protect the judges. But doesn’t the power of evaluation (judging) apply to our contests as well?

I’d also love to see a test speaker at every contest. We do this at my club level to warm up the judges so that have someone to compare to that isn’t even in the contest.  And we will compare…

Of course we have.

A boring presentation, specifically one that uses a monotone voice tells us two terrible things: the speaker isn’t excited about their message and the speaker doesn’t care about his audience. Ouch!

But before we a too quick to cast judgement on others, have we ever been guilty of a boring presentation?

I know I have been.

As public speakers we must utilize inflection. Inflection utilizes several components: volume, rate, pause, pitch, and timbre (tone variation – think Bob Dylan -vs- Johnny Cash).  The hardest of these elements to utilize is pitch. There are three reasons why pitch is so hard to use: 1. fear often constricts our throats and makes it really hard to change the frequency of our voice, 2. we often mistake and substitute volume for pitch, and 3. we are often ignorant of our voice quality and pay it little mind.

Three ways to add pitch to our presentations:

1. Loosen up our throats.  A big ol’ yawn before going on stage is an easy way to open up our throats. It doesn’t hurt to loosen up like we would before an athletic event – roll our shoulders, roll our heads, jump up and down, etc.  Anything to stay loose can serve our throats.

2. Intentionality. We are unlikely to use pitch if we don’t plan to use it.

BIG SECRET HERE: find an interval in pitch (like twinkle, twinkle little star – do to sol in the eight note major scale) and start speaking on that higher note.  We will be surprised at how starting on a higher note will raise our awareness and use of pitch immediately!

3. Accept your voice and use inflection to make it sound even better. If we don’t like our voice we are more likely to ignore what we can do to make improvements. I used to cringe at listening to my voice on a recording, but every time I use inflection and start speaking at a higher pitch I am happy with the improvements I am making to my voice quality.

My best presentations have a spontaneous feel to it. Though I’ve prepared and done my homework, I dive into sharing my ideas with enthusiasm. Power Point takes the wind out of my sails when I rely on it too much.

An image, a video, a quote, main ideas. Keep it simple.

Most people who fill the Grammarian role in my club make too few observations.  I believe anyone can be a good grammarian with a little bit of guidance.  The biggest suggestion people can benefit from is to learn to look for what people are doing right with grammar.  Below is my collaboration of grammatical guidelines that I am sharing with my club:

1.    Choose a word to match the meeting’s theme before the meeting.  Choose a word that will most likely be used in everyday speech and not simply be an obscure challenge for the day.  Attempt to pick words that are truly rich in meaning and in which members will gladly use in their vocabulary.

2.    Print several copied of the word with at least a 60 point font so it is legible through out the room.  Include a definition that can also be read from a distance.  Letting members know the word before the meeting gives them the chance to work it into their speeches.

3.    Place the word around the room using scotch tape before the meeting starts and be prepared to explain the word, definition, and an example of its use to the club at the beginning of the meeting.

4.    It is your responsibility to keep track of who uses the word throughout the meeting and report on this at the end of the meeting.  Table topics participants must use the word of the day to qualify for being voted on for best table topics.

1.    Find the Good

• Vocabulary – interesting, enriching words like cathartic.
• Alliterations – he ate a lot of fatty, feel-good food.
• Emotion, emphasis
• Good adjectives (deep, beautiful, puffy, humid, warm, foreboding, blustery, etc.)
• Word pictures, transitions, puns, word play, metaphors, similes, etc.
• Use of good words and using words correctly.

2.    Pointing out where to improve

• Refer to a dictionary for exact pronunciation.
• Colloquialisms – ya’ll, gonna, wanna, ‘old as the hills’, ‘there is more than one way to skin a cat’, etc.
• Jargon – words hard to understand by those outside the profession or group.
• Dialect – e.g. New Yorker yelling, “wassa madda wichoo?”
• Buzzwords and overused words.
• Disconnected ideas
• Ineffective wording, misused and misunderstood words and phrases.
• Tense consistency, active -vs- passive voice, incomplete or run on sentences, etc..
• Off color or offensive words.

3.    Things to avoid

• Making someone look bad.
• Pointing out too many things about one person.
• “Should” and “shouldn’t” statements.
• If you can’t explain why something is wrong or give the proper alternative than don’t mention it.
• “So”, if over used, can be a filler word, but don’t mistake its use as bad grammar.

4.    Tricks of the trade

• Make general observations and avoid knit picking an individual.
• Point out the positives over the negatives.
• Make simple diction suggestions to ESL members instead of attacking their many mistakes.  Consider talking to them in person or writing them a note instead of singling them out before the group.  Compliment their success in English!

I was disqualified from the recent Evaluation Contest because I went over my time limit of 3 minutes and 30 seconds.
Shoot! and I watched the timing light turn red too!

My attempt to fit in my ‘summary’ into my evaluation cost me the chance to be considered to win and, had I won, to go on to the Area contest.
Details. Timing.

It matters in contests.
It matters in speeches.
It matters when we are giving reports at work.
It certainly matters if the preachers long winded and the roast is in the oven.

Rehearse your speeches and time them.
Eliminate the unnecessary, give yourself some cushion to finish in plenty of time, and don’t give in to the temptation to be spontaneous and add material on the fly and lengthen your speech unless you can do it with extreme moderation.

At the club International Speech Competition this February, I WILL be within the time limits! (And was.)

If you are in Toastmasters and are not excited about speech contests, reconsider.

Why did we join Toastmasters? To become better public speakers. Here are 10 reasons to get involved with speech contests:

1. Contests force us to the next level. It is easy to get comfortable speaking in our clubs. We get to know people and feel accepted and soon thereafter we stop trying so hard to make our speeches great. We know we can give a lousy speech and people will still applaud our poor effort. We will never win a speech contest and remain comfortable; improvement and winning will cost us.
2. We learn by competing. Sometimes we think, ‘I could never win so why even compete’. How will we ever win if we don’t try? A few of us may win our first competition, like my friend Andy Cier won the District Humorous Speech Contest his first contest. Hey! That ain’t right! It took me several tries before I even won at a club level. But that is the beauty of contests – they make us work harder and IMPROVE!
3. We learn by judging. Judging a contest is hard! If judge well you have to pay very close attention and guard yourself from getting caught up in the content alone. The judging ballets have this great list of the nuts and bolts of what makes a great presentation. Judging forces us to pay attention to these great details and we become more aware of them. Next time you evaluate a speech in your club you will be better at it, pay more attention, and know what to look for.
4. We learn by observing. You have different strengths than me. You have a different style of speaking than me. And I can learn from you. We can learn from observing each other.
5. We learn by losing. My first speech contest was ten years ago. I’ve entered several speech contests since then and have lost at the club level and area level before ever winning at the District level. Losing heightens our awareness of what we did wrong, what we forgot to do, and what we can do better.
6. We made a commitment. Becoming a Toastmaster is a commitment we often take too lightly. Being a Toastmaster is a mutually beneficial experience – we get help and we help others. We can help others by getting involved with contests.
7. We can support our friends. It meant a lot to me when my friends from my club showed up at the Area, Division, and District level to cheer me on. Life is about relationships – as is communication and leadership. Showing up to encourage your friends shows them that you really care for them, win or lose.
8. We make contests more exciting. Would we rather speak to five people or fifty? Some of us might prefer five, but fifty people creates a whole new atmosphere and speakers feed off of a crowd’s energy. Make the next contest more exciting for your friends by contributing to the crowd.
9. We can enjoy some great speeches. Yes, some of the speakers will not be so good. But let’s cheer them on for trying. And yes, some speeches will be terrific, inspiring, and terribly funny.
10. Contests will ‘raise the bar’ in your club. Once my club starting taking contests more seriously it changed the level of expectations at our meetings. Now we have two District Humorous Contest winners, a Division Humorous Contest winner, an Area International Contest winner, a Division Tall Tales winner, and a District Evaluation Contest winner in our club. People expect more at our club now. Our membership is between 40 and 60 people.

Contests are INVIGORATING!

We make time for what is important to us – like improving our public speaking skills and attending our daughter’s volleyball tournament!

Public speakers (and especially preachers) pay attention.

Are we allowing for some input from our audiences?  It is interesting what a little feedback from the audience can do.  I recently returned to church work and preaching.  In my sermons I have intentionally asked questions to the audience to get some feedback, to include them in the subject and the people love it.  They are moving from spectators to participants and as a result they engage the subject far more.

David Brooks, 1990 Toastmasters World Champion of Public Speaking, says, “Great speakers go from concern about themselves to concern about the message to concern about the audience”.  Getting input from your listeners is a vital way to show them concern.

Are you about to give a presentation?  Make sure you include the audience with some interaction.

I need to remind myself to not sit and stew in the remnants of my poor performance.  This exact experience is what will help me learn swiftly and remind me what to work on and do right next time.  Don’t we learn through failure?  I failed to focus on a couple key points.  I failed to utilize the dynamics that I’m normally proficient at (gestures, vocal variety, body movement, facial expressions, etc.).  I failed to end with a memorable or concise statement.  I failed to utilize levity.

I have been thinking about my first evaluation contest – I failed to win.  I failed miserably.  But years later I became the District 15 Evaluation Champion.

Fail to win.

Thus began an unplanned round of what I call “You were right, but you were wrong about…”.  We have never done this before as a family.  But with out prodding everyone freely dived in.

One of us came up with some crazy explanation for how the fruit was discovered.  Then someone offered a different explanation.  Then I started using the phrase “you were right about…, but you were wrong about…” as a segue into my new version of the story.  It turned into 20 minutes of entertaining story telling and stretching our imaginations.  It was fun to see everyone’s wheels start spinning as different story elements triggered their own ideas to share.

This serendipitous exercise proved to be a fun time to spend as a family and a way to learn and practice presentation skills without even being aware of it.

Give it a try some time and discover how much fun storytelling can be.

In churches you often need people to fill unappealing roles.  For instance, we need nursery workers so we put an announcement in the bulletin and we give an appeal to the congregation from the pulpit.  Rarely, and I mean rarely, does this ever produce results.  It doesn’t work because if you want someone to help you out you must ask someone, not everybody.

I led youth groups for years.  I would often ask parents of teenagers to be involved – I’d ask them as a group.  I eventually discovered this concept of asking specific people to help with something and had great success.  It was ideal because I could ask who I wanted (who had the characteristics and skills I was after), I could avoid those I didn’t want (the quirky, high-maintainence types), and I would get faster results.  I asked a really fun grandparent-aged couple to cook for a youth group camp out.  They were great cooks, hard workers, and very fun to be around.  I was bridging generations, getting quality help, deepening an existing friendship, and having a blast doing it.

When I am the Toastmaster of the Day for my weekly Toastmaster meeting I ask specific people to fill vacant roles.  As a mentor I leverage this opportunity to make sure my Toastmaster mentees get the opportunities they joined Toastmasters for.  I ask them to fill roles they haven’t had a chance to yet and give them some guidance on how to fulfill the role.  I can also ask people who I’m not mentoring to fill roles and often times I can pull people in who are starting to drift in their club involvement.

Leadership often times is knowing how to work with a team and as a team.  Whether in the work place, volunteer organization, Toastmasters, or at home, we can accomplish more, be more efficient, and build affinity while deepening friendships by taking the time to ask someone to help out.

If you want someone to help you out you must ask someone, not everybody.