Toastmasters Has Prepared Me Well

In October, two fellow Toastmaster members, Greg Smith, Mike Gerrick and myself took part in a business symposium sponsored by our local library.

I spoke about listening and did an interview with a local news reporter. Weeks later, the article came out about the symposium. Holly, a friend of mine read the article. She is a high school librarian and conducts a class session with students regarding financial literacy and college preparation. She asked me to speak to her class about listening.

This blog entry is being called What I've Learned Through Toastmasters instead of What I learned At This Week In Toastmasters.

In Toastmasters, the right preparation can turn into a successful presentation. There's a lot of things that go into doing a presentation before you even do the presentation. So, I wanted to express some things I've learned through Toastmasters that were very helpful with my presentation to Holly’s students.

As part of my preparation, I e-mailed Holly asking about the names of the students and their ages. This gave me an idea of the audience, I was going to speak to.

My main focus was to make the presentation relatable to the high school students.  In my listening workshop, I do a exercise where I read a story and the participants tell me about parts of the story, they were listening to.  I wanted to try something different with the students, so what I did was tell a story, but I use the street names of their city.

In another exercise,  I wanted to demonstrate that sometimes a word can stop you from listening and the word “poem” stopped a lot of them from listening and tune me out as they confessed later on.The poem, I actually read was the lyrics to a very popular song called Fancy by Izzy Azalea. The class perked up and listen as I read more of the lyrics. Their listening went up as they focus on something they knew and had an interest in.

Another thing in the preparation that I did, was asking Holly, if they had a HDMI cable that I could hook up to my IPad. I asked that a lectern or podium be put in the room, too. These factors, if not taken care of could have made the presentation difficult.

On the presentation day, I arrived at the high school about a half hour before the presentation. This worked out really well because there was a little bit of a situation hooking up the HDMI cable for my IPad to the projector and that was worked out after some trial and error. But, if I had waited the last minute and came in maybe ten minutes before the presentation that may have been a problem.

Since I was there early, Holly introduced me to Brianna, a student who would be at the presentation. She was in the library with some other girls working on something.

Arriving early, you get a chance to meet people who will be in your audience.  A chance to get to know them and they get a chance to get to know you before you take the lectern. This can be a really tension reliever. During the presentation, I was able to call on Brianna by her name and she was comfortable interacting with me.

One thing I like to do as I like to walk around the environment that I'm going to be speaking in. I like to see where the audience is going to be sitting.

The lectern that is used is very important.At this presentation, I found out how important it is. The lectern that was in the room was much lower than the kind that I have used at Toastmasters. It didn't feel as natural as I had to really look down to see my notes, but since I had practiced a lot. I didn't have to look at my notes very much during the presentation.

Also, I got a chance to get the feel of the equipment that I was using and see chance to see if my IPad with all my slides were working properly and I had enough time to do all that.

Something that's very important when doing presentations and speeches is being comfortable in what you're wearing. I had some shoes on that were so comfortable that I was walking on air. A friend suggested that I should wear a suit and tie for the high school presentation. Since the speech was informal, I thought a casual look was good enough. So I wore long-sleeved gray sweater with gray dress pants and black shoes. I felt good and confident as I spoke.

What I've learned Through Toastmasters is that preparation is the key to doing a very successful presentation. The techniques I used in the preparations for the presentation were all learned by doing Toastmasters speeches. The high school presentation went very smooth as I gave good information, interacted with the students and gave them a few takeaways that they can use to make their listening better.

Art Byrd has been a member of Executive 408 Toastmasters Youngstown, since 2009.

He has achieved his Competent Communicator, Advanced Bronze, Silver and Gold. Competent Leader and Advanced Leader Bronze. He is working on his Advanced Silver.

Currently, Art is the Area Governor for Area 13 in District 10 in Ohio.

The Tale of Two Lecterns.

Warren Toastmasters-Nov 8, 2014

The last Warren Toastmasters meeting, two lecterns were set up in the church auditorium which has a stage.

This meeting,the Warren club tried the two lecterns again. One lectern was set up on the stage with a microphone and the other lectern was on the floor. Many members chose the stage lectern, which overlooked the members. The experience did give stage time as if the speaker was addressing a large audience. With the speakers, the speaker could be heard loud enough and clearly.

At the lower lectern, there was a better connection with the smaller audience because the speaker was on the same level as them. Also, a better chance for good eye contact.

The auditorium's acoustics were not that good, with fan noise constantly going. Actually, it was hard to hear the speakers at the lower lectern and the members sitting at the tables, when they spoke.

Ted, the General Evaluator said the use of the two lecterns was good, but he had a hard time hearing someone of lower lectern.

Ken Shellito, the Warren club supervisor, said about the two lecterns,” We are experimenting to be good communicators.”

New Members Doing Their Thang

The greatest thing about Toastmasters is to see the new members start out.

On Saturday, Becki did her icebreaker speech. Before, she went to the lectern, she talked about her fear of public speaking.

She got up and delivered an excellent icebreaker speech about her family, the family business, her start in becoming a dental hygienist and her husband and 16-month-old girl, Quinn.

Becki did a great ice breaker and I say that with all honesty, because I was her evaluator.

The meeting needed another evaluator for another speaker. Sue, a new member volunteered to evaluate. She said she had never did an evaluation ever.

Mike Gerrick gave her his evaluation guideline, which is excellent. I hope to post it soon. I need to ask Mike’s permission to post it.

When it was time for Sue to do her evaluation of someone reading a poem, which is hard  to evaluate. She was nervous and said she didn't know exactly what she was doing. The group altogether encouraged her to go with what she saw. She nodded and gave her impressions based on what she saw. Sue did a good evaluation. Her nervousness seems to go away.

What I've learned Toastmasters this week was a club can take a chance and experiment by having two lecterns available allowing members to have the option to speak with a microphone or not and find out what's the difference is. Also, I learned the inner strength of two new members had to overcome a fear in public speaking and taking on a new role.

90 Training Tip–If you're looking for source that can give you information to use in an open/close, word of the day, discussion, and speech ideas. Read Readers Digest.

 

Art Byrd has been a member of Executive 408 Toastmasters Youngstown, since 2009.

He has achieved his Competent Communicator, Advanced Bronze, Silver and Gold. Competent Leader and Advanced Leader Bronze. He is working on his Advanced Silver.
Currently, Art is the Area Governor for Area 13 in District 10 in Ohio.

  Follow Art @artbyrdview    and the Youngstown club @toastmasters408

Make Time For Audience Interaction

November 3, 2014-Executive 408

This week, I was scheduled for a speech and decided to speak on customer service.

I am doing the Competent Communicator manual for the second time. This was my second speech from the manual. I'm not going in the order in the manual, so I'm picking topics that I'm interested in. Then, I choose the project that goes with it.

 This speech, I went with Project 9, Inspire Your Audience. My speech title was How To Be Out Of Business In 365 days. I talked about customer service with a situation that I experienced. One afternoon, when I was at the counter at a fast food restaurant, the counter person said nothing to me like “May I Help You?” just nothing. I stood there thinking do I give this person my order or not.  I called the situation, The Stareoff. The counter person and I just stared at each other for a long time. Not a good customer service moment.

My Toastmasters audience chuckled as I made a reference to the playing of the theme from Clint Eastwood's movie, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as The Stareoff continued.

Also, I talked about learning about customer service as a paperboy. I saw heads nod as they could relate. As the speech went on, some people were reacting and making comments as I was speaking, which is totally fine because I knew the audience is actually listening. It is alright to interact with the audience. That interact can last a few seconds or more especially, if you asked the audience a question and wait on their response.

What I didn't expect was more direct interaction during the speech which took a few more seconds as I let the audience expressed their points.

In a 5 to 8 min. speech, seconds count.

During my practice time for the speech. The original speech time came in at about 9:40. I needed to trim 1:40 which I did. Goodbye, another personal story and a relevant fact.

In the final practice, I was ranging between 8:10 to 8:20, which is what I could live with.

During the timers report, when she said my speech time was 9:20. I knew I had timed the speech out. Then, I realized that I had allow the audience to interject their comments.

What I've learned is to put some leeway time in the speech for the audience to clap, to interact within the speech and to give an answer to question I may ask. Especially, if it is a topic that they can really relate to.

Despite, the overlap of time, I knew the audience was listening. Something all speakers want.

The Word of the Day that I learned was Divergent-moving apart, going in different directions.

Art Byrd has been a member of Executive 408 Toastmasters Youngstown, since 2009.

He has achieved his Competent Communicator, Advanced Bronze, Silver and Gold. Competent Leader and Advanced Leader Bronze. He is working on his Advanced Silver.

Currently, Art is the Area Governor for Area 13 in District 10 in Ohio.