Each of the speech projects in the Toastmasters education program is specifically crafted to help develop your speaking skills in a particular fashion. When I started speaking, I just wanted to talk and have people listen to me – I didn’t really pay careful attention to the specific learning points from each project. But that meant that I wasted a lot of the learnings that I could have received!
Many speeches very much miss the point. Sometimes its because the speaker didn’t understand the langauge used in the project. But mostly it’s more laziness. When you’re delivering a speech, care for your audience enough to read through the manual – make notes on that book so that your evaluator can see that you actively read the pages and have thought about how you can incorporate the lessons.
Maybe it’s a bit of a challenge, but it’s the best way to get the most from your Toastmasters experience – and not just waste your audiences’ and your own time.
I agree! I was reminded of this last week when I evaluated a C3 speech at SCB. Stella had a strong message throughout her speech. She started out with a story about co-worker in a situation similar to one that all of us had probably experienced before. She shared a very visual example supporting her method, and then went back to the story in the beginning and told us how it ended.
Stella really made the point. And it was a meaningful point about how our actions and emotions affect others! I was very pleased to be able to evaluate a great speech where the speaker really focused on the manual, and it reminded me that we are supposed to build off of each previous speech. As CC+ speakers, we should be putting in every objective from the CC manual into each of our speeches. What a challenge!