Record DTMs, organizing your speech and Carlo Wolff ACB CL

Congratulations to our newest Advanced Communicator Bronze, Carlo Wolff.

We enjoyed a series of great presentations at CAT last night. Here are some of the things I noted from the training on organizing your speech from Sam Jones DTM:

1. Are going to entertain, persuade, inspire or inform? Keep your speech aligned with that purpose.
2. Beyond the basic outline (introduction, body and conclusion), look for alternative structures. Sure, there’s the basic three points, but there are other structures too – like compare and contrast, time (past-present-future), and telling a story (with a lesson).

A few other things that I noted from the evening:

• Delete everything you can. If you are evaluating a speaker and don’t have something to say on a point, just move to the next point rather than saying that you don’t have anything to add. Focus on what you are there to say and do your best to skip the rest.
• Test humor one-on-one. To find out whether a joke is funny, try telling the joke without much emotion to someone in general conversation – if they smile, you might have something worth using (thanks Warwick).
• You might feel like you don’t have enough time, but don’t bother telling the audience – they probably won’t learn better by you telling them that you’re rushing. Instead, act like you have all the time in the world.
• And thanks to Emily Minor CC CL for demonstrating how when you are introducing a speaker, you can just keep clapping until they get to the front of the room – it’s a simple courtesy but looks very professional.

For me, one of the highlights of the evening was having the majority of DTMs in China in the room at one time, something that usually only happens at Conferences and Conventions. Our whole individual evaluation team consisted of DTMs – Rebecca Hong (also Lt Gov Education and Training), Warwick John Fahy (past Chairman of China) and  Sam Jones (our Immediate Past President). This yielded what I think was the most rewarding, stimulating and valuable evaluations session I can remember – thanks to each of you for your contributions!

Videos from the night to come soon.

Our next meeting is 8 January next year when we’ll have a training on body language delivered by Spike Gu ACB CL.