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The Public Speaker

I'll try to provide good ideas and practical advice for success in Toastmasters clubs, areas, and divisions. I've often thought that Toastmasters takes too narrow a view of leadership and that District leaders don't ask for much more than paying dues and meeting deadlines, don't try to do much with their leadership techniques except to do what's been done before, and limit their definition of success to achieving Distinguished status. I wonder what effect these limitations have on our membership and our membership pool.

I admire the ideas and the actions of many leaders outside the Toastmaster world, and I wonder how the practices we see in other areas would work for us. So why don't we start trying? I'll take a look at many ideas I see and read about, and I'll present them here. Some will be imaginative or theoretical; some will be practical and based on experience.

I welcome your participation. This blog can be a workshop for solving the problems you are dealing with. Comment on the posts; ask for suggestions. It'll be an interesting discussion.

May 05 2013
Apr 26 2013
Apr 20 2013

Club Communication

One of my clubs addressed this very issue as we did Moments of Truth last week. If you’re facing the same issue in your club, what solutions have you found?

Apr 20 2013

When and Why Did People Start Saying "Um" When They Talk?

Chase the link to read the whole post. Mental Floss concludes—So what is this important language function? Why do people say um? Not because they are nervous. Scholarly studies of the word reveal that the use of um does not correlate with anxiousness or any particular personality traits. Rather, um is used to signal an upcoming pause—usually uh for a short pause and um for a longer pause. The pause may be needed in order to find the right word, remember something temporarily forgotten, or repair a mistake. Um holds the floor for us while we do our mental work. It buys some time for thinking—and you’ve got to wonder why we get so up tight about “ums” and “ahs.” Leave a comment to tell us what you think.

(Disclaimer: I’ve written about Michael Erard before—goo.gl/8ZtyJ—and my opinion was “Toastmasters will probably feel uncomfortable with Erard’s comments about Ralph Smedley’s dogmatism, but I think it’s kind of refreshing to hear someone speak out for naturalness and genuineness in speech.”)

Apr 20 2013

Woolly Speeches

Lots of good advice in the David Ogilvy piece at the link; this sentence is priceless. 

Apr 17 2013
Apr 12 2013

Where are the presentations?

All right. One tweet doesn’t make a trend, but here’s evidence that audiences are expecting your content to be shared widely after a presentation. How are you making your presentations available? How about the presentations at your district conference?

Apr 06 2013

How Google Teaches Speaking

Some useful perspective here. I like the idea of “displacement tactics,” especially for eliminating ums and ahs, and I wish the practice of videotaping initial presentations was more practical. The boost in confidence that’s provided when speakers see that they are exaggerating the negatives they perceive is really valuable.

Apr 06 2013

Which Words Matter the Most When You Talk

Here’s an article that helps explain why the grammarian’s role is so important. I love where the article winds up—I love exploring how we can improve our language for better conversations and better lives. What have you found to work best when talking/writing to others?—and would love to see your answers here.

Apr 04 2013

Texting Your Message

Text messages have a wildly high “open and read” rate — 97 percent versus 5 to 20 percent for email.

However, the opposite is true for text marketing in that 90 percent of text messages get read and acted on.

Neither of these snippets, the first from the Atlantic and the second from Big Think, surprised me when I read them, but they sure frustrated me when I considered the amount of email I get from clubs, my District, and even Toastmasters International. How does seeing these facts stated so plainly make you think about your strategies for club communications and marketing?