Reflections on the speaking life and human interaction
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Last night at First Oakville Toastmasters, the chair who is a very competent Toastmasters one of my best friends in this international speaking organization, totally lost control of the business meeting.
How so? As the business meeting was coming to a close, the chair decided to end the debate. I challenged the decision of the chair but the chair pushed forward with his agenda.
And that’s when all heck broke loose.
Myself and several senior members demonstrated our displeasure by banging on the tables. The chair called for his parliamentarian’s report and I rose again to challenge the decision and I urged my fellow members to also resist this attempt to control the agenda. A demonstration broke out.
Finally the chair asked his parliamentarian for his advice on what to do. The parliamentarian laid out the chair’s options but did not put the dots quite close enough and the chair attempted to proceed. Again voices were raised in protest. It was at that moment that the parliamentarian suggested that the chair deal with my objection to the decision of the chair.
While the senior members of the club agreed with me, the less seasoned Toastmasters out voted us and the business session was concluded with no further outbursts.
So what’s my point?
It’s this: parliamentary procedure goes back to the days of King John and his rebellious barons who forced the king to agree to many of the democratic processes we use today to run meetings, councils and governments.
If any assemble allows one member to control its agenda then democracy will fall to power of the tyrant. (Not that I’m calling the chair’s behaviour tyrannical but it serves to illustrate my point.)
It was both our right and obligation to resist the chair’s attempt to exercise control over the assembly. This is at the heart of democratic process. And, yes it’s messy and yes it’s loud but the alternative is rule by kings and shook that off in this country many years ago.
All in all, it was a great night. Oh yes, the three speeches were equally wonderful.
One of the new experiments in the Toastmaster International organization has been the formation of advanced clubs.
I belong to Mighty Oaks Advanced Club and I’d like to offer some thoughts following last night’s meeting.
One of our speakers gave a speech which wasn’t well crafted. It ran way overtime and consisted mainly of one unrelated personal family story after another. As far as I could tell the speaker hadn’t thought through why this speech and why this audience.
Even more disturbing to me were a couple of references to family situations that I found inappropriate.
Regrettably, the evaluator for the speech said it was a very good speech. Sorry, no it wasn’t. It was poorly crafted, offensive (at least to me and several others) and of no interest to the audience.
Soft peddling such a speech in an advanced club doesn’t serve the speaker who needs to learn how to improve.
If this speech had been given in a regular club, my assessment would have been so much more gentle and encouraging but, at the advanced club level, speeches like this should be discouraged.
It might serve this particular speaker well to return to the regular stream or step up and learn the lessons that are here for the taking.
(And as an aside: One of my speeches last year was very critically evaluated by one of our most skilled Toastmasters. I didn’t like what he had to say then and I don’t like it now however he was absolutely correct in everything he offered and I became a better speaker as a result.)
Damn. I won the table topics contest (impromptu speaking) at the Mighty Oaks Club and now I find I’ve got to work (I’m teaching a night school course on Travel Photography) on the night of the area competition.
Well that’s why we pick a first, second and third place runner up but I sure would have enjoyed competing at Area. Next time.
