Timing Is Everything

Okay I’ll admit it.

After saying that timing wasn’t the issue when it came to my last two speeches and that it was all about group decision-making and if we could all play in the sandbox together, timing is something I’ve been thinking about lately.

I noticed while there maybe differences of opinion when it comes to how successfully we played together, there was a lot of consensus around some timing issues for the club.

For example, the top suggestion was to the effect that the chair limit their opening remarks to one to two minutes. I’ve timed some chairs out to five to eight minutes and trust me none of these talks were worth the time IMHO. And before anybody gets their nose out of joint, I’m very guilty of talking too much, too often, too loudly and too poorly.

So why should we put limits on the amount of time given the officers of the evening?

It’s because the main focus of the meeting should be on the speakers and not on the officers.

I particularly find general evaluators who use the role to either review every officer (starting we “I was greeted warmly”…who cares? I’d be more interested if you were greeted poorly then there’d be something to help us grow) or who think they need to find scores of points of failure to rail about. This isn’t helpful IMHO.

The best GE’s find something nice to say overall and then offer one point of suggestion and end with a compliment directed at the chair or toastmaster wrapping up their report in three minutes flat.

Most GE comments that are anymore direct are best delivered personally after the meeting rather than using the power of the podium.

We’ve got to keep the focus on the speakers. It’s their night and not ours!

Case in point:

Recently I attended a Toastmaster contest where the organizer did a bang up job with two exceptions. The chair for one contest used the occasion to deliver his hour-long comedy routine. One joke was nice. Twenty plus jokes and funny faces was annoying.

Then the chief judge for one of the contests started his judging comments by waving around a huge dictionary that he said were the contest rules. Ha Ha.

Then he proceed to read all the rules, and I mean all the rules, all three pages of rules that Toastmasters provides the judges for guidance. It was when he started to tell us how a speaker should be introduced that I almost got up and objected. Apparently I wasn’t alone in this feeling as several other Toastmasters were livid about the waste of time. The contest went 30 to 45 minutes too long and all of this time was taken up by these two poorly trained officers who should have known better.

So as I learn more and more about how to lead groups and be of service to the members of the club, I realize that it’s not all about me (I know this will come as a shock to some.) and that the focus should be on the speakers.

Maybe the thought about the shephard’s crook or the shock collars aren’t necessarily out of the question?

It was just a speech folks

There’s been a lot of discussion, e-mails and written evaluations that have come my way following last week’s and this week’s 20-minute advanced speech assignments.

I want to thank everyone for their input. The comments from this week’s discussion were even more helpful and insightful than the comments from the brainstorming session last week. And, by the way, those comments from last week were amazingly helpful and generally positive.

Advanced manual speeches bring with them advanced speaking challenges and the last two week’s speeches were no exception.

Based on the comments, emails and conversations it’s become apparent to me that a couple of our members may have misunderstood the intention of the speeches.

Neither speech had anything to do with their topic which was could we find ways to end on time.

Seems a couple of folks may have missed the point that the speech topic wasn’t the issue. The speeches were designed to be exercises in group decision-making and learning how to work together as a team. Both speeches were all about how (or if) we could collectively solve the issues that challenge us as a club.

I picked the ending-on-time topic as one that all members, both old and new, could relate, understand and make contributions to on both nights and to that end I think I was successful as we had lots of debate from many new and more seasoned members.

I really regret not insisting we use Toastmaster’s recommended longer timing for the speeches. As it was, we shortchanged ourselves by using the optional lesser timing. This was my fault as I thought we could reach our objectives in the shorter time that some desired and as far as I’m concerned we failed to do so as so ably pointed out by my evaluator on the second night.

As I said several times last week and this during this week’s discussion, this was a process of group decision-making and the best three ideas would be forwarded to the executive for their consideration and nothing more. I obviously didn’t make this point clearly enough all.

I knew I had messed this up when near the end of the second session there was a request that we poll the assembly to see if ending late was an issue for anyone.  I realized then I had failed to properly define the parameters around the debate. In fact, one of the evaluations from the first session accused me of having a hidden agenda and that I needed to fess up. Quite frankly I was shocked by this accusatory comment and I have spoken to the Toastmaster about it.

So when it came to the request for the poll I couldn’t see anyway to refuse it at that time, even though I knew it was off topic and didn’t serve the process of the debate. If I had refused it I risked looking mean-spirited so I allowed it but frankly it impacted the time left for the closing that I had prepared and it did throw me off stride somewhat.

On the other hand, several good points did come out of the debate and may well be adopted by the club.

Several members spoke about providing new members with an outline of officer’s duties included recommended timing. The assembly agreed that points 4 – chair’s introductory remarks be limited to one to two minutes; point 19 – change website to ask guests to arrive early; and point 20 – training for smaller roles were their top three choices for suggestions to be forwarded to the executive.

And as to the debate question about ending on time, personally I don’t care.

What I do care about is how sharp and together we look as an organization when we do what we say we’re going to do and how sloppy and lackadaisical we look when the timing goes out the window. But that’s just me and I don’t represent anybody’s opinion but my own.

Folks: It was just a speech. The point of doing speeches in Toastmasters IMHO is to practice, to learn and to work together.

Sometimes it’s going to go well and sometimes it’s going to be messy.