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.
