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?
