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I’m frequently invited to speak at Toastmasters clubs about how to speak beyond Toastmasters. Last year, I gave a presentation at a District Conference on this topic and was excited about how much interest there was in learning more about it. It’s just a natural progression – once you’ve peaked in Toastmasters, you feel ready to go out and use these skills that you’ve mastered.
So here are the top then things I’ve learned about speaking beyond Toastmasters:
- Ums and ahs don’t really matter unless they are excessive.
- Going over your allotted time can quickly turn your audience against you.
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My first job out of college was at a media company and one of the things I found interesting was the addiction to coffee that many of my coworkers had. I stopped drinking coffee several years prior to that so I didn’t understand the need to add an extra thirty minutes to my morning commute for something the company offered for free in the kitchenette. So I asked a coworker why one would waste time and money in such a way and was enlightened by her answer.
She explained that there were two types of coffee -the good stuff that you get at the Starbucks and the like, and the cheap stuff that companies try to pass off as coffee (and a benefit to employees). Someone else got wind of this and decided to replace the coffee at work with the good stuff. They got a local premium coffee company to set up a station in the kitchenette at work with one of the highest quality coffees available and a number of their best flavors. One would think that this would have been a big hit but it only lasted for about a month.
I’ve had a number of people ask me lately about how to go from a Toastmaster to someone who makes money speaking. Many of these people want to speak on their area of expertise while others are looking to speak about speaking. Those in the former have it a little easier because the key there is to just continue to develop your expertise while you graduate as a speaker to different audiences. Those in the latter have a more challenging road ahead because speaking to a Toastmasters audience is significantly different than speaking to other audiences – a fact which is often overlooked when speaking about Toastmaster-related topics. So I’m going to focus on the latter group for this article, but the former will definitely get some benefit from this too.
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Your following on social media that is. Is it big? Does size really matter? Whether you’re a professional speaker, writer, artist or business owner, social media can be an excellent tool for making new connections. But in order for it to be helpful, it needs to be used correctly.
The problem with social media is that it’s always evolving so many people misuse it. While hackers and spammers are the prime misusers of these services, a vast amount of people with good intentions struggle to make use of the medium. Many treat it like a mailing list – like it’s another method of one way communication. Some use it as a popularity contest – the person with the most connections wins. However, the point of social media (especially from a business standpoint) is to create and maintain relationships from the comfort of your keyboard.
When most of us think of hecklers, we think of bad audience members: people questioning us in a condescending way, people talking over us, people trying to discredit us and people trying to show off. However, sometimes there is such a thing as a good heckler – someone who is enjoying your talk and is so engrossed in it that they feel like they are part of it.
So instead of the person shooting down what you’re saying, they’re reinforcing it – it’s just that they’re reinforcing it every couple minutes by repeating what you’re saying, adding their own two cents or simply completing you. Normally, this wouldn’t sound like a problem but it can be a point of frustration for the rest of the audience. Remember, they’re there to hear your material, not a constant endorsement of you as a speaker.
Early in my career as a professional speaker, I made a lot of mistakes. I took on too many engagements when I had a lot of things going on with my personal life and with my job that paid the bills. I also made the mistake of allowing my contact for the presentation to select any topic that interested him or her, and then I would design a presentation around it. So I laugh to myself whenever I meet someone just getting into the speaking business that’s finding themselves battling these very frustrations.
read full story of "A Defeat Every Now And Then Can Be a Good Thing"