Toastmasters

Articles tagged 'Toastmasters'

Julie Austin

Do You Have Speaker’s Block?

By | August 7, 2018 | 7:45 pm

All writers have run into writer’s block at one time or another. According to Wikipedia, writer’s block is “a condition, primarily associated with writing, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work, or experiences a creative slowdown. The condition ranges in difficulty from coming up with original ideas to being unable to produce a work for years.”

The same thing can happen to speakers where you get speaker’s block. You go through a dry spell and don’t have work booked for a long time. You are still doing the same canned speech you have been giving for years. Or you simply are not expanding your knowledge or challenging yourself as a speaker.

Speaker’s block

If you get to that point where you feel you have speaker’s block, here are some tips to get out of it:

Speak! 

Yes just get out and speak. It sounds simple and it is. If you aren’t booked to speak anywhere, call your local library, church, or Chamber of Commerce and ask if you could come in and give a speech. Even if you’re used to being a paid, working speaker, if you aren’t working, make it happen. The best speakers I know will simply speak anywhere, anytime. Speaking, like acting, isn’t a skill you can just read about in a book and get better at. You have to actually do it.

Try something new

I remember when I was in Toastmasters we would have to write and deliver a new speech every month or two. I loved the idea of picking a random topic and doing a speech on it, just to see if I could. This is a good thing to do when you’re speaking at your local library or church. When you’re speaking for free you can experiment. Pick a topic that interests you and not just one that you need to make money with. But play to the top of your game and give it your all, even if you’re speaking for free.

Do something else creative

Sometimes if you step away from speaking and try something else creative, you stretch your creative muscles and will come back to speaking even stronger. Try writing a short story or poetry, take an improv class, go dancing, sing at a Karaoke, take up photography, make a scrapbook, etc.

Get an outside point of view

If you’re stuck, sometimes having an outsider look at things will give you a fresh way to look at your career. Have someone look through your website, speaker videos, etc. There is probably something you’re missing, and you can’t see it because you’re too close to it. Get a fresh point of view and get re-energized.

Remind yourself why you’re a speaker

If you find that things are getting boring and you’re just going through the motions, remind yourself why you became a speaker in the first place. Think about your audience and why you want to get your message across to them. This will help put the passion back in your speaking and get you excited about getting back on stage.

The next time you find yourself with speaker’s block, try one or all of the above!

 

 

 

Julie Austin

Dealing With Speaker Evaluations

By | February 19, 2014 | 1:30 am

Meeting planners will often give out speaker evaluations to determine what the audience thought of the speaker. It’s a way for them to gauge the effectiveness of the programs they’re putting together and how they can improve them in the future. For speakers, dealing with speaker evaluations can be stressful.

I remember with my first evaluation the other speakers went out of their way to let me know how much they liked it and one even pointed it out during his presentation. But when I got the feedback from the audience it was lukewarm at best. I had failed to put myself in the shoes of the audience.

I’ve had other ones where the audience was thrilled, but not the meeting planner, and ones where the management was excited, but the audience didn’t get it. Sometimes no matter how hard you try you won’t be able to please everybody.

The National Speaker’s Association asks their speakers to provide them with learning outcomes for their sessions, which they print in the program for the audience to compare against. They then ask the audience if those outcomes were met, what value they received from the presentation, and what takeaways they planned to implement themselves.

Toastmasters is a great training ground for speakers because you get constant feedback from your peers. Plus you can also learn from hearing feedback that other speakers get. Toastmasters is great for beginners because the feedback is both critical and encouraging. The feedback is simply an honest opinion of how the speech affects you personally and how it could be improved. Check out the Toastmasters Effective Evaluation Manual to learn more:

http://www.toastmasters.org/EffectiveEval

One of the best ways to get feedback is to run everything by a group of trusted people who will be critical, but helpful. This could be a group of speakers who are at least on your level, if not higher. But it doesn’t have to just be speakers. You won’t be talking to speakers in the room, so try to get an audience of regular people. Even better, find an audience similar to the one you’ll be speaking to and ask for their most critical advice.

You can’t take everything to heart, but if you see a pattern emerge from several different audience members you might want to work to improve it.