As much as I really enjoy shooting my mouth off giving speeches, I am really starting to thrive on the evaluation process. In so many ways, people treat listening as a passive process, when in fact, it is active. Evaluating is an excellent reminder of this.

In my quest to obtain Toastmasters excellence – and my ACB (Advanced Communicator Bronze) – by the new year, I have been accepting and volunteering for any and all possible speaking roles. I have volunteered for 2 last minute speaking roles 2 weeks in a row, and today I find myself in an interesting predicament: I am slated to deliver a speech at High Noon Toastmasters at the 12:00 meeting, and then another one at Stone Road Toastmasters in the evening. Sometimes I think I am funny… but am I funny enough to pull off 2 x 5-7 minute humorous speeches in one day. I am not entirely sure how this happened schedule-wise, but I am 99% confident that I can pull it off! I’ve decided on Humorously Speaking #3: Make Them Laugh, and then will spend the rest of the day marinating over #1: Warm Up Your Audience / #4: Keep Them Laughing to determine which I am prepared to deliver in the evening. Near the end of December, I’ll be delivering my final speech for the ACB. I will have to select my new set of manuals soon.

General Evaluator at HNTM, Toastmaster at SRTM. What a challenge to be the chair and only have the agenda about 25% before the meeting… and to convince people to take a number of roles for the first time