I’ve been giving some thought this past week to my last Toastmasters meeting. It seems rather unfair that I have the ability to run late into a meeting, spew out a speech that has not even been rehearsed, and come up with a top placed speech. Now, I’m not necessarily suggesting that this is unfair to the other contestants, but rather I am being unfair to myself and not respecting my own potential to actually put the work into it and really shine. Next week, our club meeting will consist of a speech-a-thon. Rather than waltzing in and delivering a speech for the sole purpose of fulfilling my speech #10 for my CC award, I am going to try with the utmost sincerity to inspire my audience and deliver a finished “product” as opposed to a string of creative and off-the-cuff words that are not as smooth as they could be.

Today I am presenting my 9th Toastmasters speech – Persuade with Power. Selecting a topic which does not include religion and politics was pretty challenging – after all, don’t most people have rather defined view points in these areas that they are only too interested in telling other people… and hoping to change their viewpoint? Alas, one of the unspoken(?) rules of membership is to avoid preaching on what can be construed as sensitive subject matter. Religion is the one that really grinds my gears! I would love to share my opinions and try to “persuade” people to my point of view, but I also recognize that there is a time and a place for everything, and the respect of neutral ground is important. Therefore, my speech selection is based on one of my other favourite topics to rant about – diet and nutrition. In retrospect, I’m not entirely sure that I persuaded anyone, but I did get a smile or two

I’m not comfortable using visual aids. Today, I will be presenting my speech that has this as a requirement. I’ve never been a paper chart or power point presentation type of person; these do not strike me as interesting visual stimulus. My preferred visual aids need to be something a bit more organic – something natural, fluid, and non-technical. To be comfortable with visual aids, I believe that I need to explore the use of props, rather than standard presentation materials.

One of my goals for this year, nay even the next several months, is to finish off the remainder of my 10 speeches to receive my CC (Competent Communicator) designation. Now, I will have the opportunity to complete 2 additional speeches during the month of February, leaving me with one final speech before receiving my advanced manual. I am somewhat stumped for topics. I do extremely well with on-the-spot pressure, but now I am finding a bit of resistance to thinking of topics so far in advance.