If you want to join a Toastmasters Club, be prepared to challenge yourself, and be prepared to take it seriously.
Even if it means you have to present your speech online, there is a structure to the two-hour meeting, and everyone is pretty much taking this journey seriously. So online or in-face, the journey to be an impactful speaker requires discipline and dedication.
I thought that online presentations would not have an impact on me. Facing a small laptop screen, where the people are visible in tiny squares, why would I feel intimidated? So, I didn’t do much preparation for this speech.
After my booster shot, I was lethargic, and had no incentive to sharpen and rewrite my speech. I was confident that I had everything in my head, clear about what I wanted to say.
That was foolish of me.
It was a speech with a purpose. A purpose requires thought and reflection. Requires clarity and concision. Requires conviction and energy.
When you go on the Toastmasters website, they explain in detail how to structure a speech. It could be chronological, topical, spatial, causal, comparative, problem/solution, particular/general/particular. And then there are the transitions. Writing a speech requires deep thought and planning.
In 700 words, or less, I needed to articulate clearly what I wanted the audience to understand about my speech with a purpose. And here I was taking it lightly. I should have written ten drafts. I delivered after two drafts. I had practiced the speech only once.
Preparation is key. Speech writing: 75%. And delivery practice: 25%.
The most crucial point is: What is the core of my speech? What are the takeaways that the audience will remember. One must write it down in different ways, a dozen times if necessary. Eventually one must condense the core idea to literally one sentence of seven words or less. To get that kind of precision requires reflection, and deeper understanding of what I wanted to say. I had done a shoddy job.
What I have discovered is that in speech preparation, making it as succinct, as captivating, and as audience-friendly as possible. The goal is to keep in mind that the audience is not going to get immersed in the speech if the speaker is half-hearted and not convinced by his or her own words.
The delivery – tone, expressions, body language, and presence – comes from practice and watching yourself. So, yes practice is necessary to ensure that there are limited number of ‘uhms’ and ‘ahs’.
As a story writer, I want to be able to create a unique way of telling a story. I am psyched by that idea. But first, let me tell you what happened at my second speech.
My speech was okay – I did it standing up. Despite the small squares of people watching, I was slightly nervous. The facilitators of the evening were keeping track of the time, language, and ‘ah’s, with a keen ear. There is pressure in that 5-7minutes of speech to create as much impact as possible. I did the best I could, but I self-reflected that I could have done better if I had prepared.
Speech review: the structure was okay. There was too much explaining, I rambled towards the last two minutes.
And that’s my learning. The writer in me knows I have the potential to improve.
I will be delivering the same speech next week. I have worked on the 5th draft, rewritten it, removed all the extra unnecessary bits. And by next week, hopefully, I will have a polished 10th draft. 🙂
This time the speech evaluators will be focusing on tonal quality, expressions and body language. I will be ready!
Shobha Nihalani: Meanderings 
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