Finding Your Voice in Toastmasters
Ron Climer took care of Toastmaster duties at today’s meeting. After a prompt opening by Don Groff, Sergeant at Arms and President Carol Walters, Ron handed off to Joke Master Don Glovan. Don gave us a great funny story about Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick.
The Evaluation team included Nathan Garnett as Grammarian, Carol Walters as Word Master, Stan Coss as Timer, and Sally Jones as Ah Counter.
Judy Groff was Speaker 1 doing her inspirational speech she plans to deliver at the Area International Speech Contest on April 7. The title was “Finding My Voice” which focused on her journey with Multiple Sclerosis. She was interested in solid, constructive feedback and got that both from Evaluator Jeanne Resin and from the group as a whole.
Hoyt Griffith gave us a Mentoring Moment about Table topics. He said he overcame his fear of Table Topics by inventing a clever strategy he called Table Topics Tango. After describing how he used that, he said he can’t recommend using that strategy at all (*see comment below).
Jackie Branscum took charge of Table Topics and gave interesting prompts that seemed to bamboozle all participants. I confess that I didn’t ask how to spell the word Jackie developed her prompts around. Suffice it to say, all responders did the Table Topics Tango. It was a fun time.
Evaluator Betty McCallister gave a good evaluation to the planning and conduct of the entire meeting. Both new members jumped in with both feet. Great job!
These are all candid shots, kind of like an impromptu shot. If you want an explanation of an extemporaneous shot, check out the mentoring moment review in the comment section below.
Here, before the meeting begins, Nathan is facing the stage while Ivan is doing a timing device check. Judy expresses passion on finding her voice while Jeanne evaluates with precision.
Here are our impromptu masters of the meeting. Hoyt gives his mentoring moment and Ron leads the proceedings as Toastmaster.
Hoyt gave an excellent mentoring moment on strategies to take for success in table topics. He began with an explanation of extemporaneous vs. impromptu. Extemporaneous is a prepared speech that is not memorized; impromptu is speech with no preparation, like the typical table topic where you hear a prompt one moment and must speak the next.
ReplyDeleteI would say a great use of the extemp speech is for the body of the speech where you have a memorized, catchy opening and close but have the body that is mainly just outlined and practiced aloud so that it seems fresh.
My take-away from Hoyt was a set of strategies that bought time to come up with a strong idea, story, or example. His Table Topic Tango or fancy footwork with words was a way to stall for time by launching right into the speech in saying how this prompt was talked about in a recent news article or TV show. You could even bring in a friend or family member that had brought it up. Then you can embellish this more until your quietly working subconscious mind hits upon just the right tactic to continue on in addressing the actual prompt. Yes, you are multi-tasking here or "faking it until you can make it" as Don #1 said.
Hoyt said you could even pivot and take this prompt in a different direction by saying something like you came across a similar idea in a news article or TV show or a conversation with a friend or family member. But this time it really would go in a different, dissimilar direction, one that you could more naturally venture into.
Once everyone in Hoyt's audience was convinced these were great outcomes, then Hoyt pivoted himself and said this was like cheating, so that he no longer did it.
Well, personally speaking, I am anxious to try out these first strategies out for myself, so if I "cheat" by laying out an extemporaneous framework before I grapple with the fresh insight impromptu, so be it.