Table Topics Day

Today, we broke from the ordinary routine of our meetings and practiced our Table Topics for the entire meeting.

Most Toastmasters members have a love/hate relationship with Table Topics. We hate them because impromptu speeches are difficult and uncomfortable, yet we love them because at the end of the day they push us to become better communicators (we also love the relief we feel when we're not called on to give one). 

During most meetings, we devote a fair amount of time to Table Topics but don't typically spend much time evaluating each other on them. In today's meeting, however, we got the chance to put our Table Topics under a microscope, and it was a big success. 

At the beginning of the meeting, we divided up into three groups. This allowed each member to give 2-3 different speeches and receive feedback from their group. Prompts were written in advance by members and then chosen at random. Feedback was done in a conversational way where we had the chance to learn what the speaker was trying to achieve and then share what he or she did well as well as things they could work on. Much of the feedback we received was brand new, so it gave us all something new to work on. 

This style of meeting was unanimously well-received by our members. Most of us said we'd like to do this ever Trimester or even every Quarter. One suggestion that a few of us made would be to have the opportunity to rotate groups during the meeting in order to get feedback from the most amount of people, so that's something we might consider for next time.

Overall, it was a fun experiment, we got to know our fellow members a little more, and we all became a little more confident in our impromptu speaking.