Tackling the challenge of public speaking – 7th July

It was under a magnificent July sun that our latest meeting was open and that another evening of public speaking began. Leading tonight’s session was very experienced speaker and member, our VPPR Marina Lussich whose theme of the evening was ‘conquering your sumit’. Indeed, learning public speaking is all about conquering one’s fears and learning a new skill just like any other, one step at a time.

In charge of time was Stephen followed by grammarian Rosie putting forward ‘challenge’ as her word of the day and finally Thomas as vote counter.

Three different speakers were on the agenda tonight, all in various stages of their Toastmasters journey and speaking on different subjects. To start off was Lindsay ‘In the blink of an eye’ speaking on how we take everything for granted if life and how we don’t take the time to pay attention to the world around us. Giving the example of world renowned violinist Joshua Bell playing in Washington metro only to be listened by seven people. Our second speaker of the evening was Magda with ‘Oxi’ speaking on the economic situation of her native Greece and the present situation unfolded. Speaking next as third speaker was Terry ‘Sales training changes over 50 years’. In his speech, Terry spoke about the development of sales techniques from Zig Ziglar focus on closing the deal to the more consultative and research based approach to selling that pervades nowadays.

The great benefit of the Toastmasters’s approach to learning public speaking, is the focus on peer to peer feedback and evaluations. Opening the evaluations was VP Mentorship Edwin, recommending that Lindsay improves by including the audience more and using more eye contact in his speaking. Club president Florian followed on by advising Magda to finish her speech with a stronger conclusion and to prepare more beforehand. Sergey’s evaluation of Terry focused on including more facts and figures, especially references as the speech objectives of project #7 of the Competent Communicator manual are to research a topic.

The table topics session was led by Prateek using quotes as the theme, participants had to explain the meaning of quotes such as “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing” or “Where the magic happens” and “if you want to become a lion, train with lions”. Numerous members and guests had a go at improving their improvisation skills. Everyone was provided feedback on their speeches by Yvonne in her first time as table topics evaluator (congratulations Yvonne!).

Another great evening of public speaking was closed off by Rosie’s grammarian report commending on the use of phrases such as “delicate details”. Followed by local area 8 director Laurent evaluating the whole evening as general evaluator.