I have noticed a disturbing trend in the Toastmasters clubs that I am active. A new member will join, give a speech or two, and then send an e-mail that says, “I am sorry, but I just don’t have the time for Toastmasters anymore.”

The irony of these e-mails is that they tend to come from people that would benefit the most from being an active member. I have collected some excuses that people use and want to present some ideas on the meaning behind the excuses.

I don’t have time for Toastmasters

Did you know that Toastmasters can make you more efficient in managing your time? By working with the Vice President of Education, you can plan out when you are going to give your first ten speeches and when you are going to do your first ten Competent Leader projects. Doing this will demonstrate how to effectively make time for meetings, roles, and projects in your life.

I am not advancing as quickly as I wanted to in Toastmasters

In Toastmasters, you only get out what you put in. Have you put the time in preparing and practicing your speeches? Have you been proactive in scheduling roles on the club calendar? Have you served as a club leader? Have you asked someone for feedback on where you are now compared to when you joined? If you answered no to any of these questions, then you might not have put anything into your club, so how do you expect to get anything out?

It’s Not the Right Time in My Life

Really . . . when is it ever going to be? For any activity in you life, there might never be a right time. There will always be work, family, and other issues that can be used as excuses to not doing something. In many cases, these excuses are nothing more then an excuse for your fear of improving. Where else will you find a supporting environment for improvement? No where that I know of.

What excuses have you heard?

Depending on your length of time in the organization, you might have heard similar excuses or many more. What have you heard? What do you think the reason is behind the excuse? How can a club overcome them to keep the people that need this organization?

Let us know in the comments.

I Have a Dream

I dream of traveling the world to speak to audiences about technology, leadership, and personal development. The past five years, I have worked hard at becoming an excellent speaker. However, being a great speaker is only part of the equation.

What it Takes to be a Professional Speaker

In order to be a professional speaker, you need a combination of speaking skill, knowledge, and marketing.  I have the first two, but I am struggling at becoming a marketable speaker.

You Can Help Me

One of the top ways to be recognized as a marketable speaker, is to be seen speaking at major events. An event that I have always wanted to speak at is South by Southwest (SXSW), a music, film, and interactive media festival. The SXSW event is a key event for me, because it lets me reach a young, technologically savvy, and forward thinking audience.

To help me, you can vote for my proposed presentation for the event.

What you need to do:

1. Visit http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/3264
2. Register on the site in order to vote
3. Vote for my presentation
4. Leave me a comment after you vote

If you vote for me, you rock.

If not, then that is OK too.

Thank you for your support!

Today’s guest post is from Bob Jensen, a fellow Champions’ EDGE Member. In his post, Bob discusses Club Coaches and how a coach can assist struggling Toastmasters clubs. Bob’s article is a great overview of the club coach program and I am grateful for his contribution.

Toastmasters International recognizes that there is a natural ebb and flow to club membership cycle. Unless proper care and feeding is given to a Toastmaster club’s membership program, an otherwise strong club might find itself facing a precipitous decline in membership in a relatively short period of time.

Once a club has 12 or fewer members, the chances of the entire club folding are very high.  “Club Coaches” are promoted by Toastmasters International as the official remedy for clubs on life support.

Why does club membership decline?

Toastmasters International points out that there are many factors affecting club membership, such as unexciting/routine programs, layoffs in corporate clubs, etc.

What I’ve noticed are several distinct trends, in particular:

• Corporate clubs start out very strong, but around the 18 to 24 month mark in a club’s lifecycle, membership drops off as members get their Competent Communicator award and do not wish to pursue any of the advanced manuals. This is typically around 35% of a club’s membership! Without a steady stream of replacements within the company (new hires and newly interested employees), a club chartered at the usual strength of 20 can dip down to a precarious 12 or so members very quickly.
• Some clubs have a number of “grizzled veterans” who have plans to become professional speakers. They have completed many advanced manuals and now use their club to practice their off-manual speeches. New members may join but often get frustrated after delivering their icebreaker speeches and disappear.
• Many clubs will have a year being led by very successful “Type A” leaders. These leaders often do a less-than-adequate job of grooming their successors, or promote “followers” who lack the leadership experience to continue a club’s success in subsequent years.

Enter the Club Coach

A club that hits the magic 12 member threshold can (and should) request a club coach from their District Governor as soon as possible.  A District Governor can appoint up to two club coaches to a specific club.

I’ve seen three types of club coaches:

• The hard-charging energetic newcomer, relatively inexperienced in Toastmasters (maybe has a CC) but has the enthusiasm to make a difference.
• The midlevel Toastmaster, three to five years experience, who is looking for the checkoff required on the DTM requirement to serve successfully as a club sponsor/club coach.
• The Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM), who has done this before and enjoys doing this….or is doing a favor for the District Governor.

Each of the above club coach types has its own unique benefits and pitfalls. A DTM, for example, while having a wealth of experience, may be somewhat older and set in his/her ways.

It is vitally important to negotiate a good fit between the club coach and the toastmasters club. It is perfectly acceptable to ask the District Governor for a trial period (60 days should be fine) to see if a Club Coach is agreeable to your members. Make it very clear to the District Governor that your club reserves the right to seek a replacement club coach if it feels there is not a good fit!!

Club coaches do receive training from Toastmasters International, however, a good many coaches tend to disregard some or all of this training. Some club coaches arrive at a club with the intention of remaking the club into the image of their “home” club, in direct contradiction of Toastmaster policy.

Members should realize that the primary function of club coaches is to provide advice and direction.

Beware the Ides of ….APRIL?

Toastmasters collect club dues in October and April of each year. Quite often, club membership will decline in the April dues period to the magic number of 12.

There is a special situation you should watch out for in April: there is a certain type of Toastmaster who sees an opportunity to get a “quick” club coach credit by volunteering in April with the intent of manipulating the system to get a quick DCP credit by June 30th (the end of the Toastmaster year). In essence, these Toastmasters want to compress a year’s assignment into a few short months. Be particularly wary of accepting any club coach in this period. They’ll often join your club and contribute a CC or an advanced award they’re working on, and will focus almost entirely on membership building, including applying heavy pressure on former members to rejoin  (offering unofficial “club discounts” for renewals) and occasionally signing “phantom members” (club coach spouses being first and foremost). These club coaches won’t fix underlying issues, they merely supply a fresh coat of paint over a rickety foundation.

Club coaches CAN help

Like everything else in life, there is a vast range in the quality of Toastmaster club coaches. Some Toastmasters can give great speeches but cannot supply club leadership, and vice versa. A club coach is only as good as the Toastmaster filling the role. Make sure you have a good fit with your club, have expectations  discussed and agreed to in writing, and work as equal partners with your club coach and a faltering club can right itself and become successful once again.

Bob Jensen is a District 14 Toastmaster living in Peachtree City, GA.  He is a member of the Peachtree City Toastmasters club.

Sitting in a training class, I found myself starting to wonder about the point of the class. We had an agenda, workbooks, and trainers but the point was slipping away. You could see the attention of the audience slip and the trainers begin to go on to autopilot. What was one thing that the trainers could have done to get our attention from the start and keep it through the two days of training?

Ed Tate in one of his lessons on the Champions Edge shared with me a technique that gets the audience interested in your presentation, and keeps them engaged in long speeches or training sessions. Before we get to the lesson, let me share with you how our facilitator started the class I attended.

She first reviewed the agenda for the next two days. After reviewing the agenda, she gave an introduction to the HR department and talked about the resources that the HR department had available for managers. Though the speaking was pleasant, it didn’t get my attention or keep me engaged. I have attended many classes, presentations, and workshops where the opening did not compel us to be engaged. Not engaging the audience reduces the value of the information you will share and makes it more difficult to sell your message over the length of the presentation.

The lesson that Ed Tate shared was to sell the benefits of the training at the beginning of the class. Don’t review the agenda, which only describes the content of the training, but share what the expected outcome of the training will be on the participants.

Think of how this could have been accomplished in the class I attended recently:

“At the end of this training course, you will have the tools to save at least an hour a week that you would have spent looking for the information we will share with you. In one hour, we will share with you nine HR pitfalls that managers trained in avoiding, have saved 10 million dollars of litigation expenses for our company and they will help you keep your. Managers that have taken this course previously, have saved the company over three million dollars in expenses related to employee medical affairs.”

In order to capture the attention of an audience, you have to sell them on what they are going to learn. If you demonstrate to them that this information can be used to have a positive impact, then you will get your audience to pay attention to what you have to say. Not selling your major points can cause confusion and it will make it harder to sell your points when you get to them in the presentation.

As you work on long presentations, training sessions, and workshops be aware of the benefits that your attendees will gain. Then when opening your session, share specifically what monetary, time, or other benefits can be had from paying attention. Sharing the benefit will increase attention, engagement, and give people a sense that you are providing value which makes them engaged.

Leave a comment and let us know the last time you heard an engaging or disengaging opening to a speech.

If you are like most Toastmasters, you get a copy of the agenda for the next meeting and take whatever open role that you are comfortable. For many Toastmasters, that means you will be the timer, grammarian, or ah counter. Those roles are important on the agenda, but they don’t require you to speak much, provide in depth analysis of speakers, or take an active role in leading the meeting. Just taking the open role that you are good at also hinders your growth and doesn’t enhance the learning environment in your club.

In order to develop as an individual and as a club, you need to change the way you assign club roles in order to maximize results from the Toastmasters program. Too often we are filling gaps instead of assigning roles to members that need development in the area the role explores. Also there are many Toastmasters that do not use the CL manual. The CL manual requires members to be evaluated in all roles of their club. When you are always the Timer, you will never be able to complete this important part of the educational program.

This effort in your club should be lead by your Vice President of Education and the Education committee. Working closely with the membership, each agenda should be crafted in a way that benefits each member in that role. If a member needs to improve their evaluations, then they should be evaluator and general evaluator more often. If someone is 4 speeches from a speaking award, then they should be given the speaking assignments they need to complete their award. The agenda should be crafted to move the club forward and not just filling gaps.

Being successful in Toastmasters is not just about showing up. You have to continually push yourself and other members forward. It is not easy to get some people into some roles, but if you want to advance above “most people”, then it is something you are going to have to learn. So what will it be? Are you going to stay comfortable with being the timer, or are you going to push yourself to develop a high performance club environment?

Do you want to know a sure fire way to alienate large portions of your audience?

“You all know the next speaker…”

Can I let you in on a little secret? Not everyone knows the person that you are neglecting to introduce, so you always need to properly introduce someone. This common oversight only gets worse when the person comes up and gets right into the content without introducing themselves after a misguided introduction.

When someone introduces a speaker as “a person that needs no introduction”, you will alienate everyone in the audience that doesn’t know the speaker from Adam. It also has the unintended effect of that are unfamiliar with the speaker feel like they are not connected with the rest of the group, which makes the speakers job far more difficult.

As a speaker, you need to make sure you have written an introduction and provided it to the person that will be introducing you. I wrote a post on this last year that you should check out.

Even when writing and providing an introduction, sometimes people will introduce you as the speaker everyone knows. When this happens, and it happens a lot, you as a speaker need to know how to recover from this major speaking faux pas. Whether it is in a Toastmasters club, association meeting, or other event; you have to assume that there is a large part of the audience that doesn’t know who you are or what you can do.

If you are being introduced as someone that everyone knows already, then you have a moral obligation to introduce yourself to the audience. If you have a powerful opening  that draws people into your content, consider developing an alternate introduction that draws people in while establishing who you are and why that matters.

To do this, you need to develop the same parts that you would have written and given to the person that introduced you. That means you have to provide your expertise on the topic, a statement that gets people’s attention, and compelling reasons for the audience to listen to what you have to say. This allows you to quickly let people know who you are, why you are there, and what you hope to accomplish. When you have soothed people into the speech, you can then get into the meat of the content.

Another gesture you can make to people who do not know you is to acknowledge them while speaking. This allows you to establish the connection with them to make them feel like they are a part of the group that knows you. Doing this makes the speech stronger, and establishes that you care about the audience.

As speakers and introducers, you must continue to be vigilant in stomping out this habit. Continuing to not introduce speakers can kill the credibility of the speakers and make it so people don’t want to join the group.

Spread the word by sharing this article with others.

It is June, so that means it is time to elect a new slate of officers for the next Toastmaster year. If your club is like many I have worked with, this is crunch time. You have a few officers that want to stay, a few new candidates, but there are some glaring gaps in your officer list. Maybe you don’t have someone that wants to step up and be President, take on the task of Vice President of Education, or show up and be Sergeant At Arms. Why are people not stepping up and taking a greater role in the leadership of the club?

1. You Haven’t Explained What is Required of Each Officer’s Role

Your club members might not know what each officer in a club does. As part of your club succession planning, you should have each of the current officers explain what their position entails and how they help the club. You should also provide written and spoken overviews of each officer role and how it contributes to the success of the club.

2. The Unfilled Roles Have Too Much Responsibility

Clubs put a lot of work on a few key roles. The executive team in the club should make every attempt to spread the work of the club across officers and committees. Not doing so could leave one or two positions open because people have the perception that it is too big of a job for one person.

3. The Current Person in that Role Did Not Fulfill Their Obligation to the Club

Did you not fill an abandoned officer position? Not doing so during the year might have left a gap that another officer or team of officers filled. Without that person there supporting the club, people might think that the position is undesirable or they don’t feel that the club needs that person anymore.

4. You Haven’t Asked People Personally

There are people in your club that want to help out, but you just need to ask. Whether they are shy, or just don’t know the role. You need to add a personal touch to get them to step up and take on additional responsibility.

5. Current Officers Have Not Developed Committees of Successors

Each of your officers should be building a team of potential successors. Toastmasters wear many hats outside of their clubs, so building a team helps spread out the work of running a club. It also makes succession easier, because committees are filled with people that understand what the officer does and how they can step up and fill their role.

6. You Have Not Demonstrated How Officers Benefit the Club

When officers do a good job, you should recognize the impact their role has on the club. If the work the club officers do is invisible, then your club members will not know how they contribute to the success of the club.

7. Leadership Program is not Stressed in Your Club

If you are not highlighting the Toastmasters Leadership program, then you are not demonstrating how being an officer helps members get their Advanced Leadership goals. Not doing so can hurt the growth of your club and accomplishment of club goals.

8. There Was No Nominating Committee

Having a nominating committee of past officers and mentors helps your club select the officers that will lead in the future. Nominating committees are important, because they take the burden off of the current leadership and gives impartiality to the process.

9. You are Scrambling at the Last Minute to Fill Roles

It is June and you haven’t talked about filling the roles. Getting all of the officers assigned can take time, so you should have started your planning before April in order to make sure you have the right people in the right positions before the July 1st deadline. It also gives current officers time to mentor new officers and transition responsibility cleanly.

10. The Club Does Not Understand How Officers Help Accomplish DCP Goals

If your club is not emphasizing the DCP program, then your members don’t know how officer selection affects their Distinguished Club Program Status. Having an officer list submitted is one of the goals of the DCP program and not having it stymies your goal accomplishment for the coming year.

Being an officer can be a very fulfilling task in any organization. Make sure that you are demonstrating the role you play in your club and how being an officer gives you deep satisfaction in helping a club reach its goals.

I hope you are doing well in finding officers to lead your club this year.

Why don’t you practice your speeches more?

photo credit: S.Su

I have observed hundreds of speakers in the past four years of my Toastmasters membership. It hasn’t mattered if those speakers are brand new or old-timers, you can always tell when they have not practiced. I see it in the reliance on their notes, the overuse of filler words, or the lack of structure in the presentation. If I can tell, your audience can tell, and you are going to lose them.

So why aren’t you practicing?

Do you feel that you do not have enough time? Do you not know what you really want to say? Did you sign up to give a speech, so now you are going to give one whether you are ready or not? Do you think that it is just not your style?

My favorite excuse is, “I am not going to be a professional speaker, so I don’t need to practice. I want to keep it real.”

So you think that only professionals practice? You think practicing will make it seem unnatural? What about Steve Jobs? He is not a professional, but he spends hours practicing his presentations. So do successful sales presenters, pitchmen, and professionals. They have all taken to heart the advice, “Practice until it looks natural.”

The most “natural” speakers spend hours practicing for a 10 minute speech.

You have to practice.

If you want to be effective as a speaker, then you must schedule time to practice your presentations. It doesn’t matter if it is in a Toastmasters club or for a presentation to a trade group. The habit is important to develop, because it will allow you to get your point across, make your audience believe your message, and deliver value to the listeners.

Most speakers have a 5 to 1 rule for practice. That means that for every minute of your speech, you practice for 5 minutes, so a 10 minute speech would be practiced for 50 minutes. Is this the most important speech of your life? Then maybe you should make it 10:1 or more. The point of the ratios is to give you a time to schedule to get up there and give your speech.

Is practice boring, silly, or downright painful? Yes it is, but everyone that has ever done anything important in life has practiced. Whether it is in sports, music or art, every profession requires a level of practice. It doesn’t matter if you are an amateur or professional; if you are passionate about what you are doing…practice.

You audience will thank you.

I am reading Marshall Goldsmith’s, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, and it has been enlightening. As a leader, it has given me perspective on the habits that hold leaders back and keep them from attaining their true potential. What struck me about the cases presented in the book was the use of 360 feedback forms with the persons that were being coached. As a Toastmaster this interested me, because we are always giving feedback to our members, but are we doing it correctly?

It has been some time since I dug into the topic of evaluations on this blog, so I am glad that Goldsmith’s book piqued my interest in talking about it again. The evaluation process in Toastmasters is beneficial to our members, and when done effectively, can truly improve all members of a club.

In the Toastmasters evaluation materials, we always talk about using the sandwich method. “The Sandwich”, means that we point out areas for improvement between two positive comments on the speaker’s speech. This is done to motivate the speaker to improve by building on their strengths.

On paper it makes sense to do that, but does it work in practice? I ask, because I too often see many members only talk about what they like about the speech but never about what they need to improve. No speaker is perfect and by helping speakers discover their weaknesses, we can help them improve in their speaking.

That is one of the key principles in, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. Goldsmith points out what the weaknesses are in our abilities and pushes us to correct our faults that are holding us back. It is something that I see lacking in many evaluations, but not all.

I can tell you from personal experience, that there are three people in one of my clubs that let me know what my weaknesses are. Though to a new Toastmaster, I might seem good. To more experienced speakers, I am stiff and robotic in my delivery at times. While many people would hate to have that pointed out – over and over – I love it. It gives me a reminder of what I need to improve on and my progress in removing that flaw from my speaking.

Do we need to eliminate the positive comments? No, because I agree that they reinforce the speaker and let them know what they are doing right. What we need to improve is our tracking of what people say are our weaknesses. It wouldn’t hurt to keep a log of what people say you need to improve. This allows you to target the areas you have the most negative feedback from and discard the areas where there are only one or two comments of it being a weakness. Then you can focus on improving the target areas one at a time. Targeting one weakness can help eliminate feelings of being overwhelmed by areas for improvement.

Evaluations are important to the Toastmasters educational program. They help you learn what you are doing well and what you need to improve. So as you get up to give one, think about how you can target key areas that the speaker can improve. What are their weaknesses? If you are a speaker, think about how you can track feedback you are getting and then improve one thing at a time.

You can get there.

Note from Chris:  Today’s guest post is from Stevie King. I am excited to have Stevie post, because he is one of only a handful of speakers left competing in the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking. So let us learn from Stevie about, “The BIG thing.”

Project three in the basic manual of Toastmasters International is titled, “Get to the Point”.  The project has the speaker work on identifying both a general and a specific point to their speech.  Most of us don’t have a problem identifying the general purpose of our speeches.  If you are a professor, your speeches inform.  If you are doing an after dinner speech, you typically are there to entertain.  If you are speaking at a graduation, often you will want to inspire.  Often times, lost in all the emotion of a rousing motivational speech, the specific point is lost.

The specific point of your speech is the action item.  It is the DO of your speech.  The graduation speech needs a call to action.  A persuasive speech requires you to ask people to act on your message.  Even a lecture moves your students to further investigate your main points.  As a speaker, we often times have several themes we want to get across in a presentation.  But all of your themes must support one main idea that you are trying to get across.

My process for developing a speech goes from back to front.  The first thing I do is come up with my specific point of my speech.  What’s the main idea?  What is my BIG thing?  That point is what drives the development of your speech.  That is what instructs you what should stay in and what material should be on the cutting room floor.  Your main idea is the one thing that you want people to remember about your time in front of them.

A great speech has to have pieces and those pieces have to move your audience through a roller coaster of emotions.  Think about the great speeches you have heard through your life and undoubtedly there is one key phrase or idea that has stuck with you all these years.  That was their BIG thing. What is your BIG thing?

Stevie King is a member of Athens Toastmasters Club 1779 in Athens, GA.  He is currently competing in the International Speech contest where he will be involved in the Region 8 finals on June 27.

You can read Stevie’s district winning speech as well as follow his contest preparation at his blog www.stevieking.wordpress.com.