At an earlier meeting I mentioned attending the Area 23 training night in January. While I was there I got speaking to some of the officers from Powdermills club based out in Ballincollig
I have always been fascinated by Powdermills because of the number of formal speeches they have on their meeting agendas. They normally schedule six speeches in a two hour meeting. Naturally something has to give. It takes time to do six speeches and six evaluations. And for Powdermills it’s the topics that takes the hit and as a result they only have about ten minutes of topics.
The potential importance of topics was brought home to me this afternoon when I saw someone I knew on the afternoon news. It was Catherine Murphy who lives here in Carrigaline and she was being interviewed in relation to a campaign to highlight the dangers of Cocaine use. Catherine is in a senior position in the HSE and she certainly came across as competent and knowledgeable about her subject.
but when I knew her when she was a nurse and the mother of one of Marg’s guides. So she wasn’t always doing Tv interviews. I am always impressed when people I know appear in interviews and do well because it confirms my belief that such skills can be learned and if practiced can be perfected.
We sometimes compare the skills learned at topics sessions to politicians trying to say nothing. This is probably not the best advertisement for topics replies as a competency to be learned. Maybe a better comparison is with learning how to answer questions about stuff you do know – but to do it brilliantly, safe in the knowledge that everything that could go wrong has probably already gone wrong in the supportive environment that is Toastmasters.
The reason Powdersmills do the six speeches is because of the demand. They get a lot of new members who want to speak. But what they find is that lots of their members will leave having completed five or six speeches. It seems they have got whatever they wanted from Toastmasters by that stage and move on.
I think many people join Toastmasters these days because of a very specific need. They are not joining a club in order to learn and practice the art of public speaking to a high standard. They are accessing a service because they know they will have to speak to groups of people within a few weeks or months or because they have to make a presentation or because there is a wedding or some other celebration coming up. They have a particular need, maybe it’s fear of getting up and speaking and once that need is satisfied, the motivation is no longer present.
This poses both a challenge and an opportunity for clubs. Can we facilitate members who have legitimate short term goals? Maybe we should ask potential members what they want from Toastmasters and facilitate them in our programmes. Maybe we can facilitate members who want to give speeches or presentations for very specific reasons associated with their careers. The programme manuals are specific enough to build competency step by step but they are also general enough to allow members to speak about almost everything.
As members we may have to sit through the odd speech that goes way over our heads and force ourselves to concentrate on the delivery rather than the content. As evaluators we may have to put a bit more preparation into our evaluations prior to the meeting – maybe even read the speech in advance and really concentrate on particular aspects of the delivery, if that’s what the speaker needs.
So if you have a specific requirement that means you would benefit from a fast track approach – do let the EVP know. If you want a particular member to act as your mentor – again let the EVP know. We might even think of it as providing a service to the community. In order to continue to provide that service we need you to pay your dues and even if you don’t intend to stay the full year, you might consider paying the full years dues. There is something about the mutual scratching of backs that comes to mind here.
So topics builds confidence and speeches build competency. So Participate, experience, educate and learn with our toastmaster for tonight…..
