I’ve been a Toastmaster on and off for a long time. I initially joined Toastmasters to practice public speaking. I was already giving talks at SQL Saturdays and code camps and local user groups, but I knew I could be better. A little ways into my Toastmasters journey, I had given my 10 initial speeches and earned the Competent Communicator award. In other words, I had completed a quick course in the basics of good public speaking. Back then, once you completed your initial speech book, you had the option to give speeches from other books. Those books were focused on particular types of speeches or public speaking.
I picked a speech which involved summarizing a real event. In Toastmasters, each speech is supposed to be given within a set time. For instance, the time for one speech might be 6-8 minutes and another might be 10-12 minutes. This one was on the longer side, I believe 9-11 minutes. I was passionate about the topic. I thought I knew the material. I thought I had a decent outline. And I thought I’d be fine.
When I gave the speech, I think I finally ended it at 17 minutes. I’d gone over by almost 100%. I didn’t have a strong ending, either. By that point I was frustrated, because I had not done a good job cutting down to the details I needed to communicate. I just came to an abrupt end. Of course, I hadn’t practiced my speech. Had I just done that, even once, I would have realized I had a big problem.
Afterwards, I thought of all the typical excuses about having given a lot of speeches, about not having time, etc. However, I knew that they were all just excuses. Nothing justified my poor performance. At Toastmasters, if you don’t think you’re ready to give a speech, it’s no big deal and you can ask it to be removed from the agenda and rescheduled for a later meeting. But because I had done a lot of ad hoc speaking, I felt confident that I would be fine. I was not even close to fine from about 5 minutes into giving the speech. I was heading for failure and the accelerator was stuck.
So what did I learn? I think a better question is, “What did I re-learn?” I re-learned that the basics are the basics because they are critical and they still must be honored. I re-learned that doing dry runs, whether practicing speeches or deploying changes, are essential to help catch big issues. I re-learned that it’s easy to build a talk for an hour, but it’s hard to compress that talk down to a smaller timeframe. The more you need to compress, the harder it is.
Finally, I re-learned of the importance of finding the positive in someone’s effort. Toastmasters evaluations are supposed to cover what the Toastmaster can improve. For a new Toastmaster, we usually focus on one or two things. But evaluations are also supposed to find the positive in a given speech. My evaluator did find a couple of things that were positive, especially around vocal variety. That helped me bring the effort into perspective. Yes, I had failed. However, I had learned from the experience. Also, even in the failure, I did do a couple of things well. I had mistakes to learn from and strengths to build upon.