One of the ways Toastmasters helps you overcome your fear of public speaking is through humour. The impromptu speaking sessions called “Table Topics” are always fun and only last between 1-2 mins. Here’s a funny video I found that may look familiar. We’ve all seen speakers who stumble over their words and fumble like this. Well it doesn’t have to be like this. Contact your nearest Toastmasters club today.
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Tonight, Wednesday evening, 25 March at 20:30 there will be a radio broadcast simultaneously from Johannesburg and Durban on regional radio. Topic: the Art of Public Speaking
Radio frequencies are as follows:
KayaFM 95.9 FM www.kayafm.co.za
GagasiFM 99.5 FM www.gagasi995.co.za
The web address is for online streaming on the respective websites – so you even if your are in Cape Town you can listen on the web. Nice, isn’t it?
Here’s some more background:
Johnnie Walker Black Label and Kaya FM and Gagasi FM will be introducing listeners to a discovery of the world around them, information that will add value to their lives in business, personal finance, investment and leisure. We seek to bring leading experts each month to help listeners discover more about the issues around them through the sharing of information, advice and useful tips.
The series began in the first week October where each week, a topic of interest to our listeners will be delved into. The show is a 30 minute Q & A session where listeners will also be invited to call in. We will prepare a guideline of questions that will pertain to the topic being discussed and we will then send it through to our guest for perusal and additions. We will also put our guest in contact with our presenters for any further queries they may have prior to the show itself. We will then ask our guest to come to the studio for the interview or have them do it telephonically.
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Happy new year to all our readers from CIS Toastmasters. Our first meeting for the year will be on Tuesday, 20 January 18h30 at Old Edwardian’s Club in Houghton, Johannesburg. Please contact our Eunice Faiga, our VP Membership for any specifics.
By Dave Hodges • DEMOCRAT BUSINESS EDITOR • December 27, 2008
Shirley Bull, director of Business & Community Outreach at the state’s Agency for Workforce Innovation, has a lunch appointment each Thursday at noon. It’s where she and other friends and business associates work on their communication skills.
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“I just can’t tell you what Toastmasters has done for me,” she says of the organizations she has belonged to for 17 years, serving as the chapter president at one point.
First and foremost, it is a confidence builder. “It can help you in your career to learn public speaking,” she says.
Sooner or later, that opportunity presents itself. Perhaps you are scheduled to give a report at a staff meeting, present a paper at a conference, or stand before potential clients and give a marketing presentation. You might need to address a homeowners association or your fellow parents at a PTA meeting.
Still, the prospect of speaking before an audience can be scary. It’s consistently ranked among the things people dread the most. The approach of Toastmasters International is to give individuals a chance to work on speaking skills in a non-threatening, instructive environment.
It’s about overcoming the fear of the podium. Toastmasters, in fact, jokingly reminds us all that no one has actually ever died from stage fright, even though some may feel they could. And chances are no one is going to notice your knees shaking or that sweaty upper lip you develop when you are addressing an audience.
What you will get is coaching and support on the essentials — speaking clearly, having good eye contact and posture, using gestures effectively, and how to give a talk that gets your point across and is memorable. And while you are speaking, as I did at Shirley Bull’s Capital City Chapter recently, you learn how to gauge the length of your remarks with the help of a member who times you. Even in two minutes you can say a lot more than you think.
Tallahassee is fortunate to have several Toastmasters chapters meeting on various days. If being a better speaker in your business or profession is a goal of yours, the clubs are ready to help.
source: Tallahassee Democrat.
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Dear Toastmasters and Guests
You are officially invited to our club’s 35th birthday party! Please join us for snacks and cake at our next meeting on Tuesday, 26 August, where we’ll also be having our humorous competition. So bring your humour, giggles and party spirit to Old Eds next week – we look forward to celebrating and chuckling with you.
Hee hee!
Any questions? Call me, Eunice Faiga, from the CIS Toastmasters Committee on 083 458 6255
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A year ago, I was assisting a garage owner with a noise problem. The garage is located in a small historic Cape Town and the owner wanted to open an exhaust repair business. Local bed and breakfast owners objected, primarily to the perceived noise of the welding and cutting as well as to cars with failed exhausts.
We did a noise-control design and sent the drawings back to the owner, who asked me to come for a site visit.
I got there. We discussed the drawings. Then he said, perhaps, I might go and discuss the matter with the town committee. So I said, fine, and drove with him to the town hall. He led me into a lobby and told me that the committee awaited behind the door on the left.
“Just knock,” he said, “and go in.” And I did.
I found myself in a room the size of a small ballroom. About 50 people sat along a huge table, with a chairperson on a raised dais. They stared at me. I realised that this was the ‘town committee’, which I had imagined to comprise, say, five people.
The chairperson explained that I was an engineer hired by the garage and that I would explain the noise-control measures to the 50-odd people assembled and answer questions. I noticed that my drawings had been stuck to the wall and that one of them was upside down.
I walked over to the upside-down drawing, cleared my throat and introduced myself. I turned to the upside-down drawing and said: “One way of getting rid of the problem may be to turn the garage upside down, but that won’t help much.” (I turned the drawing the right way up.)
I got a big laugh. Everybody relaxed. The garage extension was approved. The reason I am telling you all this is not because I want to show how smart I am, but how well I have been trained to speak in public, off the cuff, at a moment’s notice.
I learned this by going to Toastmasters’ meetings. This is an organisation that helps people to be able to speak with confidence in public. I happen to have gone to Toastmasters but there are other organisations which do the same sort of thing. There are two things one can do to make oneself a better engineer or businessperson, and one of them is to learn to be able to respond effectively to any call to address a group of people, either formally or informally. And it is so easy to do; there are Toastmaster groups everywhere – one should just find one that seems to have the sort of group of people that one might like and join up.
I’ll tell you another tale. I had to attend a site meeting, one of those explosive situations where the contractor has made a huge mess and was wildly overpaid for work which was not quite done. The client was refusing to pay any more until some progress was evident and, perhaps, not even then.
The contractor was not used to addressing groups and got the name of the client wrong, calling him Tony instead of Trevor. He laced many of his comments with deep sarcasm and in the end refused to do any more work until he was paid more money. Or he would get the lawyers in. So, since I have been trained to listen (yes, at Toastmasters), I could quite easily summarise what he had said and then ask that it be taken down in the minutes.
I then said, well, we had all heard what he had to say – we would discuss it among ourselves and we would let him know the instructions of our client. He lost it completely and swore at me and the client. And that was the end of him. How much better, I thought, if he had put his case in a reasoned way.
Now, nobody, but nobody at Toastmasters, knows I am writing this. But I do urge you to become better at your job – learn how to speak, learn how to listen.
by Terry Mackenzie-Hoy, originally published in Engineering News
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Kimmie Weeks is a powerful speaker. He speaks to more than 40,000 people every year on the topic: “Ending world poverty: a 21st century possibility”. He also lectures on AIDS, and child soldiers. Here’s a clip from one of his last speeches before he took a break to work on other projects:
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Last week I attended my first club meeting in a while because of my travel schedule. What is really awesome to observe at CIS Toastmasters is the constant growth in new members since the website has been re-launched. There is a regular number of new people coming to meetings, joining the club because of this website. Unlike the typical Toastmasters meeting I believe the number of speakers exceeded the usual quota. And for the first time that I know of the prepared speaking session was conducted before the table topics.
One of our newest members won the prepared speaking session: Stone Chirwa. It turns out Stone is a magician by trade and performs regularly. You may contact him directly on 073 6499595 if you are in need of some solid entertainment and filled with a bag of tricks. I was the evaluator for his speech and it was beyond the usual first time speeches I’ve heard. Stone was in character for the most part. He used a brilliant piece of structure to build up tension linked to his title, My Masters Degree. Every section in his story was a new level of education from the school of the hard knocks, or the school of life. His elocution was clear, his articulation great and his pacing was incredible. He even came out from behind the podium to do a quick magic trick with some small pieces of rope. This was unexpected and bodes well for future speeches where props are required. His use of gestures was good and also his body language was for the most party in tune with the message he was trying to convey. As with most speeches in front of a new audience he made one glaring mistake: he rocked from side to side throughout his speech. This was the only sign of any nervousness in his entire delivery. And on a minor note he thanked the audience, which you will learn in Toastmasters is not necessary.
Tim Verity won the best impromptu speech. I can’t recall exactly what he talked about but I can assure it must have been both witty and poignant knowing Tim. Tim has been one of the best reasons to be part of CIS Toastmasters because he brings so much enthusiasm and humour to the club meetings. He is one of the long standing members and an invaluable resource for new members to tap into. His words of encouragement has been a great inspiration for me from the beginning.
To my great surprise I won the James Ballentine Award from my club. This is an annual award for the person who’s made a big impact on the club. Its been a complete surprise to me to see how well this website has been received since I took over the reigns late last year. According to Rob Douglas DTM, this website was runner-up to the winner to Cape Town Toastmasters. Over the last 18 months I believe I have introduced at least 6 or more people to Toastmasters. At least one of them, my friend Israel Noko, has signed-up as a member, although he has yet to make his first speech.
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A good measure of laughs, learning and lingo were the order of the day at CIS Toastmasters meeting on Tuesday March 12. After all the formalities were tended to, with Corne van der Nest as the evening’s toastmaster, Marc Rees, the grammarian, explained that the “words of the day” would be French terms/words that have made their way into spoken English. And after that, voila, the speeches kicked off with the table topics, led by Cyril Chessex. Subjects included “Is there such a thing as having too much money?”, “What would your ideal career be”, and “Is there a market in South Africa for another telecommunications provider?”. All the speeches were interesting, fluid and well handled.
For the prepared speeches, it was up to four femmes fatales. Nando Mohaule did her first speech since joining the club, the CC1 or Icebreaker, showing us her joie de vive in both speech and personality. Elise Roscoe followed with her 2nd speech or CC2, a fascinating speech about the language of dogs, and how to deal with them to ensure a happy pet and a good relationship with them.
For her 3rd speech, the CC3, Tanya Kovarsky spoke about cats, and their wisdom, intuition and intelligence. Deleen Levy, the club president, did an advanced speech from the television manual, ACB1, where she played the role of a newsreader and spoke about an Eskom-related issue.
The rest of the meeting showed much esprit with superb evaluations, many more laughs (and hugs) and words of wisdom. The best speaker award went to Elise Roscoe – felicitations! Everyone said au revoir… until the next rendezvous…
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Leon Hazan is one the most popular speakers at our toastmasters club. He is a salesman by profession and has developed his own unique brand of humour in his speeches. Post your comments and questions on Leon’s speech below…
Download Leon Hazan’s Speech in mp3 file (1.2MB 5 mins)
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Sean Stephenson delivers the first part of his keynote, Time to Stand. Listen to him carefully as he demonstrates excitement through telling a story. Afterwards he eventually gets into the purpose of his talk. Starting a speech with a personal story is one of the most powerful ways to setup the context for the audience.
This is really powerful because its not talking down to people in the audience. At all times Sean is confident, in control and talking directly to the audience. And my point in posting this video clip is to show you if Sean can do it, so can you…!
Any ideas why he keeps moving the wheelchair around?
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