I failed at my toastmaster’s speech on Tuesday. Somehow I had an inclination that I was not prepared to speak on the subject I choose. Although I spent 7 hours to prepare most of the time was spent on the content and very little on presentation.
First what I did is write out the whole speech and then took the highlights and printed them on 4X6 cards. After going over the speech about 10 times I had become highly dependent on the notes (which I only realized after the speech). Writing about a subject is different then speaking about it.
I will try sometime new. I'm thinking about writing down questions that I want to address in a speech and then speak out the answers without notes. This will give a greater opportunity to focus on presentation then on preparation for a speech. After I have my speech right then it would be appropriate to do research and backup what I'm saying.
I realize that I'm on a new frontier and it will be a learning curve for me to master a subject and also be good at presenting it. As I travel and take part in training and hear speakers one of the common observations is that they have good presentation skills but lack in subject skills. I realize now that it is a challenge to be good at both.
Although this is an over quoted quote form Henry Ford I will use it here and take it to heart.
"Failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently" Henry Ford
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Failed Toastmasters Speech
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2 comments:
Gerhard: You learned a great deal from the the entire process (preparation right through delivery), so I would argue that the Toastmasters speech was a great success. Although the delivery may not have been as smooth as you hoped, that's what Toastmasters is for - to speak, to learn from it, to improve, and to speak again.
Another quote to feel good about your effort:
"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."
Theodore Roosevelt: "Citizenship in a Republic,"
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910
Thanks Andrew
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