I interviewed David Brooks on February 8, 2013 and asked him just one question: “What are your best pieces of advice on how to win the Toastmasters’ World Championship of Public Speaking?”

David is a sought-after keynote speaker and public speaking coach.  You can find a wealth of free resources as well as information about his products and services on his website.  Generously, he has provided open access to the transcript of his world championship speech.

 

Tip #1: Scale your presentation for the audience and the moment

“Here in Austin in 1986, I learned from a very talented speaker named David Abel.  He visited our club and at that time I thought, “Wow, is he ever eloquent.” He’s stunning and I wanted to be that good. He planted the seed for my growth as a speaker.”

“Over the course of four or five years, David and I became friends. At one point he said to me, ‘I have written a speech that can win the International speech contest. Now, all I have to do is to find a speech that can get me out of my club.’”

“When you compete at successive levels, you have to grow into each one. In other words you can’t take a club speech to the world championship stage. Similarly, you can’t take an international final-round speech and win at your club.”

“Each level has its unique personality andits unique challenges.  There aredifferences in audiences, differences in room setting, and differences in–and this is very important–the maturity and sophistication and experience of the judges. I don’t say this to be critical but it is a fact that there are many great speakers who don’t win their club contest simply because the judges weren’t experienced enough to fully appreciate what they just heard live. By way of example, Craig Valentine’s winning speech in 1999 was brilliant and unusually difficult.  He spoke incredibly fast, but then he slowed down to repeat key messages.  If he had done it at his club, I wonder if he would have won.”

“Here is another example.  Years ago, I watched a very talented speaker named Michael Holman from another Austin club.  I saw him compete because I went to different Area contests to scope out the competition before I went to the Division contest. His Area contest was held in a very small room. I mean, we’re talking about 50 feet square packed with 30 people.  He gave an incredibly powerful speech. The problem was that he overpowered the room. His delivery was too big for that venue and for that audience.  A couple years later, he brought that speech back to a larger room that accommodated 200 and he won.  From that I learned the importance of matching your delivery to your venue.”

“Speakers must adapt and to adjust at each level factoring in: increased audience size, increased room size, increased quality of venue, and, hopefully, increased experience and knowledge of judges.  More broadly, you have to scale your presentation for the audience and the moment whether it’s in a contest or not.

 

Tip #2: Great speech writing requires ruthless, if not artistic, editing

“Great writing is the combination of word selection and narrative construction.  Rick Brunton, for example, delivered in 1998 an absolutely seamless panorama for seven minutes. Each scene evolves into the next and each has a reason to exist. There’s not a word or thought misplaced. His concept was strong. His message was strong.  His editing was unusually strong.” The problem is, his speech did not win, place or show. Why? See the comment above: “the judges weren’t experienced enough to fully appreciate what they just heard live.” I contend this was a gem of a speech that was underappreciated by judges who didn’t understand just how good it was. Listen to it three or four times and you’ll recognize its artistry.

“One of my biggest regrets is that I was not there when Jock Elliott won [in 2011] because Jock and I have been friends since we competed against each other in 1990.  He is a superb craftsman with ideas and an artist with words.  The great thing about Jock is that he has a deep appreciation for the purity of the message. You don’t find any unnecessary movements or motions in his speeches. I was thrilled when he triumphed because it shows—sometimes—wordsmiths win”

 

Tip #3: Compete to gain the experience of perfecting a speech

“Another observation I should mention has to do with mindset. The absolute worst reason to get into the Toastmasters’ contest is to become the World Champion.  If you are just trying to win something, then go buy a lottery ticket. Your odds are about the same and it takes a lot less effort.”

“Instead, your goal should be to use the competition to become a better speaker.

Contests are the quickest route to the greatest improvement because they force you to raise your standards.  They force you to play a better game than you can play in your club.”

“Toastmasters International is smart in terms of having manuals that encourage you to develop specific speaking skills like vocal variety and hand gestures.  But the big unmet opportunity in the Toastmasters program is that they should have a manual that requires you to go back and revise a previous speech. And then revise it again, and again, and again.  After four or five revisions, you might be onto something. That’s THE benefit of the contests: to keep advancing, you have to take one speech, revise it, re-revise it, re-re-vise it until you have something.A good speech rarely happens the first time around.

 

Try It Out!

David’s particular preoccupation is with narrative construction and the use of language.  This makes sense given that his background is in publishing.  Many of his favorite speeches were delivered in the finals but did not win including: Jeremiah Bacon in 1997, Rick Brunton in 1998, and David Sanfacon in 2003.  Recordings of these speeches can be purchased from Bill Stephens Productions. (Neither David Brooks nor I have any affiliation with this partner of Toastmasters International but David recommends Bill Stephens’ archive as the best resource you may ever find.)

Go craft a better speech starting with better parts as David outlines in this excellent article.

I interviewed Craig Valentine on December 21, 2012 and asked him just one question: “What are your best pieces of advice on how to win the Toastmasters’ World Championship of Public Speaking?”

Craig is a sought-after motivational speaker, author, and speaking coach.  He is incredibly giving with his expertise – in fact you can get many of his best tips by signing up for free at http://www.52speakingtips.com/.

 

Tip #1: Tell a story and make a point

“In the championship I’ve seen a lot of speakers trying to make three major points in five to seven minutes, and you just can’t do that effectively.  What I always tell people who are trying to go for the championship is, ‘Tell one major story and make one major point.’  There’s an old proverb that says when you squeeze your information in you squeeze your audience out.  If you’re trying to get across three major points in five to seven minutes, that’s like trying to do a 45 minute keynote speech in seven minutes.  It just can’t be done and it shouldn’t be done.”

“If you look at Ed Tate, if you look at Darren LaCroix, if you look at Lance Miller — all of these are basically a story that had one major point.  Now Ed had several parts to his story, but it was still basically one major story with one major point.”

Most people make the mistake of simply retelling their stories; they do it through a lot of narration.  For example, ‘Well this happened to me, and I’m talking to my son, and my son told me that I didn’t do this right…’  You know, it’s all narration.  The key to storytelling, and the key to speaking, I believe, is what Lou Heckler said, ‘Don’t retell it, re-live it.’  I’ve actually expanded upon that, “Don’t retell it, re-live it, and invite your audience into your re-living room.”  What I mean by that is, you’ve got to invite them into the scene of your story so they can hear it how your heard it, see it how you saw it, and feel how you felt it.”

“Here is another quick example.  Did you watch the Olympics at all this past year?  Do you know who the oldest person in the Olympics was?  It was a 74-year-old equestrian from Japan.  A 74-year-old equestrian!  My seven-year-old son and I are watching the Olympics on TV, and all they kept saying as commentators was, “He’s 74, he’s 74.  He’s a 74-year-old equestrian.  He’s 74.”  Finally my seven-year-old son looked up and said, ‘Well how old is the horse?’”

“Do you know for a week I couldn’t get that thought out of my mind, so I Googled it.  I found out that the 74-year-old equestrian from Japan was interviewed, and they asked him, ‘How long will you continue to compete?’  His answer was, ‘I can go on forever, but my horse is 15.’  I thought – wow, my son’s question was much more relevant than I thought.”

“Let’s just take that that story.  It illustrates a key concept in self-development which is to never stop asking questions.  It is just a quick story about my son and me, but the dialogue helped you feel like you were there.  The dialogue is what put you directly in that scene, and you could hear my son say, ‘Well how old is the horse?’  Right?”

 

Tip #2: Your (foundational) phrase determines what stays

“Here’s a key to figuring out what you keep in your speech and what you keep out.  That’s a big part of winning the World Championship.  The phrase determines what stays.”

“Your point should be fewer than ten words so that it becomes repeatable – it becomes memorable.  I call it a foundational phrase.  The foundational phrase for this story was just four words.  It should also be somewhat rhythmic, ‘Never stop asking questions’ – that’s easy to say, it rolls off the tongue.”

“There’s a lot more to that story — that equestrian story.  My wife was with me, my daughter was with me, my son was with me, we were in Houston, my kids were running in the track national championships — but none of that matters, because none of that really supports my foundational phrase.  All the content that supports my foundational phrase I keep in.  If it doesn’t support my foundational phrase I take it out.  All I really needed was my son, the newscast, and what my son said about the horse.”

“Sometimes you can actually build brands off of your foundational phrases.  ‘Your dream is not for sale’ is a story that I tell — it’s a brand.  People repeat it everywhere I go.  They contact me and say things like, ‘Hey, I was going to sell-out on my dream, but I remember you said, your dream is not for sale.’”

 

Tip #3: Tap, tease, and transport

[As demonstrated in his Olympic equestrian story, Craig begins most of his stories with an question that has an esoteric or counter-intuitive answer.  I asked him how often he does this and why.]

“Almost every time — almost every story.  It’s what I call, ‘Tap and transport.’  In an educational sense it would be called, ‘Activating prior knowledge.’”

“A lot of speakers, start their stories and just expect their audience members to come along.  That’s a mistake.  You’ve got to tap into your audience’s world — or at least into their minds — first, before you transport them into your story.  Because then they want to come on the journey with you to find the answer.”

“I started by asking, ‘Did you watch the Olympics at all this past year?’ I tapped into your world by reminding you of the Olympics and your experience of it.  That’s important.  Then I tapped into your world even more by asking you, ‘Do you know who the oldest competitor was in the Olympics?’”

“This gets you involved.  You’re not sitting back as a passive spectator; you are actually an active participant.   People buy into what they help create.  So I’m making you part of the process.”

“Once I tap into your world with that question, I get you thinking about you, I get you thinking about your answer — then, and only then, do I transport you into my story to get the answer.  By you not necessarily knowing the answer, it builds tension.  I always tell speakers to ‘Tease them before you tell them.’  Whatever it is, tease them before you tell them.”

“For example, in one of my signature stories, I start, ‘What do you think is the number one thing that stands between most people living their dreams?’  People shout out all kinds of different answers.  That’s my tap.  I’m tapping into their world.  Who are they thinking about?  They’re thinking about themselves.”

“They yell out all the answers: fear, procrastination… this and that.  Then finally I say, ‘All your answers are wrong!  The number one thing is not what you think.’  That’s not only a tap, but it’s what I call, ‘Tap, tease, and transport.’  I tap into their world with a question, I tease them to want to know more.  Then and only then do I transport them into my story.  It is something I do very, very intentionally, and I suggest that speakers do that.  Otherwise there’s really no reason for us to want to come on that journey with you.  Tap, tease, and transport.  It’s a great way to get into your story.”

 

Tip #4: Don’t just tell your message, sell your message

People trying to win the World Championship have to realize that they are in sales.  When I won the World Championship, I was a beginner — I was just starting out and I didn’t know that much.  But, one thing I did very well in my World Championship speech is that I soldthe message – ‘If you take this step of having five minutes of silence in your life every day, you’re going to find a peacefulness, a tranquility, a serenity that you never felt before.  You’re going to finally feel fulfilled.’  I was selling the heck out of that message.”

“What does it mean to sell a message?  You never want to sell a product; you never want to sell a process; you always want to sell the result.”

“Here is another example.  When I went to buy my first car ever, I went to the dealership and the salesperson came up to me and said, ‘Are you looking at that car?’  I said, ‘Yes, sir.’  He said, ‘Great, let me tell you about it.  This car has this type of brakes, this type of engine, this type of power, this type of window.’  But my question is, ‘What is he trying to sell me?’  He’s actually trying to sell me the car.  Now I just said, ‘Never sell a product, always sell the result.’  I said, ‘Thank you, but no thank you.  I’m not interested.’  I didn’t even know why I wasn’t interested, I just wasn’t.”

“I went to a different dealership on the same day — different salesperson, same car.  This guy must have anticipated where I was in my life emotionally at that time — young and single and looking to mingle.  (Laughs)  He walks up to me and says, ‘Are you looking at that car?’  I said, ‘Yes, sir.’  He said, ‘Ooo, you’re going to look good in that one.  You’re going to be flying down the road, the wind’s going to be blowing through your hair, and the girls — let me tell you — the girls will be all over you.’  What do you think I did? I said, ‘Where do I sign?’  (Laughs)”

“He made the sale not because he sold me the car, but because he sold me the result — and he lied!  (Laughs)  I was lonely in that car, I’m telling you.  Just me and my payment — that’s all that was.”

“When I was talking about five minutes of silence in my World Championship speech, what I was really selling was was fulfillment, serenity, tranquility.  Figure out what result you’re really selling, and drive that home.  The title of my speech was, ‘A Key to Fulfillment.’  The result was built into the title — so was the curiosity.”

 

Tip #5: It is not about perfection, it is about connection

“The World Championship is not about being perfect.  It’s not about perfection, it’s about connection.  It’s not about perfection, it’s about connection.  You’re going to see several speakers go to the World Championship stage and do their speech flawlessly — and connect with no one.  Because they’re so into what they’re going to say, and how they’re going to act it out, and doing it flawlessly that they don’t even connect with the audience.  By the time you get on stage you shouldn’t even been thinking about what you’re going to say or what you’re going to do.  The thoughts should all be about your audience.”

“Right before I take the stage, what I say to myself is, ‘May I forget myself, remember my speech, and touch my audience’ – because it is no longer about me.  When you get up on the stage, if you come from that mindset, chances are you’re going to connect more deeply than the other contestants.”

“At that championship level everybody is going to have good content; everybody is going to have good delivery.  The difference in who wins and who doesn’t is in the connection; and you can feel that in the room.  So don’t be there for yourself, be there for your audience.”

“The quickest way to connect with an audience is to share the 4 F’s – your failures, flaws, frustrations, and firsts.  I almost always open up my speech with a failure story.  That way people relate to you.  I always tell people, ‘When you lift yourself up, you let your audience down.’”

“The inner dialogue of the audience members is, ‘Of course the strategies he’s talking about work for him, because he’s special.  These strategies will never work for me.’ The key to speaking is to take yourself off of any pedestal that they may have put you on, and never come across as special — come across as similar.  Put the process — not the person — on a pedestal.  Sprinkle failures throughout the speech to make sure that they keep me similar.”

“For example, if I’m talking about how imagination changed my life, I’m not going to talk about all the wonderful things I’ve done.  I’m going to talk about the wonderful way that imagination has helped me.  I’m putting the process, not me as a person, on the pedestal.”

“Sometimes I’ll share my dismal first SAT score with my audience.  The reason I do that is because when they hear my SAT score, they say, ‘Hey, he’s not any more book-smart than I am.  If he can accomplish this, I know I can do it.’  And that’s exactly what you want your audience to feel.”

If you think about my story — I was talking about my son making the comment about the Olympics.  I like what Mark Brown says, “Your stories don’t have to be sensational, they just have to be sincere.”  I’m telling a story about my son making a comment about a horse, and people love the story.  I don’t think your story has to be “climbing Mount Everest”.  Your story can be about your son and you watching the Olympics — because that’s similar, and it’s going to connect.

 

Try it out!

I wish I could have listened to and learned from Craig’s stories for hours and hours.  Again, you can get more of his wisdom for free at http://www.52speakingtips.com/.  For aspiring and established professional speakers, I also strongly recommend his book “World Class Speaking.”

My conversation with Craig yielded many insights.  Pick your ah-ha moment from among the following to apply to your next speech:  ‘Tell as story, make a point’; ‘Your phrase determines what stays’; ‘Tap, tease, and transport’; ‘Don’t just tell your message, sell your message’; or ‘It is not about perfection, it is about connection.’

I interviewed Ed Tate on December 18, 2012 and asked him just one question: “What are your best pieces of advice on how to win the Toastmasters’ World Championship of Public Speaking?”

Ed is a sought-after keynote speaker who uses storytelling to guide his audiences through the full range and intensity of human emotions .  Click here to learn more about Ed.

 

Tip #1: Take a risk

“I’m very thankful to have won the World Championship; but when I joined Toastmasters 14 years ago, it was never my intention to win.  I only joined Toastmasters to get better at my job as a sales executive for a computer company.  The founder of our club was a gentleman by the name of Randall Shelton. Very early on Randall said, ‘There’s this thing that’s called the World Championship of Public Speaking, and you need to consider it.’”

“He harassed me for the next 18 months and it got to the point where I was rather annoyed. I held Randall at bay since my work travel schedule did not permit me to enter the contest.  Then I became the training director of the Denver Rocky Mountain News.  When I told Randall that my new job involved almost no travel, he said, ‘Great, now you can enter the International speech contest.’ My reaction was, ‘Great, now I can enter this freaking contest.’ (Ed laughs) Same words, different reactions.”

“I had several purposes for competing.  Number one, I wanted to get Randall off my back. Number two, Cherry Creek Toastmasters in Denver, Colorado has a core group of people who are into giving back to other speakers and I thought it would be cool if I could be looked upon in that same light.”

“The year I won, my club contest started out as a tie. We had to have a runoff. As opposed to six rounds of the World Championship I actually had seven.  I did something very risky.  The speech I tied with was about bullying. For the runoff, I decided I would test out a different speech that my club members said was really good. That was a speech about telling the truth.  Taking the risk of changing my speech gave me the element of surprise.  The judges were not expecting it and the fresh humor worked better.”

 

Tip #2: Don’t Talk Down To Your Audience, Talk To Your Audience

“Though I purposefully do not watch other contestants deliver their speeches, I’d heard about a gentleman from India who gave this amazing Horatio Alger story. He literally slept on dirt floors and now his daughter goes to Harvard.  I’m thinking to myself, ‘Okay, this guy won.’”

“While we were sitting at the table at the start of the awards ceremony, my 10-year-old son turned to me and said, ‘Dad, I think you won the competition.’ I said to him, ‘Son, well you don’t know how these things work. You don’t know how they’ll think and you especially don’t know how Toastmasters think. Let’s just wait and see.’”

“They announce the third runner-up.  Then, they announce second runner-up who turns out to be the guy from India. At that point my son turns to me again and whispers, ‘Dad, you’re going to win this!’”

“The moment they announced the winner someone coughed at my table and I did not hear the name. My son said something to me which sounded like, ‘You lost,’ and I was trying to explain to him, ‘Maybe next year.’ He looked at me and he said, ‘No, Dad, you won.’”

“When we were on the plane back from Galveston, I looked my son and I asked him, ‘Why were you so certain that I had won?’ He replied, ‘Well, dad, it was easy.  All the other speakers sounded like parents. They were speaking like that guy Tony Robbins.’ He added, ‘They were trying to tell you how to live your life, how to do better.  You were the only person who just came out and told a story, and it was up to us to decide what we wanted to do with it.’”

“At that moment, I knew I had found my voice. That is my strength – telling stories. If you watch all three of the speeches I delivered on my World Championship journey, each is one story from start to finish and each has a lesson. That’s my style. I do not preach.  I share life-lessons, but I leave the choice of taking those lessons up to each listener.”

 

Tip #3: Compete in order to develop your professional speaking skills

“The odds are so tremendous against winning the World Championship- something like one in 35,000. However, I’m not saying that people shouldn’t compete.  Competition makes you a better speaker.”

“In Toastmasters, speakers deliver one speech and then move on to the next assignment with very little feedback. In competition it’s more like professional speaking.  You take a story with a lesson, you hone it and you craft it, over and over to make it better. You get a chance to experience what the art and the creativity of [the professional speaking] business is all about.”

“Even if you choose not to be a professional speaker, I encourage people to compete so they get a feel what it’s like to hone a story. I literally edited the draft of my winning speech hundreds of times.  Testing and re-writing is the only way to craft something that is truly excellent.”

“I am still an active Toastmaster.  I still compete.  I always test out new material, new stories, and new techniques in front of my Toastmasters club.  I never test out new material in front of a paying audience.”

 

Tip #4: Record Every Speech You Deliver

“Now the other thing that our club does is that we record every speech.  Video is the best way for you to improve. You can see what works, you can see what doesn’t work, and you can see some of your idiosyncrasies.  Before the World Championship, I went to 22 different clubs and recorded every single one of my speeches so that I could improve by studying the iterations.”

“Joel Osteen, who is a television minister, does the same thing. I just saw an interview with him and he said that he has done over 500 sermons in the past 13 years.  He said he sits down with his editor and they go through every single sermon and they talk about what went well and what they can improve for next time. You should apply that same process of watching your videos and asking yourself what you did well, what you would change if you could.  That process makes you better.”

 

Tip #5: Be Unique

“Before I went to the World Championship, I actually watched nine years previous contests back to back to back to back. The one thing I discovered about the winners is they had something unique that separated them from the pack.  It wasn’t more the same.”

“I can’t even tell you the number of contests I’ve attended and the number of speeches I have watched. I’ve just stopped counting. The vast majority of speeches I see are more of the same. They’re just like what my son observed.  Too many sound like parents trying to tell you how to live your life.”

“The winning speeches have something that stands out. Lance Miller had ‘Cha-Ching’ and David Brooks had ‘The Silver Bullet.’ My speech required audience participation where I say ‘It was just…’ and the audience finishes with ‘… one of those days.’  At least 98 percent of well meaning, well intentioned Toastmasters were against it.  They were saying that the judges weren’t going to like it and that I would probably run out of time.”

“The last part turned out to be true.  The speech was originally six minutes and ten seconds.  In front of 2,000 people it turned into 7 minutes and 29 seconds because of the laughter and the audience participation.  It was a calculated risk that paid off.”

 

Tip #6: Don’t speak to be liked, speak to change the world

“For my next piece of advice, I give full credit to Mark Sanborn, who is in the Speaking Hall of Fame and author of the best-selling book ‘The Fred Factor: How to Turn The Ordinary Into The Extraordinary.’   He says that our job as speakers is not to be liked.  Our job is to make an impact – to try to change the world.”

“I have a book that someone gave to me several years ago called ‘The Greatest American Speeches.’ In there, you have former President Reagan’s, ‘Mr. Gorbachev tear down that wall’ and you’ve got Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ and you have John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech and you’ve got Eleanor Roosevelt… all the speeches that shaped our country.”

“The book is several hundred pages long and there is not one line of humor.  Not one sentence of humor. There’s a belief that if you want to make impact have humor in your speech. There’s some truth to that, there’s a lot of truth to that, but in many of the greatest speeches of all time, that’s not the case.”

“On the flip side, I saw a President Obama’s 18 minute speech yesterday at the site of the recent massacre in Connecticut.  He was able to make it light at one moment by referencing one of the kids who said to a rescuer, ‘Hey, it’s okay. I know karate.’ In that very, very serious moment he was able to provide some relief. “

“I was four years old when Martin Luther King delivered his ‘I have a dream speech.’  The only thing I remember about that speech was that the cartoons didn’t come on the following Saturday. There were only three channels and they kept showing this black man who giving his speech over and over again.”

“Now, think about the times. Segregation was the law of the land in the South. He declared a new future.  It didn’t even exist then. It was an idea. He was describing this new future where people were judged on the content of their character rather than on the color of their skin. I submit to you that that Barack Obama became President because of that speech.  But [Martin Luther King] paid for it with his life.”

“If you really want to be a great speaker, if you really want to make impact, take a stand.  Yes, at times, you are going to be criticized.  But, you are going to be criticized no matter what you do. In the words of Seth Godin, you are either remarkable or invisible.”

 

Tip #7: Make a deep connection with your audience starting before you speak

“I attended a workshop years ago run by Lee Glickstein that exposed me to the idea of transformational speaking.  He pointed out that speakers are the most nervous and the audience is the most skeptical at the beginning of a speech.  That is a bad combination.  Lee said that before you even speak, you’ve got to make a spiritual connection.”

“There’s a lot of debate about when my championship speech actually started. There were around 2,000 people there.  Obviously I couldn’t see them, but I tried to connect with each person.  I acknowledged them with eye contact during a long silence before I spoke.”

“The vast majority of speakers start talking a nanosecond after they are introduced. Not me, I want to connect, I want to have that spiritual, emotional connection with the audience first. I know it sounds like woo-woo, but it’s psychologically important to me.”

 

Try it out!

When you watch any of Ed’s speeches, you will immediately appreciate his masterful use of the pause.  The most noticeable is the opening silence he uses to establish emotional connection that he referred to in this interview.  The next time you speak, take center stage.  Look left for two to three seconds.  Look right for two to three seconds.  Finally, look center for two to three seconds and then start speaking.

I interviewed Jock Elliott on November 20, 2012 and asked him just one question: “What are your best pieces of advice on how to win the Toastmasters’ World Championship of Public Speaking?”

Jock is a master of the written and spoken word, making his living as a speaker, speech writer, author, and speaking coach. His latest book, Speak Easy, is available on Amazon.

 

Tip #1: Push yourself out of your comfort zone

“It is very hard to define what actually wins (the World Championship) because I have seen some very peculiar results over the years.  I come from a much more restrained culture than in North America.  I have always struggled with the difficultly of doing the showmanship that so often seems to work over there.  Instead, I have always pursued oratory.”

“When I speak in the real world as a professional speaker, I cannot do some of the things that seem quite acceptable on the Toastmasters stage. I would just get mocked.  However, that is not to say that I don’t hold Toastmasters in the highest esteem – I have been a member for 37 years and will continue until I drop.  It is fabulous training ground for learning to be comfortable as a speaker.  The problem is that it is easy to become complacent.  People can be equally comfortable as a good speaker or as a bad speaker.”

“It is only when you are forced beyond your comfort zone that you grow as a speaker.  Both competitive speaking and professional speaking put you under the gun.  Among the two, competitive speaking is the better training ground since you are most directly putting yourself under the gun. The Toastmasters environment has the added advantage that constructive evaluation is the norm.”

 

Tip #2: Know what you want to say

“The primary thing is to know what you want to say.  And so often, people do not. Instead, they fall in love with particular lines; I am as guilty as anybody of that.  Often, a particular line or concept is not to the point – it is a diversion.  You have to have the luxury of being able to walk away from your preparation and then come back to the speech cold and say:  ‘Yes, lovely as it is, I will keep this idea for the future because it is good, but it does not live in this speech.’”

“Until you can get down to exactly what you want to say, then your speech will lack focus and you are not going to have a speech of any significance.  The old principle of being able to write down what you want to say on the back of a business card holds true.  You might not achieve that in the early days of (crafting) the speech. Often, you have to work your way through your theme until it is refined. That can be based as much on your own intuition as on the feedback that you get in rehearsal.  Ultimately, until you have that hard, crystal clear message in your own mind, you are never going to get it across to your audience. And of course, then it has got to be a message of value.  To me a speech without substance is just froth.  You must have something that people can take away.”

“You have to know your audience well enough to express what matters to you in words that matter to them.  The better I know my audience, the closer I am to where they live in their heads and in their hearts, then the quicker I can move them to where I want them to be in terms of accepting the point of my speech, if not necessarily agreeing with it.”

“In the Toastmasters International speech contest, your message should have a universal appeal.  Some messages are merely topical; for example, the war in Afghanistan.  Current events and many social issues will not endure 5, 10, 15 years down the road. I wrote a speech 30 years ago about a certain type of Australian beach bum.  Well, he does not exist anymore.  So, that speech only rings a bell to people of my generation who can cast their mind back that far. It does not rob the speech of its value in certain respects, but it no longer has universal appeal.”

“At the end of the day, only one person takes home the trophy.   But if 1 person or 10 or 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 people take home my message, then I have also won.  I am not trying to change peoples’ lives.  What I am trying to do is give them something to think about; what they do with it is entirely up to them.  In fact, in the writing of a speech, sometimes I change the way that I think about life myself and modify my behaviour accordingly.  That is one of the merits of actually writing speeches. It clarifies your thinking; it discharges emotions; it gets rid of the baggage.”

 

Tip #3: Express your true self

“I know a lot of contestants look at the DVDs (of past winning speeches) and say: ‘Right, that is good (from one) and that is good (from another).  I will put them all together like Marilyn Monroe’s smile and Sophia Loren’s eyes and all the rest of it and get the perfect face or in this case, speech, but the end result is that it gets very plain looking.  Watching the DVDs is fine but only if you focus on trends rather than tactics and personal style.”

“If someone wins and they have a component in there which is replicable like a song, a dance, or climbing up a step ladder, then you will see a number of copycats in next year’s contest. Some do it well, and some do it badly, but they are rather missing the point.  Most winning speeches do incorporate a gimmick – verbal or physical – that rings a bell with people.  But it needs to be uniquely yours.”

“I don’t do gimmicks and I don’t do props.  I work on the principle of being able to operate in total darkness without a sound system.  To me, it is the words and the images I create with my words enhanced by body language and vocal variety that should do the job.  I draw the line when body language and vocal variety overshadow substance.  Because it is the substance which people take home.”

“In the end, you have to do what works for you. There is no right or wrong.”

“If you are very tall you play basketball, and if you are very short, you play billiards. You do the thing that you can do most easily.  That goes for your vocal and physical style as well.  My “Just So Lucky” (winning) speech was relatively still and quiet, because that is how I usually am.  I knew that would either count against me or count for me. I knew there have been rumblings about too much show.  I was happy to take the risk because, as always, it’s what I wanted to say.

“There is one right way of doing brain surgery; but almost every other activity has any number of right ways. It is comes down to the person, the event, the audience, even the time of day.  So, for example, I can be at a conference, speaking at a rather informal lunch and there will be a different expectation then,  then at the very formal gala dinner later that same night. Not only will my message change, but also my style of dress and use of language.  Many changes are automatic.  It is just the natural persona we adopt in these circumstances. You talk to your boss in one way, your dog in another, and you mother in another. That is just the “you” that you are showing to each different person. “

 

Tip #4: Touch your audience intellectually and emotionally

For many years, I missed the point.  I was probably too academic.  I was passionate about what I was talking about, but I was obsessed with issues that did not have an emotional resonance.  Ultimately, you have to touch your audience both intellectually and emotionally.

I was in Brunei the other week and a very new Toastmaster said something I thought was so profound.  She said: ‘You are the bridge between your point and your audience.’  And I think that is very, very significant.  I certainly know from years of sales and marketing that if your target customer does not like you, then they will not buy from you.  You need to be at least respected as a speaker. Your audience may have no experience of you before.  So you have to establish likeability and respect and credibility with your audience quite soon.  Otherwise, they are saying: “Alright, he is just talking at us. He has got this thing that he is saying.’  If they are thinking that, then you have failed.”

“I try and put myself in the audience’s shoes.  I try to get as close to where they live in their heads and in their hearts and start from there. My audience in the United States is middle aged, middle class, middle income, and generally a little bit to the right politically, if you can generalise from an audience of 1500+.  I don’t think there is anything you cannot talk about – even sex, politics, and religion but it is entirely comes down to treatment.  There is no point in needlessly offending people.  I I am quite happy to deliberately offend butI go to a lot of trouble to not accidentally offend.  To accidentally offend reflects poor research or carelessness in writing.  At the same time, you cannot please everyone. No matter what you do, there will be 3% of the audience that hates you. And odds are, they are sitting right in the front row, scowling heavily, with their arms crossed (laughs).”

 

Tip #5: Hit the judging criteria quickly, clearly, but subtly

“For many years, whilst I gave very careful consideration of the judging form and addressed all the points, I do not believe I addressed them in the right way. The judges are looking for very particular criteria.  You have to give the judges landmarks they are looking for.  You’ve got to address it in a sufficiently clear way for the judges to say: ‘Right –that bit is done.’ But, you don’t want to be too obvious such as saying:  “That was my introduction, now into the body of my speech.’”

“As a listener, I am more than happy for a point to emerge a long way into the speech as long it is going somewhere.  However, the judges have to hang their judging criteria on a point. They need to see your message fairly early or at least have a useful departure point.”

 

Tip #6: International speakers should acclimatize to the host country

“Some years ago, I used to come over to the United States a week in advance and go around to as many as ten clubs.  It is very expensive and time consuming but it gets your body clock in order.  Though you are sometimes exposed to foolish evaluation, the feedback is usually very good.  Most importantly, it shows you what is working in terms of timing and language use.  This helps you make sure that your message fits your audience.  Generally speaking, it is harder for those outside North America to compete, simply because we are not immersed in the images – cultural and visual – that are second nature to most North Americans.”

 

Tip #7:  Strive for no audience member left behind

“We have far too many ‘deaths’ in the contest.  Some of the stories are so harrowing and so personal as to destroy the relationship between the speaker and audience.  With ‘Just So Lucky’, I very deliberately did have not a lot to say in detail about ‘me’.  Instead, I created a series of images which the audience could put themselves into. “

“For example, when I talk about friends of our family I say:  ‘We had our differences, but we got over those.’  When I was practicing, a woman came up to me and said: ‘You lost me there because I have family differences and never got over them, so I could not be with you from then on.’ What I did was add the words ‘Well, I’m just so lucky because we got over those.’  By saying I was lucky, I acknowledge that not everyone gets over their family issues.  I hope that allowed her or others like her to move on with me to the next bit.  All the way through, my images and language are crafted for people to say. ‘Yeah, I am there, he is talking about me.’

 

Try It Out!

When you listen to Jock’s winning speech ‘Just So Lucky’, you recognize how he meticulously crafted every word.  Most world champions do not discuss this effort much since it has become second nature to them.  When you deliver your next speech, engineer one or two key phrases tied closely to your key message that deliver powerful emotional or intellectual impact to your audience.

I interviewed the 2007 District 36 speech evaluation contest champion, Christine Clapp, on November 30^th, 2012.  Though she is a successful educator, keynote speaker, and speaking coach, she graciously shared her deepest insights.

In her words, here are the secrets to winning the Toastmasters speech evaluation contest.  Christine’s overarching theme is that a speech evaluation must have a clear structure.

 

Tip #1: Craft a positive introduction

“Just like any other speech, a speech evaluation must have an introduction, body, and conclusion.  During the introduction, start off by thanking the speaker and saying something relevant, personal, and positive.  For example, ‘Your speech is such a timely topic.  I completely empathize with you since I too have kids that get sick at the worst times.’”

 

Tip #2: Focus on content and delivery in the body of your evaluation

“As you transition into the body, provide your audience with a preview of how you are going to move through your evaluation.  Most evaluators just go through a list of things chronologically which can feel chaotic.  I always structure my evaluations with two sections in the body – content and then delivery.  When you structure this way, you set yourself apart.”

“Break each of the two sections into three components.  In the content section, start with one thing the speaker did well.  Second, share one thing they did well but could have done better. Finally, close with one thing that they can improve upon.  Then, repeat those three components in the delivery section.”

“You want to troubleshoot for people by not only revealing an improvement area, but also suggesting a specific example of how to address it.  Each one of your three components should be supported by specific examples from the speech.  Here is an example of sharing one thing the speaker did well but could have done better:  ‘You did well on your gestures when you showed us how you hacked the coconut out of the tree.  But it would have been more impactful had your gestures had been more exaggerated like this (demonstrates).’”

 

Tip #3: Conclude with a call-back, a call-to-action, and a summation

“When you transition into your conclusion, call back to the positive detail you used during the introduction.  Then, encourage the speaker to apply a relevant call-to-action related to the Toastmasters communication or leadership track.  For example, ’I hope that you consider using this for a humorous speech contents in the future.’  Or, ‘Your story was very well told; you should consider pursuing the Storytelling advanced manual.’  If they delivered a leadership centric speech, you could say: ‘I hope you consider expanding this speech and delivering it as an educational workshop at your regional conference next spring.’”

 

“Many contestants do not look at the judging ballot which gives 15 out of 100 points for a concise, encouraging summation.  About 1 in 100 evaluation contestants will actually provide a summary of their key points.  For example, ‘And just to review, great job on this and this, and it would be really great if you could focus on this, this, and this in the future.’  Literally doing that one thing alone will help you clear the path to the District if not win your District contest.”

 

Tip #4: Know where the speaker is sitting

“In a previous District speech evaluation contest that I did not win, I left the room before I saw where the speaker sat down.  That was a big mistake because when I was ushered back into the room and up onto the stage, I was looking in the crowd of 150 people trying to find the speaker.  I did not know where she sat down. “

“When I give an evaluation, I like to look at the person when I start and when I am sharing complements.  Then, when I give suggestions for how the speech could be even more effective, I broaden my eye contact to the entire audience.  In the contest that I lost, I never made eye contact with the speaker.  I felt uncomfortable and my speech seemed weird and disconnected.”

“The year I won, I waited in the room until the speaker sat down.  All the other contestants rushed out. I stood at the door waiting to see where the she sat down. Then, when I came in, I looked at the speaker and thanked her with direct eye contact.”

 

Tip #5: Mind the time

“Many, many of your competitors will be disqualified by going over 3:30. As with all Toastmasters contests, you need to be very aware of time.”

 

Try It Out!

Unlike the International speech contest, the Toastmasters speech evaluation contest requires little or no advance preparation.  Next time your club holds an evaluation contest, give it a try following Christine’s winning advice.  Open on a positive note with a relevant personal detail.  Discuss content and delivery separately in the body of the speech providing specific examples and advice.  And finally, conclude with a call-back, a call-to-action, and a summation.