I interviewed Lance Miller on November 19, 2012 and asked him just one question: “What are your three best pieces of advice on how to win the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking?”

Lance speaks and delivers seminars on leadership and communications.  He is also sought-after as a speaking coach.  You can reach him at http://www.lancemillerspeaks.com.

As you will discover in his words below, Lance’s core principle is sincerity in your message and in your delivery.

Tip #1: It is not in the winning, it is in the learning

“I competed and lost for 13 years before winning the World Championship.   One of the big lessons that changed my life came in 2002 when I realized that it would be hard for me to learn from my mistakes if I was unwilling to admit that I was making any.  The audience was telling me that I was not speaking at the level of a World Champion.  Early on, I wanted the audience to say, ‘Oh, you are so brilliant (laughs).’  That type of thinking was proof that I did not yet have the right mindset. “

“I learned more from the speech contests that I lost than I ever learned from speech contests that I won. I would never go back and win a contest and lose the lesson. The audience would not allow me to go forward until I corrected specific aspects of my attitude and my speaking.”

Tip #2: It is not about you, it is about the audience

“I have already had three people in the last month contact me and tell me that they are the 2013 World Champion of Public Speaking.  From my experience, if you go into the contest with that attitude, then you are missing the biggest component of the contest. You are missing the fact that the contest is about the audience, not about you.  How does your speech improve the way your audience thinks and lives three hours, three days, three weeks, three months, or even three years after your speech?“

“Humility and sincerity are what make great speakers and great speeches.  Your speeches should not be sensational.  Humility means you are talking eye to eye with your audience. I see people go into this authoritative posture, talking down to their audience.  It comes from watching too many stereotypes of preachers and football coaches. Their style becomes: ‘I command you to think this way (laughs).’  It is better to appreciate that your audience is made up of brilliant people – probably smarter than you are.”

“I see people time and time again focus on traumatic events.  Never mention the word ‘cancer’ in a speech. Playing the ‘death card’ is many times an attempt to try to use sensationalism to make up for other deficiencies in the speaker’s skill set.  Instead, turn your attention to the audience with a message that you sincerely believe will make a difference.  Even if you do not win the contest, you still win because you are actually making a difference in people’s lives.  The speech that most deeply touches the hearts and changes the mind of the audience is the one that wins.”

Tip #3: Be yourself

“Just being you is the hardest thing in public speaking.  When we stand in front of a group of people, the strangest things start happening to us.  You lose your thoughts, your body starts doing stuff all by itself.  I want to meet the exact same person on stage that I met offstage albeit with more energy.”

“For me, the contest was a journey of self-discovery and self-worth.  You need to look at your life and define who you are. We go through life and get defined by our family and friends. We end up trying to be who they want us to be instead of who we want to be.  When you can figure out who you are, then you have something of value to give the world through your words.“

“At one point when I was trying to find messages (to use as speech topics), I was so frustrated because nothing really bad had ever happened to me.  Have you ever felt that way?  I started looking at my life. I came from a good family; I had a good education; I had good jobs.  Oh, man, where is the inspiration in that? This is horrible (laughs).  But, I went back and instead asked ‘What have I learned? What has made a difference in my life that I would want to share with the audience?’”

Part of being yourself is talking to the audience instead of acting on stage.  Great oratory is not having conversations with characters that are not there, screaming and yelling, or getting overly emotional. It is not about ladders or chairs or orange cones.  Just talk to your audience.  You should be able to make your point with your speech even if your audience cannot see you.  Paint images in people’s minds with your words.  Share your story with your audience instead of telling them what they should think.

“When I bring characters to life in my speeches, I do not dramatize them.  I tell the audience what they said and what they did in my own voice.”

Try it out!

Lance’s winning speech, entitled “The Ultimate Question”, focused on the importance taking the time to validating yourself and others.  I leave you with his words on how he found that message:

“Early on in my Toastmasters experience, I asked what the International contest was.  Somebody told me that it is your five to seven minutes to say something important to the world. So, I asked myself, ‘If I could make one change in the world, what would it be?’  It struck me that if we just validated each other, by looking for what is right rather than for what is wrong, then the world would be a much better place.”

I interviewed Darren LaCroix on November 14, 2012 and asked him just one question: “What are your three best pieces of advice on how to win the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking?”

Though Darren is best known for his humor, the aspect I enjoyed most in our conversation was his view that we stand on the shoulders of giants.  As you will discover in his words below, he views every other speaker as a coach and mentor.

You can connect with Darren at darrenlacroix.com.

Tip #1: Focus on the process of becoming a great speaker, not the outcome

“Every time I speak at a conference, somebody asks me: ‘How can I win the World Championship of Public Speaking?’ The first thing I tell them is that simply winning the contest is a bad goal.  Your goal should be to become such a great speaker that you can win.  If you just create a championship winning speech, what are you going to do with it afterwards?  Focus on the process of becoming a better speaker.  If I could do anything, it would be to get the lust (for winning the championship for its own sake) out of people’s minds.”

“There are many world champions who have won whose lives have not changed in a meaningful way. And there are plenty of people who have not won and gone on to have amazing careers.  So, winning the contest is not the be-all end-all.”

“In fact, I do not know of too many people who won that actually set out with the goal to win.  Consider 2008 World Champion LaShunda Rundles – her goal was to get her message out there and this was just a platform to do it.” (LaShunda’s message was that our words are the seeds of our immortality.  Sadly, Ms. Rundles passed away on August 21, 2012 after a long battle with lupus.  You can follow her journey in the documentary SPEAK.)

“Rather than looking to win, I joined the contest in order to work on the stories that I was already telling in my keynote speech.  Those days, I was spending all my time either doing my day job, marketing myself, or speaking. I never had time to work on the craft of speaking.  Win, lose, or draw in the contest, I would win by putting those stories back into my keynote.  As Craig Valentine says, ‘If you want a masterpiece, then you have to master the pieces.’”

Tip #2: Build a team but trust your gut

“Having a coach is important. You don’t have a clue if you don’t have a coach.”

“You have to be careful who you listen to. There are two kinds of feedback.  The first is ‘here is what I thought and felt’.  Everyone is qualified to give you ‘thought and felt’ feedback though you do need to look for commonalities and not be swayed by a lone opinion.  Second, there is ‘here is what you can do to improve your speech’ feedback.  Not everyone is qualified to tell you what you can do to make your speech better. “

“When I fell on my face at the 22 practice clubs everyone said ‘Get up sooner, I was uncomfortable.’  My coach Mark Brown said ‘Stay down longer, they are uncomfortable. Darren, our job as speakers is not to make people feel comfortable, it is to incite change.’  I too was incredibly uncomfortable while I was lying down. If you watch the video of my speech, you will see my foot shake – that was not intentional. I overrode my discomfort by having Mark’s voice in my head saying ‘One-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thousand-three… O.K. Darren, now you can get up.’”

“It is also important is not be coached out of who you are.  David McIlhenny was my phenomenal head coach up through the Regional contest.  There is a joke in my speech about my experience with a restaurant franchise where ‘I took a $60,000 debt and I doubled it. I turned a Subway sandwich shop into a non-profit.’  David thought I should take that line out. I said, nope, that stays. That was the one piece of my speech that I had done before; it came from my early days of stand-up but was a perfect fit into big picture of the speech.  I knew in my gut and from experience that it would work and I knew I had to do it. It is still going to be your speech.  Though you may be uncomfortable, you have to stay true to your own ideals.  When I won the regional contest, David chose to take a back seat and urged me to take Mark Brown as my new head coach.  Mark had been to the big dance and David was wise enough to recognize that.”

Tip #3:  Find a deep message to use as your starting point

“When I got to the finals, I had already used up my two best stories.  I thought I had to start from scratch.  It was then that my head coach Mark Brown said:  ‘Darren, don’t write a speech.  Instead, pick the most important child in your life.  If you were going to die tomorrow, what one lesson would you want to pass on to him?’ That stopped me in my tracks. I thought of my nephew.  It forced me to dig deeper.”

“Many people start out trying to write a winning speech. They are not going deeper inside themselves to find what lesson will resonate. I think a lot of people start with the wrong starting point. If you start from the wrong place, you can work really hard, harder than anybody else, and never ever make it. “

“I can work hard on perfecting a story, but if that story does not reinforce a core message then who cares.  There is a great story ooooh, it is entertaining, it is memorable but to what end?  You might win your Area contest, you might win your Division contest, but you are never going to win the whole thing unless you are your message. There is no perfect topic.  The only topics that will work are topics that you care about.”

“It is possible to start with a story.  But if you do, then you have to look very carefully at the message. It is better to begin from the other direction – to start with the message.”

“The gist of the contest is that it is supposed to be motivational or inspirational… a life lesson.  These are simply universal messages that we need to be reminded of.  My message was nothing new. But I put my own twist on it.  So, sometimes, we are in the business of being professional reminders.  Glenna Salsbury, a past National Speakers Association President, says: ‘You should be talking about your ah-ha moments.  Transfer your ah-ha to the audiences ah-ha. ‘  The point is not that you are simply telling a story.  The point is that that stories are there to drive home a powerful lesson.  Bill Gove, the founder of N.S.A. said that all speaking is: Tell a story, make a point; tell a story, make a point; tell another story, make another point.  I do not think there is any number that is the perfect number (of story/point pairs). I did not have 3 stories.  Ed Tate’s whole speech was one story, that’s it.”

Bonus Tip: Have a no-regrets mindset

“Two quotes resonated in my head throughout the whole process.  David Brooks 1990 World Champion said “Let no one out prepare you” and Otis Williams Jr 1993 World Champion said “Be so good, the only question is who comes in second”.  I did not want to regret that I did not prepare enough or that I did not follow through with an idea. For example, I had this idea about running.  I thought that if I am going to be under the most intense pressure of my life, then I should be in good physical shape.  So, I started running four miles a day. “

The night before the final contest, I saw a sign for a massage in the hotel. I was barely making a living at that point.  My cheap side said, ‘$70 for a massage, are you kidding?’ But my no-regrets voice kicked in and asked ‘What would a champion do?’  A champion would be under a lot of pressure – so get the filppin’ massage. That is an investment in winning.  I could not afford to be too cheap to do it.  I did not want to have any regrets.”

Try it out!

Darren’s tips very closely mirror those of every one of the Toastmasters World Championship speakers that I have interviewed.  Approach the contest as a learning journey.  Start with a compelling message that will change your audiences’ lives.  And, seek out great coaches but treat their feedback as advice, not law.

I interviewed Stuart Pink on November 14, 2012 and asked him just one question: “What are your three best pieces of advice on how to win the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking?”

Stuart’s experience differed from many champions and finalists as family priorities limited his ability to practice prior to the World Championship.  Perhaps his speech was so authentic and fun because it was only the seventh time he had delivered it.  He viewed the contest as an opportunity for personal growth and camaraderie.

In his own words, here are the insights he captured along his journey.

Tip #1: Don’t Try To Win, Just Strive To Connect With Your Audience

“Though it may sound paradoxical, my first piece of advice is don’t try to win.  Making a connection with the audience is what matters.  If you are all about trying to win, then I don’t think it is going to happen.”

“I found the contest to be such a valuable experience that I am looking forward to entering again next year.  To me, it was not a competitive experience. There was a real camaraderie between the contestants.  I learned so much about myself and how to connect with an audience that I would like have another go at it. Obviously, I want to do as well as I can, but in my mind, it is not actually about trying to win.”

Tip #2:  Stand Out

“I wanted to be original; to stand out in some way. On the one hand, it is good that there are all these former World Champions who provide great advice.  There are lots of places you can go to find out how to improve your speaking. However, one of the problems is that if you are not careful, your speech can start to look everybody else’s.”

“There were a few ways I found to stand out. One of them was that my stories focused very much on children. If you look at the other speakers, they focused on their life stories; and often, on great tragedies that happened in their lives.  There were quite a few stories about cancer and divorce. On their own, those stories can be quite compelling.  The problem is that when you hear them back to back, they become less compelling.

“In addition to standing out with story choice, I tried to stand out thematically.  I tried to think of things that I had not heard before. I invented the word and concept “Brainlifting” which I thought would capture people’s attention. For my final speech, I understood that you hear the question ‘What if…’ all the time, but I had never heard anyone refer to it as the two most important words in the English language.  I thought that might be thought provoking.”

“Last, I tried to stand out with physicality that tied meaningfully to my metaphor linking physical exercise to mental exercise – Brainlifting.  I ran around the stage and did jumping jacks. I was aware it was going to be a very big stage and you want to try to use all of it. Though I think it worked, I do sometimes wonder how authentic it was. Non-Toastmasters look at these contests and say ‘These people are ridiculous – running around, falling down, and doing things no normal speaker would do.’”

“If you do something unusual, it needs to tie very closely to your core theme.  Perhaps the jumping jacks did not tie closely enough to my core theme of creativity.  Darren LaCroix did it best when he fell over, got up, and pointed out that even when you fall down, you have still taken a step in the right direction. That was brilliant!”

#3 Add Humor Incrementally

“Humor is essential in any speech.  Most of the funny things in my speeches were things that my children said.  After I won the Division contest, I was talking to my 5-yerar-old son who had been going through a phase all children experience trying to grasp the concept of death.  Out of nowhere, he said ‘Daddy… don’t worry… when you die you go to Jupiter where there is all the chocolate you can eat!’  At that moment, I knew I needed to put that into my speech.

Humor is very incremental.  Let me give you another example.  I did a speech in my club where I talk about why most work environments are not conducive to creativity.  Even the business casual clothes you wear are a uniform.  Though people told me that I should always wear a suit in a speech contest, it seemed hypocritical to wear a suit with that topic. After the speech, someone walked up to me and suggested, ‘Why don’t you get to that point in your speech and cast off your jacket and tie.’  I thought that would be great.  A little later on, it struck me that I could add the line “Fellow Toastmasters, I could go on” just after the tie came off.  Then there is this double meaning that I would strip down to wearing nothing as I made the final points in my speech. I got the biggest laugh every time I delivered it.”

“There are different types of humor, and I am always on the lookout for something that might be funny.  If I find something funny, then that is a good start – something that I can then build on.”

Bonus Tip:  Link speech content to stage location

The semifinal and final were the first time that I ever really thought about my movement on stage in detail and doing different stories in different places.  Darren LaCroix and Ed Tate gave me this great tip the day before. Write one word associated with each part of your speech on a separate piece of paper. Place them around the floor of your hotel room.  Then, practice walking to the bits of paper and give the speech in the right order. Also, practice giving your speech starting at any point.  Normally, when I practice I begin at the beginning. So the beginning gets practiced much more than the middle and the end. I got to the point where I could step on any piece of paper and deliver my speech from that point.

Try It Out!

I leave you with the final words of encouragement that Stuart shared with me:

“I only joined Toastmasters last year.  Literally, from the club contest on up, each level was new and eye opening to me. It is a gift to be able to communicate with people and I still am finding out about it. I am fascinated by it really.  For me, it is such a learning experience.  If I complete again, I may not even make it past the club contest since we have such great speakers in Providence Toastmasters Club.  Still, it is just a fantastic process to be a part of and I encourage everyone to try.”

I interviewed Mark Brown on November 10th, 2012 and asked him just one question: “What are your three best pieces of advice on how to win the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking?”

Mark gets to deliver an extended version of his winning contest speech almost every day in his role as an anti-bullying ambassador for Great American Opportunities, an educational fundraising company.   That has given him thirteen years of perspective and wisdom on what make his speech successful.

Tip #1: Have solid message with universal appeal

“One can be humorous, entertaining, and engaging, but without a message, the audience cannot remember what you said.  Your message translates into speech value for the audience first and only then on the judges’ ballots.”

“Contestants often ask me: ‘What is the perfect topic?’  There is no prefect topic.  Just speak from the heart. Focus on connecting with the audience, not the judges.  Don’t impress them, impress upon them the value of what you have to say.  Change their lives.”

“Beyond having a powerful message and beyond being unique in the way you present it, you also have to make sure that your message is one that nearly everyone in the audience can relate to. In the semi-finals and finals, the audience is truly international.  That means you need to appeal to people with different cultures, different customs, and different perspectives on life.”

Tip #2: Be Unique

“From time to time, I come across people who respect what previous winners have done so much that they lose themselves in the persona of the people they admire.  You bring yourself, your experience, your voice, your life, and your message to the forefront.  Strive to leave the audience with something of value and the rest will come.”

“Some people get the DVD set of past winners and deconstruct every speech. They count how many steps people take before they say a word and what color suit to wear if you are speaker number six versus speaker number three. I did not do any of that.  There is a danger in over-polishing your speech.  If you go too far, you will lose your sense of frankness and genuineness.”

“To be successful at the highest levels of the International speech contest, you must be unique.  What makes you stand out from everybody else?  In the case of 2012 winner Ryan Avery, he became characters in his presentation – his mother, a police officer, his drunk buddies. You could actually see Ryan transformed into these characters on the stage. That style has become important in recent years.”

“Back in 2010, David Henderson decked himself out as a fighter pilot complete with bomber jacket, goggles, and scarf.  He reenacted his childhood and brought a very powerful message about love.  He stood out with his costume, his presentation style, and had a really, really powerful message.”

“Over the years, people have integrated different elements into their speeches to be unique.  Props were introduced in 1994 when Morgan McArthur used a life-sized, collapsible wooden horse. That evolved into creative uses of chairs and ladders.  Humor became prominent with 1996 winner David Nottage followed by 1997 winner Willie Jones.”

“Most speeches have an introduction, three main parts, and a conclusion.  My speech was unique in that I had an introduction, two main parts, and an extended call to action.  After introducing the concept of intolerance with the statement that ‘You never get a second chance to make a first impression’, I moved into part one – the fantasy world of ‘Beauty and the Beast.’   In the second part of my speech, I wanted to move the audience from the world of fantasy to the real world.  I asked myself ‘How can I make intolerance real for the audience?’  That was role television reporter Pat Harper played in my speech.” (Pat won an Emmy for reporting on her week spent undercover living as a homeless person on the streets of New York).

“I struggled with finding a third part for a couple of days. You always hear about the ‘power of threes.’ In a previous version of the speech, my 3^rd example was based upon something that I read in the Bible.  Well, not everyone is comfortable with the Bible; we have Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus – every religion and no religion – in the audience at that level.  A Biblical reference did not seem to be the best thing for me to do. Then it hit me!  Did I really need a third part? That rule is not written in stone.  Instead, I choose to involve my audience personally in my call to action. For me, that was more powerful than adding a third story.”

“I guess that singing a line from a Disney cartoon did not hurt me either in terms of being unique.  I still sing that line everyday when I speak at middle schools and the kids have a great time.”

Tip #3:  Use visual language

“Speakers should strive to bring two dimensional concepts to life in three dimensions. In my speech, I could have talked abstractly about intolerance.  Instead, I used the Beast from Disney’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ to personify the concept of intolerance.”

“When I talked about Pat Harper  in my speech, I said: ‘There she sat, huddled in the doorway, shivering, trying to fend off the bone chilling wind.’  I could have said ‘she was trying to keep warm,’ but that would not have given the audience a visual. Bone-chilling is a wonderful adjective to describe the depth of the cold.  If you watch, you will see that I shivered as I delivered the line.  That was all deliberate.  It gave the audience both a verbal visual and a physical visual. In the contest, word selection can be critical.”

“It is wise to have certain language that you are going to use for certain effects. You want to generate an emotion in your audience.   You want them to not only hear what you say, but also to feel what you say.  Ask yourself, ‘what is the highest impact phrase I can use without sounding too pretentious?’  Think about that and put that in your speech.”

Try It Out!

Mark Brown’s advice mirrors that of every other world champion I have spoken with.  Start with a powerful, universal message.  Deliver it in your own voice.  Use language and every other tool you have to change the lives of your audience.  If you do that, you do not need to worry about the judges.