Bill SituClub President Public speaking is the skill that most people flock to Toastmasters to learn. As such, we're launching this new series on Friendlies' Corner titled #friendliesspeak! Here, we'll offer speaking advice to help you hone in on this skill. Welcome to the first instalment! Why I BlogIf you've been following this blog thus far, you'll probably know that I majored in English. Not surprisingly, I've had a love affair with writing for a long time <3 During university, writing essays was the bread and butter of my academic life. Outside of my coursework, I also wrote for the school newspaper and for various websites. Currently, I teach English, and therefore spend a fair amount of time teaching students how to write. This blog, since its creation, has given me a public outlet to share ideas about topics related to Toastmasters. However, there is another important reason as to why I blog. Namely, it is to help me better organize ideas that I might just use in future speeches. Writing, like speaking, serves the essential purpose of communicating ideas. Written and spoken communication each has its own distinct advantages. Still, there is one way in which the former is particularly useful for improving the latter. Verbal communication is spontaneous in nature, which doesn't allow for much forethought or revision. As such, incoherence is often characteristic of spoken communication. On the other hand, with writing, you have the chance to revise your ideas as much as necessary until you are satisfied. This then enables you to better communicate your ideas in spoken form when the time comes. Preparing for Impromptu SpeakingA table topics session at an open-house event last Thanksgiving It goes without saying that writing ideas down is an essential step for prepared speeches. However, writing is also especially helpful for impromptu speaking.
Impromptu speaking happens at every Toastmasters meeting in the form of a table topics session. In this section, a table topics master asks questions related to the meeting theme, to which members and guests step up to the stage and deliver a speech to answer. Table topics may be designed for impromptu speaking, but it doesn't actually have to be. There have been times in the past where I was fully prepared to speak on a specific table topics question. The most recent one was just this past meeting. The question that the table topics master asked was "What was your best/worst movie you've ever seen?" Having previously written on the topic of how unrealistic martial arts movies are, I decided to speak about this. In real-life, an important time when impromptu speaking skills come into play is during job interviews. Surely, you'll never be able to know the questions in advance. Still, there are some fairly standard questions that employers often ask. In my experience, taking the time to write out responses to such questions has proven particularly helpful for me when preparing for an upcoming interview. In fact, you would have had a chance to organize your responses on paper when you wrote your CV and cover letter to the employer! To be clear, I'm not trying to say that writing frequently by itself will make you an immaculate impromptu speaker. Still, it will help! Hopefully, I've managed to convince you to take up writing as a means to improve speaking :) If you found this post helpful, then stayed tuned for the next instalment of #richmondfriendlyspeakers! We'll be covering how to best draft a speech!
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Bill SituClub President At the beginning of this month, our club welcomed aboard a new executive team. Some of the officers were re-elected, but a few were brand new to their elected positions. This means that we've had to do succession planning. As I like to call it, we've had to keep our campfire going. You'll see in a bit what I mean exactly :) Campfires and LeadershipWow, summer's now in full swing! Normally, this would be an excellent time to go camping. Sadly, the current situation might not make it feasible :( However, I hope I can still get you into the camping spirit with a (virtual) campfire story :) The first recorded use of fires by humans was about 300,000 years ago. Since then, fire has been an integral part of human survival. In the wilderness, a fire serves a number of vital functions. We use it for cooking food, keeping out harmful animals, and creating warmth. It also provides us with a source of light and can help us signal to rescue personnel if, God forbid, a situation necessitates it. In an organization, leadership is as necessary as a fire is in the wilderness. There is another striking similarity between leadership and campfires. Without people actively maintaining them, they will die out over time. Once a campfire dies out, it becomes very difficult to rekindle. The same goes for leadership in a team. Speaking of campfires, the YouTube channel, Crazy Russian Hacker, has many awesome videos on this topic. Check them out! Maintaining Successful LeadershipKeeping a campfire going requires a few things. First, we need to regularly add fuel, that is, firewood, to it. We also need to fan the fire and arrange the pieces of firewood so that they stack on top of each other. Sorry, I know this sounds nerdy! I've been on too many field training exercises in both cadets and now, the Canadian Forces, haha! Maintaining successful leadership in an organization also requires initiative. This initiative is what we commonly call succession planning. Succession planning simply means preparing our successors to take on our current role(s). I have done two terms as VP Education to date. Both times, upon finishing my term, I trained the incoming VP Ed in taking on my role. Having just been a Sergeant-at-Arms this past term, I'm now working to get the current S@A up to speed. This way, he can learn his role and be able to properly perform his job in the months ahead. Succession planning does involve plenty of coaching, which I talked about at length in a previous post. Leaders Can't Last Forever, but Leadership MustThis statement may sound paradoxical, but let me get things straight for you :) The word "leader" here means the person who heads an organization. Leadership refers to the quality of being a leader.
Surely, no leader can last forever. Here in Canada, general elections must take place every four years. This applies to the federal, provincial, and municipal-level governments. At UBC, my alma mater, student government elections happen annually. In Toastmasters, a president can serve for no longer than 12 months consecutively (this means I must step down by next January). Even so, quality leadership must persist even with different leaders in place. Planning for succession does take time, energy, and effort. Nevertheless, it is the only way to ensure that successful leadership can continue. A team may have a really brilliant leader at one point in time. However, if that leader doesn't plan for succession, the team might just fall into ruins in the end. This is certainly the last thing I would want to do! What else do you do to plan for succession? Post down below! If not, you can also share tips about fires if you're an outdoors expert! Let's have a lovely fireside chat :) Bill SituClub President It's safe to say that COVID-19 has caught everyone off guard in some way. Our club, and by extension, the Toastmasters organization is no exception. A few months ago, we never foresaw that the pandemic situation would require us to hold meetings virtually. In fact, there's still no say at this point as to when we can hold in-person meetings again. I had always thought that online meetings weren't ever going to be great. However, the past few months have proven otherwise. Not Looking Forward at FirstI really was never a fan of virtual meetings before the public health emergency. Many virtual meetings that I'd in the past were simply not great. I can still remember several times on Skype or Google Hangouts where there were technical problems of all sorts. Often, they had to do with audio quality or Internet connection. I, like many other people, started experiencing wonky Internet connection at the start of the pandemic. This has been a huge bugbear for me over the past few months. Given this, I really wasn't looking forward to online club meetings at the beginning. Still, our club figured that holding club meetings virtually was at least better than putting off on them entirely. As such, we went ahead with them. Getting AccustomedDivision E International Contest on Zoom The first online meeting that our club did back in March was actually through Skype. I didn't know about Zoom's existence then, let alone how it even worked. Going into the meeting, I was seriously thinking that it was going to suck. However, the meeting proceeded one agenda item after another. By the end, it turned out much better than I had anticipated! We didn't have any major issues, which was a miracle! Before the next meeting, one of our club coaches advised us that Zoom was the platform to use for Toastmasters meetings. This meant that our first step was to figure out how Zoom worked. As the club president, I took the lead on this. I actually don't enjoy playing around with technology much, but Zoom seemed more straightforward than I had imagined. I also saw for myself why Zoom is more preferable for club meetings. From that point on, we've been doing online meetings weekly. Over the past few months, we've practically gone from being beginners at Zoom to now becoming experts at it! Benefits Where I Least Expected ThemToastmasters is very much international after all! I did mention that I initially didn't expect to enjoy online club meetings. However, my thoughts on this have since evolved, and in many unexpected ways too.
For one, there's no commute required to get to meetings. Online meetings means I can participate from wherever I may be (which has for the most part been home). I'm happy to say that I've saved on some gas for my car! Sure, fuel prices have been uncharacteristically inexpensive in the past few months. Still, it's definitely less time spent on the road! What's been even more amazing is that we've gotten plenty of visitors, including those from around the world! I was actually expecting at first that fewer guests would show up to meetings. However, we've had guests from places like Kingston (Ontario), the United Kingdom, and even India! I certainly never saw this coming! Wow, Toastmasters International sure is living up to its name :) By this point, I'm definitely holding back on my initial thoughts. This may sound cliché, but our recent experience with online meetings has shown that life requires us to be adaptive. It's often a challenge at the beginning, but settling in will always follow suit. I'm happy and thankful for the club members for having been willing to adapt to the circumstances and make things work. What has your experience with online meetings been like? Post in the comments to let us know :) |
AuthorSBill Situ Archives
August 2020
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