Thursday, March 25, 2010

District 47 Conference and Contests April 16-18

Today is the last day to register at the regular rate! It goes up $15 tomorrow!!

Our district (47) is holding it's Spring Conference & Contests in Fort Lauderdale beginning Friday evening, 4/16 and closing Sunday 4/18.

This is a great opportunity to hear great speakers, attend valuable workshops, and network with fellow Toastmasters.

You will get to hear 2007 World Champion of Speaking, Vikas Jhingran, deliver the keynote address and, drum roll please, our own Nina Potter will compete in the International Speech Contest Saturday evening!!!

Having the conference and contest right in our backyard makes it a convenient and affordable way to get more out of Toastmasters.

Please, follow this link, and register today. You will be pleased.

While registering, also consider taking out an ad for your business or yourself. They are very affordable and will get you into the program read and brought home by every attendee.

John Schneyer
VP, Education

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

10 Tips on Using the CL Program

This is my weekly VP, Education post. What do you think? Please let us all know by commenting below. You can also view this on the Toastmasters International site by clicking here.

John Schneyer, CC, CL

So, what’s the deal with the CL program?

The Competent Leadership (CL) manual gives you an opportunity to learn and practice leadership skills by serving in club roles. It will help you gain self-confidence and skills that will help you in many ways: academically, professionally and personally. The CL manual offers training in time management, organization, planning and critical thinking – all of which can be applied to everyday life.

Consider this: If the CL manual can help a club run more efficiently and successfully, and it can also help club members to improve their lives, why wouldn’t your club leaders pursue it? Sometimes, a little promotion from a fellow Toastmaster can help smooth the way. In case you’re finding it a little difficult to get the ball rolling with your VPE or other officers, here are ten quick tips from Toastmasters members that you can use to help promote the Competent Leadership manual:

1. At each club meeting, have one member assigned as the CL evaluator. By having an assigned evaluator, you ensure member progress in the CL manual.

2. Increase member awareness by requiring that members bring their Competent Leadership manuals to every club meeting.

3. Does your club have a sample copy of the Competent Leadership manual on display at every meeting? Keeping an extra copy on hand means you’ll have one available for guests to peruse or for new members to borrow.

4. Make sure that you recognize your members when they participate in the CL manual. Award a member with a ribbon when she’s halfway through and make an announcement when that person completes the manual. Let her know you appreciate the special care and preparation that she took with each meeting role.

5. Encourage the president and VPE of your club to promote the CL manual at each club meeting. Emphasize how the manual functions as a valuable learning tool – training each member on the different roles of the meeting and helping them build beneficial skills for the working world and daily life.

6. Place equal importance on the leadership and communication tracks in your club by including accreditations for both tracks in all correspondence, agendas and programs for your club.

7. Use the Competent Leadership Achievement Chart! Post it on the wall during meetings and keep it up-to-date. Draw attention to the successes listed on the chart.

8. For every speech a member gives, your club can request that he perform and receive evaluations on at least three meeting roles.

9. Does your club have a newsletter or Web site? Post a reminder to members to bring their manuals. Also, your club can post a congratulatory list of those who have completed the manual.

10. Ask each member who achieves the CL award to mentor a new member in the manual.

These tips will help make the CL manual a natural and easy part of your club’s meetings. When the CL manual is second nature to the members of your club, you’ll be pleasantly and easily learning leadership skills that help you everyday.

John Schneyer - Figuring Out What to Work On

John Schneyer delivering Speech 3 from the Technical Presentations Advanced Manual, The Nontechnical Audience.

From Toastmasters

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Competent Leadership Evaluator

Fellow Toastmasters,

We have decided to create a new meeting role, Competent Leadership Evaluator, to help facilitate progress towards our members achieving Competent Leadership status. I will fill this role at our next meeting and it will be available for you to perform at future meetings.

It will work like this:

Signup to be the Competent Leadership Evaluator

Remind fellow Toastmasters to bring their Competent Leadership Manuals to our meetings

At the meeting, gather CL manuals from the Toastmasters who are filling the roles highlighted in green below who still need those roles to complete CL projects

Observe their performance at the meeting and write your feedback in their manuals

Return the manuals at the end of the meeting

This is a listening and evaluating opportunity that does not require you to deliver an oral report. You will learn more about the positions by performing this role and will provide a valuable service to your fellow Toastmasters.

I encourage you to consider filling this role as you would any other.

Please call me with any questions.

THEME

GO GREEN

3/16/2010

Toastmaster *

Kasia Nowak

Inspiration

Barry Rinehart

TABLE Topic Master *

Carlos Cabrera

The Small Tip

Vanessa North

Speaker #1 *

Flavia Finnegan

Speaker #2 *

John Schneyer 10-12 minutes

Speaker #3 *

Bea Solya

Speaker #4 *

Michele Guarino

BACK-UP SPEAKER

Jeff Tockman

Gen. Evaluator *

Russell Foster

Evaluator #1 *

Stephen Marinaccio

Evaluator #2 *

Marshall Isaacson

Evaluator #3 *

Bob Geller

Evaluator #4 *

Walter Bald

Minutes

Supporters

Competent Leadership Evaluator

John Schneyer

Timer *

Daniel Escalante

Ah Counter *

David Paltanavich

Grammarian *

Matt Bloomfield

Body Lang. Master

Jeff Tockman

Inquisitor

Terrence Bazley

Greeter

Camera Coordinator

Roseane Houck

Food Master

Can Not Attend

R Singer

(Signed-Out)

M Novek

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

John Schneyer - I've got the whole world, well, a little piece of it, in my hands

John Schneyer presenting Project 3 from the Advanced Manual, The Entertaining Speaker

Infuse Your Club with Vitamin C... Creativity!

This is my weekly Vice President, Education post.

Last night was an excellent example of being creative as the Weekly Toastmaster. Barry Rinehart took the meeting theme and turned it into a fun, exciting meeting while remaining true to the Toastmaster mission.

I went to the Toastmasters International site and found this article that may give us ideas for future meetings. I have copied it below and you can find it by clicking here.

Please add you comments by using the link below.

John Schneyer


Over time, many clubs fall into the doldrums. It’s possible for meetings to become a bit stale, for members to lapse into a routine pattern each week. Sometimes it’s a result of the sameness of the room, identical meeting formats, or the absence of enough new members to infuse your club with new energy. Over the years I’ve watched clubs succumb to lethargy. Yet the remedy is as easy as a little dose of vitamin C:Creativity.

Administer this vitamin to your club once every four to six weeks, and you’ll see its life force return stronger than ever. Paula Tunison, DTM, past International Director and three-time District 55 Governor, agrees. “Toastmasters is like a love affair. Everything is exciting at first and then, if you’re not careful, it can become dull and routine. Changing your meetings helps to keep it exciting.”

Here are some of the many ways you can introduce freshness, fun and vitality into your meetings:


A different room layout. Many times we accept the room layout as a given: the placement of the lectern, chairs and tables. For a change of pace, try reversing the location of the lectern before the next meeting. If possible, put it at the opposite end and feel the difference. Other variations: If your lectern is at the narrow end of a long table, try placing it in front of the wide side. Or consider removing the table and holding the meeting in a circle or semi-circle, a chevron or some other configuration of chairs. Remember, environment informs experience. Add flowers, a scent or some fun decorations for further effect. Create a new environment and the experience will surely feel fresh and exciting.


A joint meeting with another club. Find one that meets nearby at the same time. You can host them for one meeting, and they can reciprocate another time. It’s exciting to entertain guests who already know the Toastmasters traditions. The extra people and energy from this joint meeting doubles your fun!


A grab bag meeting. Designate your next meeting as a grab bag where, upon the arrival of members, all meeting roles are drawn from a bag filled with slips of paper. Use a fill-in-the-blanks agenda, or a flipchart or whiteboard where you write in the roles chosen from the bag. Any member may end up as Toastmaster, speaker or evaluator. The drama adds a layer of excitement as even the “prepared” speeches feel like Table Topics.


Theme meeting. Turn a normal meeting into a special event! Recently one club in the United States held an Academy Awards meeting where the Toastmaster wore a tuxedo, the Table Topics were related to movies and the winners gave acceptance speeches! Another club honored the American baseball season with a meeting in which each member assumed a baseball-related role, the Toastmaster became the manager, the General Evaluator became the head umpire, speakers became batters and the Topicsmaster became the pitcher. Members fielded topics. If your club tries this, you can dress the part as well!

Other themes may relate to topical holidays or current events of a local, regional or national nature. Celebrate the Cherry Blossom Festival in Japan, Independence Day in your country or even a club, district or company anniversary.


Costume parties. These types of theme meetings are especially stimulating. You can wear masks and costumes for Halloween, caps and gowns at graduation time, or go green for St. Patrick’s Day. Adornments abound depending upon the theme for your party.


A time machine. Your costume party or theme meeting can be tied to a historical period. At this meeting people dress like a past generation: platform boots and silk shirts with wide lapels for the ’70s, bobby socks and leather jackets for the ’50s, or even the Gatsby look from the roaring ’20s. You’ll find a new energy comes with such wardrobes. Or go back further: the Renaissance era, Roman or Greek empires or even the Stone Age. Perhaps you’d rather fast forward to the year 2058 or 3008? When the time comes, come in character.

In addition to dressing for a particular epoch, use related language, phrases and speech topics. Methinks you speaketh the King’s English fits in your Elizabethan era. For the Roaring Twenties, your closing thought may end with “twenty three skidoo.” And your Table Topics and speeches can relate to the themes of the era as well.


Go Hollywood! Themes abound from the world of motion pictures. Whether you take your inspiration from Hollywood, India’s Bollywood or the movies of Hong Kong, you’ll find wonderful ideas from films as diverse as The Matrix, the Harry Potter series, Jodhaa Akbar, Ratatouille or The Forbidden Kingdom.


A progressive story. The Topicsmaster begins the fun and it’s continued by all the members. Collectively, you will tell a story designated by the Topicsmaster. This requires listening skills, creativity and quick thinking to complete. Each member contributes a sentence or two in the co-creation of a new story.



“Toastmasters is like a love-affair. Everything is exciting at first and then,
if you’re not careful, it can become dull and routine. Changing your
meetings helps to keep it exciting
.

Paula Tunison




A debate. Your Table Topics can have two participants arguing alternate sides of an issue. Or plan a debate with numerous “candidates” for a fictitious election to involve as many members as possible. Another alternative: You can ask Table Topics respondents to argue both sides of an issue. Decorating a table with politically themed bunting is optional.

We The People, a club in Reno, Nevada, allows a Table Topic responder to rebut the previous participant’s topic as a debate activity. This builds listening skills and persuasive skills and also challenges listeners to think more, as divergent points of view are posed in the successive responses.

Even the prepared speeches for such meetings can take on a campaign tone, tackling issues and vying for the hearts, minds and votes of club members.


A television newscast brings the world of journalism to your club. Your Sergeant at Arms can give the countdown until you go live and also be the “voiceover” that introduces the newscast. Your Toastmaster of the day is the anchor, with Table Topics and General Evaluator as your Sports and Weather co-anchors. Speakers become field correspondents with reports, etc. You can even turn some roles into commercials.


A speech marathon! Help your members earn their educational awards as you dedicate an entire meeting just to prepared speeches. For clubs with a lot of members and the constraints of a one-hour meeting time, this periodic pumped-up housekeeping event helps more members speak and shortens the wait time between speeches. It’s educational for audience members to see multiple speeches in rapid succession. These popular events can be staged at a regular club meeting or scheduled in addition to your regular meeting time and place.


A reverse meeting. Once a year, say on April Fool’s Day, you begin with the closing thought, hear speech evaluations before the speeches, and generally reverse the order of your entire meeting. Once in a blue moon this fun variation of the usual meeting format is refreshing and fun. Give it a try!


The mute button. In this meeting it’s all done without sound. You can mouth the words to your speech or topic, but focus on communicating with facial expressions and gesticulations – use body language. A less ambitious version: Turn Table Topics into charades.


Every day is a holiday somewhere. There are event calendars such as Chase’s Calendar of Events that provide fascinating and timely themes you can build meetings around. For example: Sept. 24 is National Punctuation Day (www.NationalPunctuationDay.com) in the USA. For that week’s meeting, ask members to discuss punctuation used in their speaking. Many holidays have their own Web sites to help you understand their origins, meaning and intent.

Tall tales are terrific. Once in a blue moon, or every April 4 in the U.S. (“Tell A Lie” day), you can dedicate a meeting to embellishment, aggrandizement and bald-faced lies. Everyone can get into the act. Your speech introductions, speech contents, Table Topics and more can play fast and loose with the truth. Make outlandish claims, issue representations of gigantic proportions and pull each other’s legs for comedic effect. Then, just to confuse your audience, throw a bald-faced truth into the middle and see if they detect it! Make Pinocchio proud.

During Table Topics, play True or Lie. For some, this is easy. For others, less so!

Vote after each topic response on whether it was the truth or a lie. Alternately, confuse people with your version of truthiness – things that a person claims to know intuitively or “from the gut” without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination or facts.

If you’re troubled by fostering lies in a Toastmasters meeting, rest assured that each April 30th you can honor National Honesty Day with a meeting dedicated to truth – which is often stranger than fiction!

Veteran Toastmaster Yew Kam Keong, Ph.D. (Dr. YKK) of Australia’s Deloitte at the Barrington club explains why we should deviate from our regular program formats from time to time: “These meeting ideas are effective because they contain the essential elements of creativity: spontaneity, humor, playfulness and doing the unexpected. Toastmasters meetings will never be the same again. They will be even more fun...and with fun comes humongous learning!”

Dr. YKK, also known as the Chief Mind Unzipper, is an international creativity speaker, consultant and best-selling author (You Are Creative – Let Your Creativity Bloom). In his 22 years as a Toastmaster, Dr. YKK has spoken to Toastmasters clubs in 10 countries and inspired creativity in countless people. His Web site, www.mindbloom.net, contains many tools for clubs and members.

Whether you employ these or other ideas to spruce up your meetings, that extra shot of Vitamin C will breathe new life into proceedings. While you never want to eschew the educational value of meetings, such variations on our traditional formats will add a new dimension to your Toastmasters training and keep everyone fresh. Any time you apply creativity to your meetings, the results will yield fun, energy and new perspectives. Ready...set...create!

Craig Harrison, DTM, founder of LaughLovers club in Oakland, California, is a professional keynote speaker, trainer and principal of Expressions Of Excellence! For more resources, visit www.ExpressionsOfExcellence.com.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Toastmasters Going Greener

Fellow Toastmasters,

Our club is trying to go a little greener and save some money. Here's how you can help.

Instead of paying to have ballots printed (you know, those little slips of paper we use to vote for Best Speaker, Best Evaluator, and Best Table Topics Speaker), we have decided to reuse paper that would have been thrown away or recycled as our ballots.

All you have to do is take a piece of paper you would have normally recycled and cut it into strips. An 8.5 x 11 piece of paper makes a dozen ballots if you cut it in half the long way and then into fairly equal strips.

Don't worry if there is something printed on one side, we'll just use the blank side. Potential sources of this paper are:

  • any drafts or mistakes from your office or home (assuming no confidential information is on them)
  • handouts you may receive at a seminar that you no longer need
  • our own meeting programs
I'm sure you can come up with other sources if you give it a little thought.

By doing this, you will help the club save money and become a little greener.

What suggestions do you have? Comment below.

John Schneyer
VPE


Wednesday, March 3, 2010

10 Biggest Public Speaking Mistakes

This is my weekly Vice President, Education post copied directly from the International Toastmasters site

Top executives often fall flat on their faces as speakers.

How come intelligent, business-savvy people end up boring their audiences? They fail to recognize that public speaking is an acquired skill that improves with practice and honest feedback. Speaking for 20 minutes before the right group of people can do more for your career than spending a year behind a desk!

Rob Sherman, an attorney and public speaker in Columbus, Ohio, says in an article in the Toastmaster magazine to avoid these mistakes:

  • Starting with a whimper. Don’t start with “Thank you for that kind introduction.” Start with a bang! Give the audience a startling statistic, an interesting quote, a news headline – something powerful that will get their attention immediately.
  • Attempting to imitate other speakers. Authenticity is lost when you aren’t yourself.
  • Failing to “work” the room. Your audience wants to meet you. If you don’t take time to mingle before the presentation, you lose an opportunity to enhance your credibility with your listeners.
  • Failing to use relaxation techniques. Do whatever it takes – listening to music, breathing deeply, shrugging your shoulders – to relieve nervous tension.
  • Reading a speech word for word. This will put the audience to sleep. Instead use a “keyword” outline: Look at the keyword to prompt your thoughts. Look into the eyes of the audience, then speak.
  • Using someone else’s stories. It’s okay to use brief quotes from other sources, but to connect with the audience, you must illustrate your most profound thoughts from your own life experiences. If you think you don’t have any interesting stories to tell, you are not looking hard enough.
  • Speaking without passion. The more passionate you are about your topic, the more likely your audience will act on your suggestions.
  • Ending a speech with questions and answers. Instead, tell the audience that you will take questions and then say, “We will move to our closing point.” After the Q and A, tell a story that ties in with your main theme, or summarize your key points. Conclude with a quote or call to action.
  • Failing to prepare. Your reputation is at stake every time you face an audience – so rehearse well enough to ensure you’ll leave a good impression!
  • Failing to recognize that speaking is an acquired skill. Effective executives learn how to present in the same way they learn to use other tools to operate their businesses.
Do you have other suggestions for this list? Add comments through the link below.