Aurora Colorado George Sutton Toastmasters Club
Improve Your Speaking, Communicating, and Leadership Skills and Have Fun Too!
There are literally thousands of skills, techniques and habits that can improve your presentation. Here are 101 of them:
- Follow a proven plan for outlining and delivering a successful presentation
- Recruit a mentor to help you through the development of your speech
- Practice!
- Use an example about yourself
- Organize your speech with a definite opening, conclusion and a few points in the middle
- Clearly state your speech goal at the beginning
- Make sure every element of your speech focuses on that goal
- Examine your word choice carefully
- Structure your sentences
- Research and know your audience before you present to them… Read Full Post »
You can start to lose weight several times throughout your life and buy every exercise machine you see on t.v. at 2am, but you only truly change your lifestyle once to lose the weight and keep the weight off forever.
If this saying is true for weight loss, is it possible that Toastmasters is like losing weight as well?
Definitely!
People join Toastmasters for a variety of reasons. The purpose they choose is similar to any diet regimen or the quest to lose weight. We all join hoping Toastmasters will change our lives by giving us that weekly exercise of… Read Full Post »
I was watching a rerun of The Office a few days ago and at the end of the episode I learned that the title of that episode was called Dwight’s Speech. Apparently, Dwight won “salesman of the year” and was asked to give a speech at the awards ceremony.
Half way through the episode, Dwight, along with his co-workers were in a conference room where Dwight was asked to give an impromptu speech of what he would present at the banquet. One of the employees suggested maybe he should join Toastmasters to get some practice with public speaking.
He went… Read Full Post »
You’re at a business event sitting casually at one of the many round tables as your plate of chicken breast, asparagus, and mashed potatoes with gravy is delivered. Finally, everyone at your table is served their plate so you can dig in!
Suddenly, a tap on the shoulder.
It’s the event program chair.
“Sir/Maam,” she says.
“I understand you have some insights on (fill in your topic of expertise). Our dinner speaker is going to be about 15 minutes late and I was told you might be willing to share your knowledge with the group to fill up five minutes… Read Full Post »
The first 30 seconds before your speech begins are just as important as the first 30 seconds after you begin speaking. These 30 seconds set the stage for your audience for what they should be listening for and why they should spend their time listening to what you have to present.
At our Toastmasters club, we’ve been paying a bit more attention to those first 30 seconds lately. There are three parts to that time period before you deliver your first spoken word and I’d like to share what we’ve been covering lately.
- Learning Your Spot –… Read Full Post »