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Is your public speaking or Toastmasters progression stalled? Do you feel that you are not giving many speeches? Has it been awhile since you did anything leadership related?

You my friend are in a rut.

Looking through one of my Toastmasters manuals today, I realized that there were a lot of areas where people can get stuck in a rut, and I hope that I can provide some suggestions to jump start your speaking and get out of the rut that many of us fall into after a few years.

• Ask struggling clubs if they need speakers
• Mentor a new club
• Coach a struggling club
• Do a Better Speaker Series, The Successful Club Series, or The Leadership Excellence Series modules at your club or a struggling club
• Try to get a new club started
• Mentor a new member
• E-mail other service organizations and ask if you can speak about Toastmasters at their upcoming meetings
• Go to a local NSA chapter meeting to get ideas on marketing your club or speaking career
• Attend a speaking Boot Camp
• Ask your District Governor if you can serve as a district officer
• Host a speakers networking breakfast
• Host a happy hour event for local speakers
• Mentor youth in your community
• Join a service organization
• Join a professional organization
• Listen to better speaking/motivational CDs

Any of the above an more can hopefully get you out of a rut and get you back into speaking, leadership, and the passion for Public Speaking that we all bring to our clubs, careers, and lives.

What suggestions do you have to get out of a rut?

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Transitioning from the club I started at to a new club, I came to a realization about my development as a speaker. As I worked to get better and better, I found that I was only becoming as good of a speaker as the best speakers in my club. That is what makes Toastmasters so powerful, but it was contributing to a slowing of my development as a speaker that connects people and empowers change.

As Toastmasters, we correct people through evaluations. The Toastmasters in my first club were amazing Toastmasters, and that is one of the things that was holding me back. They excelled at speaking to Toastmasters, but to take things to the next level, I needed to speak with the audience, be motivated by the people I was around, and feel that there was a connection, empowerment, and a drive to succeed in speaking. In many meetings at my old club, I felt like we were doing a great job of just going through the motions.

So I moved and it has been the best thing for my speaking. I am in a club with at least four speakers who are better than me and that motivates me to be better. Also, my previous club was attended by many people who worked for other people. My new club has many small business owners who bring an amazing level of excitement to developing my speaking into a business.

So I ask you, are you feeling stuck in a rut? If so, then I encourage you to find the place where you feel you will best succeed. It might be the best thing that happens to you.

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In Toastmasters we announce and track use of a “Word of the Day.” Doing so allows us to practice words that we might not use in our everyday speech to expand our vocabulary. It is a great way to make your speech more eloquent.

Today’s word: Caustic

caus·tic –adjective
1. capable of burning, corroding, or destroying living tissue.
2. severely critical or sarcastic: a caustic remark.
caus·tic –noun
3. a caustic substance.
4. Optics.
a. caustic curve.
b. caustic surface.
[Origin: 1350–1400; ME < L causticus < Gk kaustikós burning, caustic, equiv. to kaust(ós) burnt (v. adj. of kaíein to burn) + -ikos -ic]

From: Dictionary.com

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Being in Toastmasters for a number of years, I now have no problem getting in front of random people and speaking on any number of topics. In the past few months, I have realized that this was making me somewhat rude when others asked how to start getting comfortable in front of an audience. Because I have conquered my fears of speaking in front of others, I have in some ways, forgotten what it was like to be afraid anymore.

In my studies of adult learning models and methods, I have found that experienced professionals often have difficulty in describing what it takes to get started. They have internalized their current experienced model so much, that they have in some ways forgotten the inexperienced model.

So how do we fix it? How can those of us that are comfortable speaking teach that first step towards comfort?

Even as many more people attend Toastmasters, Dale Carnegie and other speaking schools, I know that there are many more people out there that still haven’t taken that first step.

How do we explain it?

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When you are speaking, it’s not about you. It’s about the audience.

By etech

You see it in corporate presentations, professional seminars, and yes, even Toastmasters clubs…the speaker focusing on themselves and not the audience. This is the death blow for keeping your audience interested in your speech and it will cause people to not want to listen to you speak.

Don’t worry, you are in good company. Every speaker at some point will get an inner focus. It happens when trying to present unfamiliar material, have not internalized the message, or when you are talking about a personal story. Sometimes you just get wrapped up so much into the “You” of the speech, that you forget the “Them”, the audience.

It happens. So what can we do to prevent navel gazing during our pontifications (I mean speeches)?

1. Internalize Your Presentations – When you don’t know your material from every angle and point of view, you will not be able to understand the audience’s view of your speech. Practice it, read it into a recorder, put your heart into it, or whatever you have to do know the material….do it. Without a complete understanding, you will spend more time in your own head trying not to step on your lines then you will be delivering those lines.

2. Know the Audience – Who are you speaking to? Have you interacted with your audience? These are some of the questions you need to answer before speaking. When you don’t know your audience, it makes it tough to know what they want and what they are thinking. When you don’t know that, then you are thinking about that during your speech and it is obvious as you deliver.

3. I / You Ratio- This is one of the tips given constantly by the World Champions of Public Speaking and Patricia Fripp.  When you are transcribing your speeches, count how many times you have said “You” versus “I” in your speech. If you have said “I” many more times than “You”, then the audience might be thinking you have an ego problem, but more than likely you have just done too much navel gazing.

So next time you present, if you think you are not connecting with the audience, you aren’t. The reason you aren’t is because you are too inside of your own head. To prevent navel gazing, internalize, know, say “you”. Connect, connect, connect. That is the fastest way to get out of your head, and make the audience love you.

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