Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Tips for a great introduction

When we're writing and rehearsing our speeches for Toastmasters, we are so concerned about objectives and body movement and watching our ah's and planning to use the word of the day that we can ignore a very practical, real-world need. Namely, our introduction! These are the first words our audience will hear, and we are satisfied to have the audience hear "Gary Bisaga, What I did over the summer, What I did over the summer, Gary Bisaga." Come on! This is your chance to not only have the audience hear something wonderful about you, but to have somebody besides yourself saying it!

This is really a great opportunity we so often pass up. "But this is just a Toastmasters meeting" you may be saying. I believe that every time we get up to speak in Toastmasters, we are preparing ourselves for speaking "out there," in the Real World (TM), where everybody doesn't clap enthusiastically and use the "sandwich method" to write nice things on slips of paper despite our bombing horribly.

Here's some great tips from comedian and speaker Judy Carter.

Till next time, speak well.

Gary