Last night’s meeting was fabulous, fun and full of useful information and feedback. As people arrived and the room filled up there was an exciting buzz in air.
Our wonderful President, Christine Morrell kicked it off by telling us about a professional speaker she listened to this week who was talking about how to deliver a great speech.
Christine relayed the professional speaker’s message that there were three main important points to remember and follow.
- Practice. Keep on doing it as much as possible and find a safe space to practise with people who will give you honest and helpful feedback. Get other experienced speakers to evaluate you.
- Prepare. Think positively about how it’s going to go. Be excited instead of nervous. Learn to think on your feet by practising impromptu speaking.
- Product. Ensure that you have a great product. Your speech should have a strong beginning and flow smoothly through to a powerful ending. Use the rule of focusing on three key points and use a personal story.
What really struck Christine was that this is EXACTLY what Toastmasters provides us with and, therefore, we are in the best place we can be to become great speakers.
We are extremely lucky to have some very experienced speakers at our club and although this can be a bit off-putting to new members, it’s important to ensure that our guests and new members are encouraged to learn from them rather than be intimidated by them. After all, we ARE a very friendly bunch and the experienced speakers want to mentor and encourage the less experienced ones. That’s what it’s all about.
Success Story
We always love a success story. Success stories are told when a member delivers a speech or presentation outside of the club and tells us how being at Toastmasters has given them the tools, support and courage to step up to a challenge.
This week we heard from James Kirkby. James has been a member of Bromley Speakers for 9 months and he joined us to improve his confidence and presentation skills. James works in the IT industry and aspired to present at an industry conference. He achieved this recently by giving a 30 minute presentation to over 100 people and afterwards was commended for his presentation. James admitted that prior to coming to Bromley Speakers he never would have accepted this challenge. James’ success story is another testament to how Toastmasters helps us to improve and deliver.
The Meeting
Our Toastmaster for the evening was David Hampton. A very experienced speaker, David joined Toastmasters in 2001 in America before coming to Bromley Speakers in 2003. He has competed in the division finals of the Humorous Speech contest four times and has won the Table Topics contest at Division level. Our President said that he has ‘mastered the skills of making the difficult look easy’ and he certainly did that as he guided us expertly through the meeting this week.
You can watch David’s in a humorous speech contest here.
Deborah Goodman warmed up our vocal cords with her mouth-watering question, ‘what’s your favourite dessert?’ and left us all feeling a little hungry after hearing about all the puddings people love to eat. It’s a good job there were some delicious chocolate cookies available in the tea break!
Tom Jewers presented his very helpful ‘Top Tip’, reminding us that it’s fine to be nervous. He told us not to panic, just practise and the nerves will fall away as you speak and your delivery will improve.
Prepared Speeches
We had three fabulous speeches, beginning with Cecilia Mbullah’s personal story entitled simply ‘She’. This was followed by Rajesh Deshmukh’s Icebreaker speech about his journey towards becoming a cataract surgeon, aptly entitled ‘Why Did You Choose Eyes?’
The third prepared speech came from Richard Green who had us laughing all the way through with his humorous competition speech, ‘Life in Siberia’. Richard is taking this speech into the Division competition after winning at Club level and then at Area level and we wish him all the very best in the competition.
The speeches were expertly evaluated by Susan Raynor, Vinu Madhavan and Margot Glover and the evaluations are speeches in their own right.
Susan said that Cecilia has a natural ability to engage her audience and that her speech was vivid, descriptive and emotive. It was delivered with emotion and had a strong message and the ending had impact and direction with a call to action.
Vinu commented that Rajesh delivered an excellent first speech without the use of any notes. He engaged well with the audience and was clear and confident in his delivery. An Icebreaker speech is the first prepared speech so we congratulate Rajesh for stepping onto his pathway and taking the first steps to becoming a better public speaker.
Margot evaluated Richard’s speech and it was an easy one to evaluate as Richard is an accomplished and experienced speaker with a natural ability for comedy.
Table Topics
Table Topics, led by Karen Mefflin were fun, as always, and new members, Harry and Arun, and guest, Adrian, both did well for their first attempt. Tom Jewers won the contest with his impromptu speech about where he sees himself in five years’ time.
The topics were evaluated by Alain Culos and Susan Shaw gave an evaluation of the rest of the meeting.
Other Roles
Our ‘Ah’ Counter, Robert Parker galloped us through an excellent and very unique report, as if we were at the races, which was a lot of fun. Well done for coming up with that idea Robert!
Hospitality was Vinu, Sergeant at Arms – James Kirkby, Timekeeper – Ben Lopez, Grammarian – John Cross.
Congratulations to our winners. Richard Green for his prepared speech, Vinu Madhavan for her evaluation speech and Tom Jewers for his impromptu speech.
Another great night at Bromley Speakers Club!
Bromley Speakers meets at Ripley Arts Centre, Bromley on the 1st, 3rd and 5th Thursdays of the month, at 7.15 pm.
For more information please email us
vppublicrelations@bromleyspeakers.co.uk