Quora Answer: What are the Best Tips for a First Toastmasters Speech?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “What are the best tips for a first Toastmasters speech?”

The first Toastmasters speech is known as the icebreaker.  It is meant to be four to six minutes long.  The purpose of the speech is to introduce yourself to the audience, and is the start of your branding.  Every person has a specific style of speaking, preferred vocabulary, and subject matters that they are reasonably credible to address.  In delivering any speech, there are always two aspects: crafting the speech, and delivering it.

Firstly, since the purpose of this speech is to introduce yourself, you should speak about yourself.  This is important to build credibility with the audience, and confidence with yourself.  You are the expert of yourself.  This is your life story, your hero’s journey, the interpreter of your speaker persona.  No one has ever walked in your shoes, and no one can gainsay you on this.

Some people build from the title, and others decide on the title after they have crafted the speech.  It is a matter of preference.  However, for beginners, it is important to start with a good working title.  Your title should be appealing – it is advertisement.  Just as a book or movie with a terrible title does not sell, your speech title should be able to sell your story.  The title should be related to, or allude to, your central theme.

Our lives are amalgamation of moments.  Those moments need to be fleshed out.  Pick any significant event in our life, or something interesting, unique, amusing – anything that you can connect with the audience, through shared experience, common values, or empathic experience.  In this story, no matter how much you have to say, stick to three salient points and build your story around it.

When you see the yellow card raised, or light flashed, that means five minutes have passed, and you should segue into your conclusion.  Ending a story is as important as starting it.  Nobody wants to watch a movie with an unsatisfactory ending.  The conclusion should be a reiteration of your central theme, and the title.  This is called your call to action.  It is the moral of the story, the takeaway for the audience, the distilled lesson of our hero’s journey.

When it comes to delivering the speech, most people are nervous.  That is perfectly normal.  When you stand before the audience, look around.  Find smiling eyes, familiar faces, comforting looks.  This helps to settle some of your nerves.  When you feel loss of words, that grasping of elusive thoughts, and you are losing the thread of your speech, stop.  Breathe in deeply, and slowly.  It allows your brain to reset, and start from where you left off.  The story will come back.

Speaking is more than just filling the silence with words.  Speech is about shaping that silence with sounds to draw a picture, to tell a story, and bring that audience with you on your journey.  Have pauses.  Give the audience time to laugh at your jokes, to grieve with you, to feel what you feel.  That enhances your speech.

Finally, use open gestures.  Stand straight, and look around the room as you tell your story.  Move from one side of the room to the other.  In an English speech, since we read from left to right, you move from the audience’s right to left.  This is known as narrative pacing.  It helps the audience move with you in your story.  When you come to the conclusion, move back to the centre of the stage, and centre them.

None of this is easy for most people.  But the lessons you learn from your first speech, applied consistently, will become natural and smooth.  That is the process of becoming a good public speaker.  Toastmasters is a nurturing environment.  Do not be afraid to try new things, to fail spectacularly, to make a fool of yourself.  We have all been there, and we will laugh with you.  Take that first step, and enjoy the process.