Toastmasters Icebreaker speech was just fine
Last night I gave my first prepared speech at Toastmasters. Wow, was I nervous. My legs literally trembled while I was on stage, in front of a group of about 30 not-quite strangers.
I’d written out a speech on the weekend, and had practiced it to myself, with a timer. I figured out roughly how long each section was going to take, if I remembered the words. I also set myself break-points so that I could finish on time. That was essential — I rambled and forgot half of my speech, but used the traffic-lights to get back on track subject-wise. (More on that later, but for now I’ll just say that I hit the six-minute limit dead on.)
I wrote out my speech. I practiced in bed at night. I put key bits on cue cards. I put the cards in my shirt pocket, and didn’t use them. I forgot half of it, and used up the time anyway.
Nobody noticed. I flatter myself there, but its true in general. They didn’t know what I’d planned to say, so for all they knew I was word-perfect. They saw some of my nervous habits, but nobody mentioned my knees knocking together. It’s all good because they expect the first speech to be off a bit — the purpose is to discover speaking talent that you already have. The flaws I can work on.
One former club president told me that it was fabulous. A union boss, a pretty good speaker himself, told me that he’d voted for it as best speech of the evening.
I got lots of good feedback, and I’m sure that my next speech will go even better.