From Nuala McHugh VP PR, London Victorians
On 10 May 2016, London Victorians had the pleasure of hosting Mohammed Qahtani the 2015 World Champion of Public Speaking. This was a very special London Victorians event! The evening was split into two parts, the first part entitled “Conquer adversity and live up to your dreams”, The second section of the workshop was entitled “Inject more humour into your speeches”. Mohammed delivered a very dynamic, humorous and energetic workshop with Q&A sessions after each section.
Mohammed began the first section of the workshop by stating that in order to achieve your dreams the word “impossible” should not exist in your vocabulary. To effectively achieve your dreams successfully, he broke down the challenge of achieving your dream into a number of steps and listed adversities that you may encounter. For each item, he also included a fact or anecdote as an example.
Mohammed explained to the audience the need to have specific goals, and included the advice that goals should not be superficial; ideally they should have a higher or noble cause. His workshop additionally, offered practical advice that he finds effective in controlling fear. He demonstrated this in an exercise with the audience, asking participants to breathe deep into the belly to get the benefits inhaling and exhaling slowly, to calm nerves.
The second section of the workshop began with Mohammed explaining why humour is important in order to catch the audience’s attention, maintain audience engagement, and how humour can often help in delivering an important message. He spoke about his basic rules of comedy, different types of humour, and the benefits and pitfalls of each. He then demonstrated his skills with a very humourous prepared speech in which he recounted an aeroplane journey where he changed his seat multiple times and encountered new issues each time, intertwining a message at the end; that we should take control of our lives and actively change our circumstances if we are unhappy.
Overall Mohamed’s two workshops were very inspiring and included excellent practical advice on humorous speech making, goal setting, positive thinking and how to lead extraordinary lives.
The workshops were followed by an excellent dinner in Lime Orange Victoria where participants had the opportunity
London Victorians would like to thanks Warren Sheng for the photography and Savse Smoothies for providing refreshments and snacks at the break. Look out for our next London Victorians event!
A few months ago, I sent out an email at work inviting colleagues to take part in a Speechcraft course during lunch breaks over 8 weeks. Speechcraft is an 8 week introduction to public speaking from Toastmasters. I knew there would be a few people who would be interested, but I wasn’t sure what kind of response I would get because it’s not a huge organisation – it has about 300 people who are office based.
