I often wonder why fellow toastmasters don’t enter contests – only it seems like such an obvious thing to do to refine our skill. Should you enter? Of course you should, but what do you stand to gain?
It was so obvious to me to enter one year – I thought it would be easy – and then I failed spectacularly and unexpectedly. It’s quite normal for a table topic to go horribly wrong or for the speaker to sit down half way through. It’s not so common in a club speech, and even less common in a contest speech. Three minutes in I put my hand up and told the contest chair I’d had enough, and was going to sit down. I really had. The contest had brought out the worst in me – a lack of preparation, and an attempt to deliver an emotional speech from my childhood really hit home.
Emotionally, the speech had the desired effect on me, but not my audience. The message I was hoping to deliver to my audience hit me the hardest, and I dried up, memory gone, a few garbled sentences later and I was done. Should I attempt a rescue and get back on track, or stop my speech right there in the middle? Usually I would always choose the former. Pause, breathe, and deliver the rest of the speech of the cuff – or find a way get back on track. When a speech goes wrong like this the audience don’t know if you transition in to something more like a table topic. You then appear to be confident and in control. To pull this one off I would need to be in a happy smiley place (my top tips for Table Topics are to smile and be happy). I was agitated and emotional, and that was my downfall. My rehearsal time spent yapping into a mirror did not have the same emotional impact that I experienced from a real audience. And my lack of preparation showed. My nerves loaded the gun and emotion pulled the trigger.
The best bit about these experiences is what you can learn from them. I don’t think I could have prepared for this because I didn’t even know it could happen. And that’s why we enter the contest, so that we can prepare better for the next contest, and fulfil our goals as accomplished toastmasters.
For me speech contests are the biggest bang for your buck at Toastmasters. They accelerate learning and the ability to deliver speeches confidently in all scenarios. They can provide you with the world’s greatest confidence boost, or the world’s greatest wake-up call. Which will it be? There’s only one way to find out…
Patrick Thomas
VPM – Farnham Speakers Club
Last Updated on 1st February 2025 by Allen Paul