As Toastmasters, we all make commitments to occupy roles in our meetings. We progress through the educational programs by evaluating at one meeting, speaking at another, and serving other roles at other meetings. We do it because in the the world outside Toastmasters we want to be ready.
When members are unable to fill a role, the Toastmaster will be forced to rework the agenda at the last moment. This cannot always be avoided. People don't show up or aren't ready if they do. One speaker isn't ready, another doesn't show up. Suddenly, a promising meeting is replaced by a backup plan. My advice is to be able to step into any role at any time, to be the backup plan. Recognize it as an opportunity and say “of course!” By doing so, you can accelerate your progress and enhance your reputation while the whole club benefits by better meetings.
You may be thinking it's only a club meeting so what's the problem? The problem is that it's an opportunity. You get to choose if it is an opportunity to relax or an opportunity to grow. If you punt on this, you use it as an opportunity to practice punting. There will be bigger opportunities with higher stakes and this is your chance to prepare.
Area Contests
Twice a year, Toastmasters offers a series of contests in clubs, between clubs, and across various levels of the organization. Some members compete seriously, some enjoy the show, and some psy no attention at all. Entire clubs, sometimes entire areas, don't participate. This is another opportunity to grow that people overlook.
My friend Kate Gaylord came to an area contest to give the target speech for the evaluation contest. It turned out that nobody was there to compete. Someone else gave a speech for Kate to evaluate and in three minutes she qualified for the Division Evaluation contest.
Like all Toastmasters contests, the evaluation contest is judged. In addition to getting some tips on evaluation, Kate studied the judges scoring criteria. This led to three big takeaways:
Don't try to be smart or clever at the target speaker's expense. Some. people do this even though it is both common sense and common courtesy. Their names typically follow phrases like "also competing were..."
Focus on the biggest takeaway you can offer the speaker for improvement. As you get into higher levels of the contest better target speakers are found and this becomes more challenging.
Finally, assume the judges are busy and will get only a minute to score your evaluation. One of the scoring criteria was quality of your summation. Hint: make sure they know you have a summary. If only some of the judges score this zero (missing) you've left easy points on the stage.
Shortly thereafter, Kate won the Division contest, this time against actual competition. At the District contest she evaluated a target speech presented by a visiting International Director.
Two tried to be smart or clever and earned their spot at the bottom of the also competing list.
One gave a solid evaluation but didn't offer a clear summation--good enough for third place.
The top two also offered actual thoughts for improving the speech. I thought Kate's suggestion wax better and the judges agreed. Kate went home as District Evaluation Champion. I got to pass my private scorecard around the table,correctly predicting the top three places in the correct order.
Kate richly deserved the result for her fine effort, but none of it could have happened without her willingness to step up. Here's another example where stakes were higher.
COCACM Symposium
In 1985, I was both a new employee at Battelle Columbus Laboratories and an active member of the local computing society COCACM. When COCACM scheduled its annual symposium at Battelle’s 500 seat auditorium, I became the de facto liaison between the two organizations for the event.
The Symposium was the chapter’s fundraiser for the year. It featured four presenters providing various perspectives on a state of the art theme. Columbus had been a computing hub for several years, and the one day event had a long history of filling the auditorium and putting on a quality event.
Out of town presenters were not paid to speak, but COCACM covered their meals, lodging and travel. Since the symposium was a day-long event, we asked them to come in the day before for a dinner party with event organizers. Two of them, scheduled for afternoon presentations, decided to fly in the morning of the event to save themselves time and us a night’s expenses. The two morming presenters were our guests the evening of Thursday May 16, 1985.
At midnight, a pilots strike began, leaving thousands of people grounded, including our afternoon presenters. As the Sun rose, hundreds of attendees filled the auditorium. Half our program was out of town, stranded, in an age that predated cell phones.
While the auditorium settled in to listen to the first presenter, a few of us held a quiet but tense meeting in the lobby. Our morning events were on track and lunch would be ready, but our afternoon? It wasn’t up in the air. It was grounded.
At this moment, John Fried suggested that he might be able to find an alternative presenter. John wasn’t my boss; he was four steps up the management hierarchy. Battelle at the time had a collection of leading edge software projects. Would we like a public version of one of them? Yes, please. A few minutes later, Richard Darwin got a call. Could he pull together a presentation and spend the afternoon with an auditorium full of computer geeks? Of course! It was an opportunity (and John Fried was asking).
Battelle is internationally famous as a think tank that turns science projects into real-world technology. At the time, this included computer systems. Darwin’s role was to market Battelle’s capabilities to anyone who might be interested. What was the topic of the event? No problem.
While the audience was escorted to lunch and Darwin was preparing, we were still one presenter short. The contingency plan was a round table discussio but dhortly after Darwin began one of our missing afternoon presenters walked through the door with suitcase in tow. He had gone through who knows what and arrived in time to fill our last gap. The other presenter was unable to get through.
In Summary…
Not all spontaneous opportunities are going to be public triumphs. As meeting planners, we want to have a plan and a backup plan, but even then we may need to make the best of a bad situation.
As individuals, we can an should be ready to meet our commitments and when unexpected opportunities arise to cheerfully say “of course!”
