As Malcolm Gladwell writes about in his popular book, “Outliers: The Story of Success,” an intensive practice regimen can result in people becoming stunning experts in surprising ways. There has been a lot of criticism of his points, most notably treating “10,000 hours of practice” as a magic number (and not simply an average of how long many...

Not many Toastmasters know this, but Toastmasters International is inconsistent on how to time Table Topics. The back of the Competent Communication manual provides instructions for different roles. In the Timer section (page 70 in the edition I have), it says: Generally topic speakers should be more or less 15 seconds of allowed time; prepared speakers must be more...

Around contest season, I often find people wishing me “good luck” or hear them saying it to other contestants. That always seemed strange to me, especially when a contest Toastmaster announced it to every contestant in the room at once. That’s as silly as telling every contestant that you hope they can win. Obviously, they can’t all...

Over the years, I’m sorry to say I’ve seen certain easily preventable challenges occur time and again. Don’t get me wrong: I know running a contest is very hard work. It takes a lot of effort from a lot of people, and so much can go wrong. I’ve ran the most efficient triple-area contest in District 55. I’ve ran the largest club contest...

How long does it take after the meeting starts before your prepared speaker begins? How long after the first opening sound of a conference keynote before the keynote speaker begins talking? How long after a speech contest opens before the first contestant begins? IMHO, five minutes should be a hard and fast maximum. In my experience, however, often it climbs up to 15...

“We’ll wait a few more minutes for more people to show up before we start the meeting.” “This meeting is now called to order. Now we will recess for five minutes while we prepare to begin.” “Oh, we just list that as our start time so that people show up in time for our real start time, which is 15 minutes later” Do these...

Some fortunate clubs are packed full of eager speakers competing for limited speaking slots. However, others find themselves challenged to get multiple speakers on the agenda for each week. What can you do when you regularly face the prospect of meetings without any speeches? Be warned; it’s possible to go too far with these tips! In one club where I was VPE, I...