Moments of Truth / DCP Training

Moments of Truth

Moments of Truth is a Toastmasters International club quality checklist of sorts. 36 points address what they feel makes a big difference in how successful a club is, the “moments of truth” that can cause a member to join/stick with a club or leave.

In the winter of 2013-2014, I delivered this workshop at two officer training events (combining it with a little Distinguished Club Program training). I decided to try to liven things up and make this fun and memorable, calling it “Moments of Truth or Dare.”

Feel free to use or modify the PowerPoint I used. If you want to share it with your members, I just ask you upload it yourself somewhere instead of having them all use this link.

To use the PowerPoint, you’ll want a mouse or similar device, instead of a remote that just goes forward/backward. On the Jeopardy-style quiz board, click a question to jump to the slides for that question. On the answer slide, there is a large left-facing arrow that will return you to the quiz board. Clicked linked disappear from the quiz board, making it easy to tell what is left.

I used a number of supplies to set up for this.

• Monopoly money
• Cards with catchphrases (this list was a useful source)
• Computer to display presentation (depending on your setup, you may need a power cord, extension cord, mouse, cable to connect the computer to the projector, a flash drive with the presentation on it)
• “Prizes” for the contestants, possibly funny. For example, you could announce they all get a new car and then give them each a Hot Wheels car.
• Stations for the host (presumably you) and each of your three contestants.
• Dry erase markers
• Non-verbal Table Topics cards

For the stations, I used a TV tray with a clear plastic box/storage tote on top. This brought the top of the station to the players’ torsos, and the dry erase markers wrote on the plastic. I printed out papers with “Moments of Truth or Dare” at the top and taped them to the inside front and inside back of the cases. If there was no such background, the audience could see inside the cases and it would be much harder to see what was written with the markers on the cases.


I recommend that you find your “contestants” at least a few days before the event and that you walk through what they will do in the game. It can also be helpful to print out instructions and bring them, as a reminder and in case you have to make a last-minute change to your contestant lineup. Here’s what I use for instructions, but feel free to change as you wish.

“Moments of Truth or Dare” is all in good fun. Don’t worry about the points or winning, just do your best and enjoy the game. Don’t be afraid to be funny!

The game bears some similarities to Jeopardy.

Before the game, write your name on outside the box, the side facing the audience, with dry erase marker

You will start the game with some play money. Those are your catchphrases. Accumulating money is the game is completely arbitrary, so don’t worry about it.

Pick your question by saying “I’ll take x, Chad” where X is the phrase in the box on the screen you want to pick. For example, “I’ll take a break, Chad”. Following this exact formula–very similar to the Jeopardy format–is important to the humor of the game.

Whenever you want to answer a question, you must yell out the top catchphrase in front of you. You may use each catchphrase only once, so try not to mix up your used and unused catchphrases.

If several people yell at the same time, the most entertaining one gets to answer (more or less–again, arbitrary and silly).

No need to answer in the form of a question (as Jeopardy does). Just answer. These are all fill-in-the-blank questions.

Don’t know what to answer? Feel free to say something silly.

If you mess up, you have to do a “dare” (quick nonverbal table topic). I will give you a card with your action on it. The other contestants rapidly try to guess what you are doing. This should be very quick–seconds, not minutes. You may want to get out in front of your stand to be more visible.

For the two “Daily Double” questions, you will have to brainstorm on a topic. Before you are given the topic, you must guess how many ideas you think you can come up with. Your goal is to meet or exceed that number when given the topic.

Final jeopardy: you will bet. Don’t worry too much about what’s ok. Pick a number of dollars out of thin air or say “all of it.” When given the question, you will quickly write an answer on the BACK of your box in dry erase marker. When called on, you will turn the box around to show your answer.

After final jeopardy, you will be awarded your prizes and be clapped off the stage. Then I will proceed to the DCP training, which won’t be nearly as fun without you guys!

Bear in mind that you will need a few minutes to set up the stage; make sure you are either the first presenter or that the event organizer will give you time on stage between events in order to set up.

Briefly explain the purpose of Moments of Truth and then introduce the game (advancing slides as you speak, working your way to the game board). Make sure the contestant names are clearly visible on their stations so the audience can see them. Randomly pick someone to choose a question.

“Ann, you go first. What will you take?”
“I’ll take ‘five'”

Click the link for the question. You’ll be on a slide showing one of the Moments of Truth points, with a blank where a word (or several words) should be. Read it out loud. Note: you may want to read the category (one of the six Moments of Truth) questions as well. That is displayed at the top of the question slide.

Just like in Jeopardy, any player can “buzz in” to indicate they want to answer the question, but in order to do so they must shout out one of the catchphrases in their pile (and they may not use the same one twice). Two people shouted out at the same time? Pick whoever is more entertaining.

(Note: Jeopardy requires players to answer in the form of a question. I did not do that in Moments of Truth or Dare, but you could if you wanted to.)

Once someone has answered—or they buzzed in, but couldn’t think of anything to guess (encourage them to yell out something, even something ridiculous)—it’s time to look at the answer. Click the right arrow button in the lower right hand corner of the slide, or just advance to the next slide.

The same Moments of Truth point is displayed. The words that were blanked out before are bolded. Read the correct answer. I inserted awfully wrong answers and then struck them out on the slide. No need to read those, but the audience will hopefully read them and laugh. I joked that those answers are from when I “tried the game and got every answer wrong.” If they are too silly for you, you can remove them from every answer slide.

There is no official scoring method. It’s just a silly game. But if you like, you can tell people you’re adding/deducting points or throw play money in their direction for a correct answer. Have fun with it!

After the question has been read and you announce whether the player was correct or not, time to return to the question board. Click the left-facing arrow in the lower right corner of the slide. If you do anything else you will end up on a different slide in the presentation, which will be confusing.

Note that once clicked, links on the game board change to the background color of the board, effectively rendering them invisible. Try not to click on the wrong links (the only way to make them appear again is to close the presentation and reopen it, showing all links again)—but if you do, the link is still there, just hidden. Mouse over it and click it if you need to return to that question for some reason.

There are two “Daily Double” slides in the presentation. When one is revealed, Ask the contestant how many ideas they can come up with on the yet-to-be-revealed topic. You can even ask them to bet an amount of money. “all of it!” “nothing!” “a billion dollars!” “the square root of pi!” it doesn’t matter, it’s all silly.
Advance to the next slide. This shows the topic. Now it’s time for them to yell out ideas. Keep track so you can announce whether they made their goal or not. Then click the left-facing arrow in the lower right corner of the slide to return to the question board.

Note: after the contestant shares their ideas, feel free to mention some of the ideas from the relevant list for Social Event Ideas or Inter-Club Event Ideas.

Once the question board is cleared, click the lightning bolt icon on the question board slide. This will take you to Final Jeopardy. Once you are on the Final Jeopardy slide, instruct the contestants that they are going to be given a question and will write the answer on the BACK of their stations. Then proceed to the next slide, with the question. Give the contestants a little time to think of something and write it down. Feel free to lead the audience in the Jeopardy theme music while they work.

After they are done, or you feel sufficient time has passed, call on them one by one to turn their stations around. Read their answers to the audience.

Now it’s time for the end of the game! I like to say something like “We counted and recounted, and realized all of the money you’ve been given comes from Monopoly and is all worthless. You are all tied with zero dollars!” but make up whatever you like. Hand out the “prizes” to your contestants to thank them for their participation. One way to run that would be to say “you get a car, you get a car, everyone gets a car!” and hand out Hot Wheels cars to your contestants. Clap them off the stage and move on to the next segment.

Distinguished Club Program

Briefly explain the purpose of the DCP: by working on goals that help the club, clubs earn up to ten points, and that different point levels correlate with different titles. It’s a friendly competition, clear goals to strive for that help the club keep on track with activities that benefit the members. I like to refer to DCP as “Darned Club Points”.

Since most people are already familiar with the DCP, I find it easy to ask for the crowd to yell out each goal BEFORE I show it. Then I can move quickly through the slide, clicking or pressing the right arrow or page down key to reveal each goal one at a time, explaining any that I feel require more information.

After showing all goals, I asked everyone to stand up, telling them that I would be asking how many DCP points their club has, not to sit down until I told them to, and to only count as many points as they were SURE they had. “Anyone with less than one DCP point, sit down. Anyone with less than two DCP points, sit down. Anyone with less than three DCP points, sit down. Anyone with less than four DCP points, sit down. Anyone with less than four DCP points, sit down. Anyone with less than five DCP points, sit down. Congratulations, everyone standing is a Distinguished club! *applause* Anyone with less than six DCP points, sit down. Anyone with less than seven DCP points, sit down. Congratulations, everyone standing is a Select Distinguished Club! *applause* Anyone with less than eight DCP points, sit down. Anyone with less than nine DCP points, sit down. Congratulations, everyone standing is a President’s Distinguished club! Anyone with less than ten DCP points, sit down. These people are the real overachievers. You only need nine of the ten points to reach President’s Distinguished, the highest level of the DCP program, but these people went above and beyond and nailed every last goal! *applause* you may be seated.”

Note that, as you work your way down to the last few people left, you may want to just stop and ask each of them how many points they have and what club they’re from. The audience will be curious about who those highest achievers are. Also, this works well for mid-year training when talking about how many points they have so far; then you can urge them to get even more points in the second half of the year. For beginning-of-year training you may want to ask instead how many points their club had the previous Toastmasters year.

Whew! Now as your massive, awesome session winds to a close, remember: every presentation, every lesson, should end with something powerful, memorable and maybe even funny, a really strong ending that leaves an impact!

I wish I could think of one.