Should I Repeat Speeches?
Jan 17
“Friends don’t let friends give non-manual speeches.”
You have speech manuals for a reason. They help you focus on different speaking skills, stretching your comfort zone and always encouraging you to improve. Whether a Toastmaster has given three or three hundred speeches, both of them can work on improving and experimenting with vocal variety. And of course, as you go through the manuals, not only do you progress up the educational awards ladder, but it helps your club with the Distinguished Club Program. You can even get credit for a speech outside Toastmasters, if a Toastmaster is watching and evaluating you!
But when is it not right to complete a manual project for a speech?
Technically, TI has no rules against completing a project, just like they have no rules against getting credit for a speech project when the speech went way over time and didn’t remotely meet the listed speech objectives. But because it is allowed doesn’t mean it is suggested; in fact, it is discouraged.
Toastmasters focuses on helping you become a better speaker with every speech you give; having you improve focused skills, having you learn to write many compelling speeches, helping you learn to fit into a fixed time period (which is typically what you would have in any public speaking setting), helping you learn to tailor your material to different audiences.
If you give the same speech over and over, are you getting that benefit? Let’s take an extreme example; suppose a brand-new Toastmaster comes up with one speech, memorizes it word for word, and completes their CC with that one speech–just a very basic speech, not excelling in any Toastmaster qualities.
Will they have learned vocal variety, use of visual aids, body language, persuasive speaking, customizing a speech for their audience, how to write good speeches on any topic, etc.? No. They will have not learned public speaking; they will have learned a speech.
Of course, you can take a speech for one audience, get feedback, make changes to the speech to make it more effective, and give the new and improved speech again; that is also a valuable speaking skill, learning how to take feedback and improve a speech.
When thinking about repeating a speech and getting credit for it, it’s really a judgment call on your part… what you feel is ethical, what you feel is best for you. Just ask yourself this:
“Am I repeating this speech in the spirit of Toastmasters? Am I giving this speech in the spirit of the project for which I am getting credit? Is repeating this specific speech helping me to become a better Toastmaster?”
Think on that and make your decision–and keep on growing as a speaker!
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How is it that a member keeps repeating the same speech over and over, joins different clubs so that no one can keep track of his progress? This person is going to be able to move up in the TM organization because no one stops him. I am now very skeptical about others who have moved up in the organization! Also, how about speakers who are practicing for contests and repeat the same speech. How do we know they are not taking CC credit for it?
I’ve recently heard of a Toastmaster who completed 10 Pathways in one year. It is no stretch of the imagination to picture how this was achieved.
With the pandemic necessitating zoom meetings, it would appear that this TM searched all over the world for slots as a guest speaker (not hard). And we might rightly conjecture that not every single speech was a startling example of originality.
If I were to meet anyone with a similar track record I’m afraid I would feel more than a little skeptical that material was not recycled.
What if a member keeps repeating the same 2 or 3 speeches repeatedly? And what if they make themselves difficult to track because they join different clubs every 6 months?
Is there a guideline for being able to repeat a speech? (It must be changed by 25% to deliver it again? Not sure where I read this. And can the same speech be delivered again and again?)
I am not familiar with and hard and fast rule from Toastmasters International about repeating speeches. It would certainly be difficult for them to enforce. You may be thinking of the guidelines for what percentage of a contest speech must be original content.
As long as each project has a different title, there’s nothing TI can really do, and no way they can even know it’s the same speech over and over.
I feel it is valuable for people to learn the skill of giving a speech, making significant improvements and giving it again, greatly changing and refining their speech over several renditions. That’s a skill we tend not to work on in Toastmasters. This rare event happens most often for contests.
But I have also felt frustration seeing the exact same speech over and over. I have known Toastmasters who filled a single manual with the same speech over and over. Not as a learning experience working towards a more perfect speech, but from sheer laziness.
On the other hand, they are practicing public speaking, and hopefully are getting useful feedback on content and delivery each time, so the value is greater than zero.
A thought: technically, only two projects in a CC should be given outside of the club a member belongs to. This rule is generally unnecessary and rarely enforced, but if the Toastmaster is filling a CC from speeches in many different clubs, the VPE could choose to be stricter with them on that point.
Hopefully their mentor or someone in the club will gently but firmly talk to them and encourage them to challenge themselves to make each speech project better than the last, to keep writing new speeches and focus on regularly improving their content and delivery. But if the member isn’t interested in growing their public speaking skills, there’s little you can do, just as you can’t help it if a member puts no effort into their speeches, or doesn’t show up to meetings.
You can always try calling World Headquarters and asking questions on policies and advice. I have done that many times over the years. In this case I doubt that will have anything to say beyond what I have already outlined, but it’s worth a shot.