How to Speaker the RDG Way

3. Suggestions

• Get your speech recorded to watch later. You know what you want to accomplish with your speech more than anyone, and video will give you an audience-level look at your performance.
  
• If your club uses a collapsible or mobile lectern, you may want to have it moved to encourage a more open atmosphere to your speech. You may want to have “stage instructions” for the Toastmaster to move it for you as well (place these in your written introduction). Remember to help replace it after your speech as well.
  
• Come to the meeting early so that you can help arrange the room to your liking, as well as spend a few minutes in front of the lectern. Doing this will make being in front of the live audience not so much of a shock, allowing you to open with more power and poise.
  
• Remember that evaluators are not perfect, and that they are giving their opinion of what you can work on to improve. Learn to take their criticism gracefully. Remember, you are at Toastmasters for education, not validation (to quote Craig Valentine).
  
• If you are using notes, make them large and readable from far distances and keep them to two pages if possible. Use different typefaces, bold, underline, highlighting, and whatever other accents you wish to make key points stick out. This way, you may not need to even read the content of the note because the accents will trigger your memory.
  
• Remember that 700 words in a document translates into a 7 minute speech, though your cadence may vary. Practice timing your speeches to be sure.
  
• For your introduction, make sure to cover the 3 C's: Content (a little bit about what you're going to talk about), Credibility (why you're qualified to talk about it), and Context (why it's relevant to the audience). You should bring a printed copy of the introduction with you in case the Toastmaster forgets their printed copy.