Division B Contest - Part 2 of 3 - My process

Part Two: My Mental Process





Hoo boy! I thought the Area contest target speech was tough! During Nigel's speech I tried to take the short "trigger" notes that Jeffrey Washington had suggested. Didn't work for me very well for this speech so I went back to my own way of note taking.



My first goal was to determine what type of speech it was. That was challenging because of Nigel's opening tone of his speech. When he changed the tone from humorous and light-hearted to tragic that threw me off. It was not until the end when he talked about his reason for joining Toastmasters and giving speeches to help others avoid the emotions he experienced that's when I knew this was an Inspirational speech.



My next goal was asking myself, what is the goal of an inspirational speech? Why it's to inspire the audience to act. Now I had my baseline to prioritize my notes. This is important as you only have 3 minutes and 30 seconds at the most for your evaluation. Optimally, you want to start wrapping up at 2:30 so you don't exceed the time and disqualify yourself.



I had drawn 2nd of the 4 contestants which is good for an additional 4:30 minutes added to the 5 minutes all the contestants were given to organize their notes.



In the room we were isolated in I then looked at the notes I took during the target speech. Then I created an outline of the main points. When my time came I was ready. I felt prepared enough to hand my notes to the Sgt-at-Arms. This freed up both my hands. Also I didn't want to run the risk of breaking the rapport with the audience by always glancing at my notes.



I believed I had a good shot at winning for the reason I had come up with an insight that I didn't think any of the other contestants had come up with. That insight was the heart of my evaluation.



The insight was this: an Inspirational speech seeks to inspire people to act. You accomplish this by having the audience imagine themselves in the same situation and experiencing the same emotions. Since it was emotion that motivated Nigel to act, having the audience go through the same type of strong emotion should also get them to act.