Sometime in the next few months, your Toastmasters club is going to hold a contest. For new members, a Toastmasters speech contest sounds maybe a bit… childish? unnecessarily competitive? waste of time?

I suspect that you’ve never seen a Toastmasters speech contest.

On today’s podcast, let’s take a look at one of the biggest events in Toastmasters around the world, and the benefits to you and your club when you hold a contest.

INTRO

Do you need to be able to speak to groups of people? Do you have ideas that can help create a better world, if only you could get them out? Then Toastmasters is for you. In an hour a week, we can teach you public speaking and leadership skills and have fun while we do it. This is Toastmasters 101 and I’m your host, Kim Krajci.

Toastmasters Speech Contests

I joined Toastmasters because I was a high school speech and debate judge. My experience with public speaking was already competitive, so a speech contest in Toastmasters didn’t surprise me.

Whether or not you’re competitive in nature, it’s pretty natural for people to compete against each other. My kids used to compete over whose side of the car had the better Christmas decorations on the houses that we passed as we drove around town. Yes, that makes no sense. Don’t try to figure it out.

Competition is built into us. There are certainly those who think we ought to outgrow it when we become adults. We need to be cooperative, not competitive.

I don’t disagree with “cooperative.” I think we can do both and have everyone benefit from it.

Which is why I think that the Toastmasters contests are so valuable to all members, even those who will never compete.

Let’s start with those who don’t want to compete.

There are reasons to not compete in a Toastmasters speech contest.

Dislike the pressure of producing a “contest speech.”

That’s an issue for some people because Toastmasters speech contests are driven by some written rules and unwritten expectations.

Toastmasters International provides the official rule book for all contest events. Timing. Originality. Type of speech – prepared, impromptu, evaluation. The stage space. Now, with covid, we have video recordings with strict instructions. Disqualifications.

I don’t have a problem with a rules manual. I’m sad that it has to be modified every year because someone finds a way to circumvent the rules – aka cheat.

There are clear rules – but there are also some unwritten expectations about speeches – in particular, the World Championship of Public Speaking.

I’m very close to opening a can of worms here…

The rule book says that any type of speech is acceptable for the international speech con...