Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Speakers corner


Yesterday, at the Toastmasters meeting, I was TopicMaster, and we did play "Hyde park speakers corner" inside the pub. It was fun!

I asked the present people imagine we were at the Speakers corner, step up, speak louder, get used to eventual interruptions, try to retain people to listen, tell personal stories about the objects or topics I gave them.

It was too much to ask.

But some did. Others, spoke louder, indeed. In all, we had fun!

The best compliment I got, was from a guest who did not want to speak, and I not ask her out. After the meeting, she told me "if I knew it will be so much fun, so easy, I would have spoken too, I regret I did not do it."

So my idea did work, even if I could have introduced more every object I gave them to speak about, or reminded them again and again, (I did sometimes) "we are at Hyde park speakers corner" not a Toastmasters meeting!

Anything can happen, anyone can interrupt you, mock you, or even worse, go away... You have to handle all of that, whatever it comes. But I asked only one or two very accomplished Toastmasters to be interrupted. And they were a lot less then us, at the park.

I loved how we could learn to handle people interrupting us, and will have once to play it again, better, so that we all learn how to handle it.

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