Newcomer Womens Leadership Program

On Friday December 16, 2022, I attended the graduation ceremony for PRUDE Inc’s Newcomer Women’s Leadership Program. This development program focuses on women who are new to Canada and Saint John. The program is run by an organization called PRUDE (Pride in Race, Unity, and Diversity through Education) https://www.prudeinc.org/

PRUDE operates a number of developmental workshops around bias, newcomer transitions, cultural awareness and more. These graduates were cohort #8 of this leadership development program run by the energetic and highly effective Christine Eruokwu. For more information on the program see https://www.prudeinc.org/nwlp

 

The training I deliver is primarily in public speaking and soft skills/leadership skills. I was impressed during the graduation ceremony when several of the newcomer program graduates delivered presentations on their background and aspirations. Most people are reluctant public speakers, and some have a significant fear. I admire anyone who takes steps to become a more effective communicator, and I have immense admiration for people who pursue public speaking in a second or third language, like all of the graduates at this event.

I was invited to offer a brief speech at the event so I spoke on what I had offered to the newcomer women’s program, and acknowledged what I received from the program. These women are brave risk takers all of whom left one country to come to Canada, and a small city of the east coast and the Bay of Fundy. I find spending time working with them to be inspirational. It’s inspirational to be around brave, ambitious risk takers. This is what I received.

 My professional background centers around public speaking, general communication skills, and leadership development.  My continued involvement with Toastmasters is a significant component of this skill set. Toastmasters mission is to empower individuals to become more effective communicators and leaders, and this is accomplished primarily when people join one of our 16,000 clubs around the world. However, it is enjoyable when we can connect to an existing group on a short-term basis and deliver benefit, such as this instance with the newcomer women’s group.

If you’re interested to see some photos from the event, please visit my Linkedin post https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jimkokocki_newcomerstocanada-prude-nwlp-activity-7011709480262402048-CM40?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

 

How to Deliver a Holiday Toast

There are many opportunities to show appreciation with a toast during the year.  The Christmas holiday season is ideal for practicing and exercising this skill.  A toast typically honors a person or a group of people. It’s a simple yet sophisticated technique to show gratitude and celebrate camaraderie at family events, at dinner with friends, or at work events with colleagues.  

Should you choose to offer a toast, attendees will appreciate your thoughtfulness and poise  Brevity is key as there’s no need to stand awkwardly holding a glass for a long period of time. Be brief.   

Here is a simple formula that requires little to no preparation.

How to Offer a Toast at any Occasion

1. When you notice a lull in the conversation tap your glass with a fork several times to get everyone’s attention

2. Stand and declare ‘I’d like to offer a toast’

a.       Acknowledge an achievement from the year passed. This could be an achievement of someone at the event, or a group achievement.

b.       Give thanks for the opportunity to be together at this moment. Celebrate this moment.  

c.       Offer best wishes to all during the coming year. You might single out one or two individuals who have major events in the upcoming time period.

d.       End with ‘let’s raise our glasses to …”

3. Sit down and enjoy your contribution to group camaraderie

Nervous Energy and Dancing During Speeches

 In December I was invited to participate on a panel of judges for presentations delivered during a university competition. The participants all did quite well. I’ll offer some observations that address some public speaking habits in general.

As this was a masters level business program, the students skewed towards late twenties or older. Some were very skilled presenters; however, it was clear many had little experience. There is no substitute for experience.

I didn’t notice any of the speakers rely on notes to any great extent, which is very commendable. There were five teams of five to six people, and each team member delivered a short speech as a contribution to presenting team results. 

Purposeful Movement Versus Purposeless Movement

I noticed many of the speakers managing nervous energy unconsciously with near continuous movement, dancing away.  It is better to move a little while not speaking, then plant the feet, and speak.  Finish a component, move, plant the feet, and speak. Constant moving is distracting for many audience members, and visibly demonstrates nervousness.

Word Choice and Use of Non-Words

Most participants used a minimum of filler noises like ‘um’ and ‘ah’ but several used a quantity that I found distracting. When someone’s speech is full of ums and ahs, I need to work to filter them out to concentrate on the words and sentences, to interpret the overall message.  As a listener, you filter them out too, and this is additional work for the listener. If you need to work too hard on filtering, you will feel some mild fatigue as the speaker concludes. You might even comment to a colleague that such a presentation was exhausting.  

Few people will entirely eliminate filler noises, but we can all work to be aware of our usage and minimize them.  We concentrate hard on good word choices. Most of us can do a better job on concentrating on filler noises and catching them before they escape.

Managing Questions and Answers

In my experience, when managing Q&A sessions with a team of varying experience, it is best to have an experienced leader field the question, perhaps shape the response, and invite another team member to expand on details when appropriate. It was evident during these presentations that any member was enabled to answer a question. That’s wonderful empowerment for the team members, but not ideal for sharing and managing information. 

At times, those answering went far beyond the initial question, which in some situations, might expose more information than is necessary. The students were eager to jump in – they were being graded – however, in a public environment, a respondent should simply answer the question clearly, usually addressing only what was asked, and being cautious about elaborating, as this could lead to a more penetrating discovery.

There were a few occurrences during the team presentations where an elaboration to a question queued me to ask a more penetrating follow-up question, although I didn’t.  In respect for the students and our time limits, neither the judging panelists nor I followed up on these elaborations. In general, speakers should only answer the question asked. Be cautious when elaborating and illustrating additional knowledge and details. I’ll mention my desire to follow-up dealt mainly with exposure of team dynamics, which in my opinion is the real value of these team exercises. It appeared some teams had some challenges working together.

Time

Many of the teams did a poor job of managing their time allotments.  This is a cardinal sin in public speaking.  Don’t exceed your time limit as it impacts the remainder of the program.

Summary

In summary here are my observations;

1.    Be aware of nervous energy and use purposeful movement instead of purposeless movement

2.    Be conscious of word choice, but even more conscious of non-word choices, that is, filler noises like um and ah. Too many and you’ll exhaust your audience, who will then be unfriendly towards your proposal.  

3.    Field each question with professionalism and invite team members to elaborate only when appropriate

4.    Answer the question

5.    Avoid elaborating when it offers little value and could expose more information than the team might like.

Writing a Christmas Story

 

This week I prepared and delivered a seven-minute speech at Rising Tide Toastmasters club. The speech was a simple Christmas story.

Speeches like this aren’t a strength of mine.  I use stories regularly in speeches, but rarely would the purpose of one of my speeches be only to entertain. However, over the past week this one fell into place quickly and easily.  I will share the process as I think you might find it helpful.  I will likely re-use the speech in Christmases to come.

Three Components

 I had recently completed a thorough cleaning of my living room, and in doing so, I picked up and moved an old guitar that was just sitting around collecting dust. I decluttered books, DVDs, and the guitar, and took them to the Salvation Army thrift shop as a donation.  That’s the entire story, but of course each component needs some relevant detail and color. Here’s how that was added. Three components for about two minutes each result in around six minutes of material in my experience and practice. I delivered this planned six minutes of material in a total of seven minutes. Here are the components.

First, I described the thorough cleaning.  I still have too many books.  I was surprised how many DVDs I still have when I have no longer have a DVD player, or a television. I own a few guitars and the one I spoke about was unused for many years. My Rising Tide Toastmasters club had recently discussed clutter so this provided a nice refer back to that shared experience.  At every meeting we practice off-the-cuff questions and response on a variety of topics, and a few weeks ago it was on clutter. I noticed people have some strong opinions on acquisition, storage, and disposal. So, the first speech component about my decluttering was easy to construct and set the stage for the speech.

For the second component, I described how I had originally acquired the guitar, and why it was not used recently. The guitar is a Les Paul junior and when I bought it, it was in poor shape, but I wanted it anyway, because it looked cool.  I made efforts to improve it, but it was never in great condition. I did and do love it, but in recent years I bought another junior that is in much better shape.

For the third component, I described the disposal, and the decision on how to proceed with disposal.  I had considered selling or gifting the guitar directly to see if I could get it to a kid at Christmas who would treasure having a cool looking guitar, that is playable, but not in greet shape. But listing and finding a buyer, let alone a buyer I would find suitable for my beloved possession, would take time. So, I decided to donate it and let the thrift shop manage all aspects of that.  I do hope it makes some kids Christmas.

Dialogue Adds Color

The interaction at the thrift shop added more color. The conversation was brief;

“I have a donation’”

“Great. Thanks.  A guitar! How much should we charge for this?”

“Not much! Ten dollars. Maybe as much as $50.”

“Is that all!!!”

“Yes.  It’s playable, but it’s not in great shape. Hopefully it makes some kids Christmas. It would make a great first guitar for someone.”

 

And those were the three components.

 

Speeches and Purpose

It’s fine for a speech to only offer a story, to simply entertain. Christmas time leads itself to that.  But it’s much better if you can inspire people to think differently or act differently.

So, I closed by stating my purpose was to get the audience thinking about how we all have possessions, how the value to us often diminishes over time, and that they might be holding something that might make nice donation, and make someone’s Christmas. Not a world changing message, but perhaps it can help someone’s holiday.

I feel good believing that the guitar will get into the hands of a deserving kid, maybe a future rock star.

My purpose in writing this is to show how we can be opportunistic in reflecting on everyday small events, and assemble components for a worthwhile speech.