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You're listening to the Talkative Toastmaster podcast. I'm your host, melanie Surplus. In this podcast, we explore how Toastmasters can help you to polish your public speaking skills, communicate with confidence and amplify your authenticity. You'll hear from my fellow Toastmasters and I how this global organization has impacted our lives for the better and how it could impact yours. Now let's get talkative. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to episode 54.

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This week I'm going to review what has been a very hectic but interesting contest season, based on my participation in four separate club contests and seven different area contests, including the one I ran for area 26 across district 69 since September. As I said, it's been a very busy few weeks Now. As an area director, I can't compete in any level of the speech contests this year, so I decided to immerse myself into the contest space in pretty much any other way I could help. This has given me a thorough understanding of the annual Toastmasters contest process in a way that I never truly appreciated while I was simply turning up to compete. It's fair to say that a lot of work goes into every contest, whether it's at the club, area, division, district, regional or world level. So this week I'd like to cover my observations about contest season and share some tips for anyone who may be considering competing next year or future years and also anyone who may be considering organising a club or area speech contest in the near future. And I'll finish up by talking about two of the extracurricular activities I attended in this timeframe as well. That really expanded my understanding of Toastmasters speech contests in a slightly different way, so we'll get to those Now. I covered the detail of contests and how they run at a club level in episode 20. So if you want to go back and review that episode, I would highly recommend it. But just to summarize, every year 30,000 or so Toastmasters around the world start the journey of contests, and the culmination of all of that from club level can go right through to the World Championship of Public Speaking, which is a contest held every year at the Toastmasters International Convention. This year it was in Anaheim and that's where the very best speakers from around the organization, around the world, fight for the right to compete in that world championship of public speaking.

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In terms of what we need for contests, and it's more or less the same at each level in a general sense, in terms of the roles we need to fill. But as the contests go further up. As each level of contest plays out, there are more specific rules about who and who cannot be judges and what types of qualifications the role holders must have. But certainly at the club and area level and even at the division level, we need contestants. At every level. We need contestants and without contestants obviously we wouldn't have a contest.

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We also, for these contests, need contest chairs and these people are responsible for they're like the emcee of that particular contest. So, for example, there might be separate contest chairs for the international, the humorous speech contest, the table international, the humorous speech contest, the table topics and the evaluation contest. Again, they're responsible for running the contest. They're also responsible for briefing the contestants before the contest, getting speaker profile forms and eligibility forms. And yeah, responsible for the paperwork and eligibility forms and yeah, responsible for the paperwork. There is a fair bit of paperwork involved in club, area, division, district, any competitions. So we have our contestants and our contest chairs.

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We also have a chief judge. This is a really important role, probably next to contestants, one of the most important roles in any contest, and it's this person who is responsible for overseeing and briefing the judges who will be effectively determining the winner for each contest and ensuring that the contest is run by the rule book. So this person needs to be an experienced Toastmaster who has either competed and run contests before and can navigate the rule book should any queries come up. As well as the chief judge, we also have at least five judges and a tie-breaking judge. So the judges are given criteria sheets and these are standard for any Toastmasters contests around the world. There's different criteria for the International Humorous Table Topics and Evaluations Contests, but those criteria are the same. So if I wanted to compete in a contest in any other country outside of Australia, the criteria for judging would be exactly the same. It's the judge's role on the day to basically determine the best speaker on the day, and they've got a whole lot of criteria sheets to help them do that, mostly focusing on a contestant's content, structure and delivery. That's the very short form of it, but it's effectively those elements that each speaker is going to be judged on. Then the tiebreaker judge if, when the contest results are tallied up and there's a tie in first or second or third place, is a tiebreaker judge whose role and participation in the contest is, as it says, to break that tie and to determine the winner.

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Now, also, depending on the level of contest, normally at the area contest and above there is an assistant chief judge and their role is to brief the other positions. So the non-judging, non-competing roles such as timers, sergeant at arms and ballot keepers and it's really also just to support the chief judge should they need anyone else to run around? Really also just to support the chief judge. Should they need anyone else to run around? And certainly, having been to so many contests in the last few months, there is a lot of running around, no matter how organized a contest is. Now, timers the role is obvious. They're the ones keeping time of every speech, every evaluation, every table topic and recording that on sheets and helping the judges to determine if there have been any time disqualifications and I'll talk more about that in a moment. We also have sergeant at arms.

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So normally in the table topics contest and the evaluation contest, parts of those contests involves some of the contestants being outside of the room at any given time to allow for one speaker at a time to either deliver their table topic or their evaluation. So the sergeant-at-arms is either sitting with the contestants outside the room waiting to bring them in and then there's a sergeant-at arms in the room who assists on that side, and then ballot counters. So once each speaker has spoken and the contest is effectively over, the judges are marking their results on a voting form which has at the bottom a ballot, basically, and the judges have to nominate the first, second and third place getters based on how they've scored everyone. And then the ballot counter's role is to go around and collect all of those little ballots from each judge, head outside of the room with the chief judge and there they tally up the results. And there's normally at least two ballot counters whose role is to basically count up the results, double check everything and work with the chief judge to document the actual results. Document the actual results. Every contest has to have these roles as a minimum, and even just being able to get those people into place, let alone competitors, can take a fair bit of work, because there's rules about people competing in contests can't realistically hold any of those roles before they've competed and, yeah, just making sure contestants are eligible to actually compete. So there's a lot of moving parts.

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Now, in terms of what I've seen from some fantastic contests throughout District 69 this season is, I would say, one get very familiar with the judging criteria for whatever contest you'll be competing in. This is very much what can make or break your progress in contests. If you study the criteria, you'll understand what the judges have been instructed to judge you on. And it wasn't until after I'd even won at my first club contest, when I started competing about four years ago, that I even knew about the criteria. And so certainly in our club we do circulate the judging criteria as soon as people let us know that they would like to compete. But the higher up you go, the more familiar with those criteria that you need to be, because that is again what the judges are looking for. And again, depending on the contest you're going to be in, those criteria will typically range around content, structure and delivery and timing as well.

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You've got to stay within your allocated time for your speech or your table topic or your evaluation. I would also say practice your speeches. I mean, it's an obvious thing, but practice giving speeches in your club, practice giving table topics and evaluations and even just in your normal club meetings. If you know what the criteria for speeches are and for the contests are, you can start to weave those into how you deliver evaluations and how you deliver table topics and each one that you do in the normal course of your club meetings becomes practice if you wanted to compete. I think as well, it's important to.

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If you're in a contest situation, especially an area you know, club competitions can be nerve wracking enough, but when you start to get into those higher levels of contest be it area or division or district or beyond it can feel quite daunting because there's an element of formality about it, and the higher you go in those contests, the more formal and potentially daunting that briefing process is going to feel. So if you're in the contest briefings and you're not clear about what you're being briefed about, absolutely ask any questions to the person who is briefing you. It's their role to make sure that you understand what's expected of you, how the contest will work, what you need to do, when you need to be in the room or outside of the room, just depending. Now my next suggestion is to really watch the time. If contestants speak outside of the allocated times for speeches, table topics or evaluations, they are disqualified, and if they don't speak to the minimum amount of time as well, they'll be disqualified, and we saw a number of time disqualifications through the course of the contest season this year, and it's always so sad when the contest chair has to announce that there has been a time disqualification and even if it's just a couple of seconds, it can completely rule you out of a contest, and none of us want to see that.

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So, again, this comes down to practice being very aware of when you see those orange lights in whatever contest you're in, start to wrap it up. Those orange lights in whatever contest you're in, start to wrap it up. Just start to wrap it up. Get used to doing a very quick but thorough summary of what you've just said. And, yeah, just watch the time. Most importantly, enjoy yourself and just see any competition as another part of your Toastmasters journey. It is such fantastic experience to compete, particularly if you get out of the club and you're competing at area level with speakers you may never have heard of or seen before and judges who have never heard or seen you, and so just enjoy every part of that. And my final point for competitors is if you don't win this year, final point for competitors is if you don't win this year, keep trying, try again next year. Some of the best speakers in this organization have refined their say humorous and international speeches over many, many years to finally win for the first time at, say, an area level or division or district or region or even the world level. So just because a speech may be knocked out in one contest in one club doesn't mean that you have to ditch that speech and forget it forever. It can absolutely be revived and I've again seen many instances of speeches that were rehashed and tweaked through this contest season to eventually get that speaker to the next level.

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Now, in terms of potential organizers of area speech contests or division or district although I have less experience with those personally, I've certainly been involved in organizing those, but certainly in area contests. If you're considering taking on an area or a club or an area director role next year and want to get involved in the organization of contests, I would say absolutely, book your venue as early as possible. So clubs, it's typically going to just be your standard meeting room. It's not normally going to be a big deal. But for area contests where you could be expecting anywhere between 25 and 60 or more guests to attend, you want to make sure you've got a venue booked and have that sorted as soon as you can Now. Also, you would want to be confirming your chief judge as soon as possible. Now, sometimes this may be your division director or for a club, it might be your area director or it might be other experienced members from your club or area. There are some people around certainly our district and I'm sure in every district who love being chief judges. They thrive on that stuff. So if you know people or can use the club officer training sessions or district leader training sessions to network with people and find out who loves judging, get onto them and get them booked and confirmed as your chief judge straight away.

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You'll also then need to work with your chief judge to determine if you'll be organizing the judges or if they will be. So as long as someone is organizing the judges, there's often a lot of last minute scampering, I suppose, for judges. So this is where area directors and division directors often help each other out, simply because none of us can compete and we are all therefore potentially available to judge as long as there's no one from the clubs. We're in competing in a contest, we're judging, and that particular point of the rule book has come up a few times this contest season, where a number of my club buddies, particularly the Leading Edge Club are competing in other contests, so I've not been able to judge specifically in those contests. So I've not been able to judge specifically in those contests. Again, this is where understanding the rule book can be very helpful and navigating through who's eligible to judge and who is not.

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Also, if you're organizing one of these contests, definitely communicate regularly with the club presidents or your area directors, depending which level of contest you're organizing, and let them know how each club is going to need to support that event. So, whether it's bringing timers or providing sergeant at arms or ballot counters, or judges or catering, whatever it happens to be, you'll need to be in regular communication with the people who are going to be participating. Also, it's very worthwhile keeping in very regular contact with your division director, certainly at the area director level. They can absolutely provide help, and my division director, suzanne Goglin, has been fantastic in terms of her support. So shout out to you, suzanne, and thank you for your help in my contest and certainly all the others in our area and the other divisions that you've helped out in.

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Also, as an organizer, you need to be very aware of the paperwork requirements. As an organizer, you need to be very aware of the paperwork requirements. So each contest in Toastmasters has a whole lot of paperwork that needs to be completed. It's part of the, I suppose, the official documentation. It's one area of the organization that I would love to see an overhaul in. There is literally so much paperwork and I just wonder how much of it could be done electronically and how much of it could be combined or scaled back. But as an indication, you know, for every contest the speakers need to be filling in speaker eligibility forms and speaker profiles so that that content can be used to introduce them.

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For judges, there's ballots and judging sheets for each of the four contests. There's ballot counting sheets, there's timing sheets, there's result sheets, there's scripts. So scripts for the contest chairs, scripts for the chief judge and the assistant chief judge. I was amazed at how much paperwork actually needed to be printed.

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Certainly in Eastern Division it was great that again our area sorry, our division director arranged an afternoon where a few of us got together and mass created, or we created kits for each of the areas so that we all had the relevant paperwork. And even just creating those kits gives you a very thorough understanding of the process and what's required. So until you've done that. Until you have to put those kits together, you really don't have an idea of all the paperwork required. So if you find yourself organising an area contest in particular, definitely get help creating those kits and certainly in Eastern Division you'll hopefully have a kit handed down to you. But yeah, the kits are important Also being organised on the day. So having a run sheet understanding exactly who should be doing what, knowing that you've got people around to delegate to and to ask for help on the day with, I would just say, toastmasters, is the kind of organization where you can absolutely ask for help. Put out the feelers and people will rally. It's amazing how much last minute activity goes on behind the scenes, whether it's club executive or area directors or division directors or a myriad of other helpers who are just there in the background to provide support if it's needed. So that's just some tips for people who might be considering organizing, certainly, an area level contest. I know the requirements for judges get a little bit more specific at higher levels of contests so, having not directly organized one of those yet, I will have to wait till I've been there and done that, until I can talk in detail on that One of the other activities I did, which tied into contest season and was very helpful and I did this several months ago was to attend a judging workshop held by Mark Hunter.

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Now, mark had previously been a winner of the World Championship of Public Speaking and had competed at that level many times. So his thoughts on judging and having been judged at the international level very thoroughly, the way he structured his workshop on how to be a judge and how to be a good, objective, non-biased judge, was a fantastic afternoon. It was very helpful to hear from an experienced Toastmaster how to try to eliminate bias, how to tackle different situations, different scenarios that might come up. For example, if someone speaks about a very controversial subject, are you judging them on the actual content and message? Or if it's offensive to one person, does that necessarily mean it's offensive to the entire audience and how do you score that? And so there was a lot of helpful discussion about how to make those split second judging decisions that can really impact the results of a contest.

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And the other workshop I did sort of related was a speech writing workshop run by Colin Williams, who I interviewed in episode 41 and who is one of my Leading Edge Club buddies and who got to the final 28 of the International Speech Contest this year and, as you'll hear in episode 41, if you haven't heard that one Colin represented Australasia in the World Championship of Public Speaking in Anaheim this year. So the workshop that Colin ran was a speech crafting, speech writing workshop based on his experience. So it was very much analyzing a couple of the speeches that Colin had taken to the World Championships, that Colin had taken to the world championships, and then we got to brainstorm our own speeches and look for seeds of an idea, seeds of a story and seeds of a message that we could weave together into a speech. And after contest season this was such a refreshing change. It was so valuable to hear, you know, an actual, experienced speaker deconstruct their own speeches but then help other members to see how they could craft their own speeches and some techniques that could be used. So I found that workshop very interesting and also I think it helps the judging process because you can get an idea, for you know whether people are focusing on the message or the purpose of the speech or both. And yeah, it just gave me a whole lot more things to think about.

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So that's really a brief overview of my experience of contest season this year and there were some spectacular competitors and some unfortunate disqualifications, all of which make for a awesome contest season, and I can't wait to see how it all plays out at the division level contests, which will take place in about next February or March, just depending which division it is. And so if you haven't yet competed, the contest process can sometimes feel a little bit mysterious, and whether you're competing, supporting or organizing a Toastmasters contest, there's plenty of people in the organisation who can answer any questions you may have. I have learnt so much this year by jumping in and agreeing to help in the various roles, whether it's been judging or being a contest chairs, ballot keepers, sergeant at arms. I've really tried to throw myself into all of the roles, except Chief Judge. I don't quite feel confident being a Chief Judge yet, but maybe next year, and I would encourage you to do the same. If you're in Toastmasters and you intend to be part of this organization for any length of time, the sooner you can get your mind around how contests work and you know how you can potentially support those contests. You'll just learn so much about the contest process, about what makes successful speeches and what makes credible judges. But for now we get a bit of a reprieve until the division and district contest season starts up again next year, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how that all plays out.

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If you're ready to unlock your potential, consider joining a Toastmasters club near you. Check out the Find a Club link on the Toastmasters International website at wwwtoastmastersorg. It's worth visiting a couple of different clubs as a guest to see which club best suits you. If you do take the leap and visit a meeting, I would absolutely love to hear your experience. Feel free to message me at talkativetoastmaster at gmailcom or tag me in the comments if you found this podcast on YouTube, facebook, instagram or Twitter. Thanks for listening to today's show. Head to talkativetoastmastercom, where you'll find the show notes for this and all other episodes, as well as links to some awesome Toastmasters resources. If you found value in today's content, I'd really appreciate if you could share it with friends and colleagues who may be interested or leave a review on iTunes. This helps more people to find us. Until next time, remember the words of Roger Love All speaking is public speaking, whether it's to one person or a thousand. Have a great week.