Humorous Speech Contest 2022 - Lessons Learnt
Every year after a Toastmasters' contest, I have a bunch of learnings to progress as a better speaker and a better person irrespective of winning or loosing in the contest. This year was quite interesting because even before the contest I learnt a few lessons. The Rehearsal Recordings When I was listening to my rehearsal recordings during the first few days, when I was not too confident with the script it sounded humorous. However when I was too much familiar with the script, I could feel a sense of overconfidence exhibited as slight arrogance when I listened to the recordings. Voila! this turned out to be a lesson for this year. No evaluator would dare to point this out to a speaker. How Humour Works on Stage In a humorous speech the audience should recognise the speaker as one among them and relate to each and every word uttered. A tone of over confidence or arrogance will spoil the whole show. So I had to work hard to underplay my tone and body language to bring back the humour...
