On the the keynote sessions at the recent Toastmasters Convention was presented by Bob Hooey -  "The Ideas Man". His speech was entitied "The Power of One – you can do and will make a difference" – a very relevent topic to leaders in Toastmasters.

He gave us all a copy of one of his books – "The Power of One". He has also made several books and articles available for free on his website. This includes several full length books on leadership, management and self-development.

I highly recommend some of the downloads – so visit http://www.inthecompanyofleaders.com/TM.htm to grab some of the articles.

This list is from a brain-storming session we held at the recent World Champions Edge summit in Calgary. 

1. No message
2. To many messages
3. Ingoring your audience
4. No pausing
5. ?chicken soup? stories (using other common stores and not using your own stories)
6. Making yourself the hero
7. Stepping on the laugh
8. Explaining why, not how
9. Not being yourself
10. Making assumptions (about your audience)
11. Being too serious
12. Forcing (irrelevent) humour into your speech
13. Repetitive gestures
14. Winging your speech
15. Not customizing your message to your audience

In case you are wondering why my blog has been so quiet, it is because I spent the last two weeks at the Toastmasters annual convention, and the World Champions Edge summit. One of the great things about Champs Edge is that it costs less than $30 per month, and in addition to the monthly CD's, weekly lessons and access to the online forums, they put on a full day members only training at no cost! The value of the training I received at the summit easily covered the cost of the annual subscription.

Yes, I did have every intention of sharing my thoughts on my blog while I was at the convention, but it was a very busy time, and I simply did not have the time to write anything (ok, a pretty poor excuse, I know).

The convention was an amazing experience. If you ever want to network with people from all over the world, this is the place to do so. We also had the opportunity to rub shoulders with several of the world champs of public speaking, as well as to meet some of the Toastmasters directors. Best of all, I got to meet several of my online friends in person (hi to Sherri, Able and Rich).

Over my next few blogs I will share some thoughts and learnings from the convention.

By the way, here are some of the photos.

How to view your club’s Distinguished Club Programme report. If you want to know how your club is performing on the DCP, watch the video. Goals are only achieved through planning and monitoring, and the DCP is a great tool to monitor your club’s progress.

Hint, click on the square icon on the bottom right to view in full screen.

Download the podcast.

Note that these are my own videos and are not officially sanctioned by Toastmasters International. Use them for your benefit, but use them at your own risk!