Inspire your audience
- Time: 8-10 minutes
- Objectives:
- To understand the mood and feeling of your audience on a particular occasion
- To put those feelings into words and inspire the audience, using all the techniques you have learned so far
Tips for New Speakers
The Ice Breaker is the first speech in the Toastmasters Communications Manual. It is expected to run for 4-6 minutes. So the green light will come on at 4 minutes, the orange at 5, and the red at 6 minutes.
As above, you’ll see that the objectives of the Ice Breaker is just to introduce yourself to the rest of the members.
Most people do this as a “biography” style. So you just give a chronology of events in your life. “I was born in Melbourne and moved to Perth when I was seven. I went to high school at blah and did a course here. I’ve worked in here here and here”.
Some people talk about a specific event. I did my ice breaker about the first time I met my wife! Another guy had come to Australia when he was 21 from Pakistan, so he did his talk about his first impressions of Australia.
One guy (a big tough guy!) had a hobby where he grew Bonsai Trees. He did his whole talk about that. How he got into it, what it involved, people he had met through it, and why he was still doing it. It was very interesting.
This is your first time getting in front of the audience and you may find that you feel nervous once you get up there. So the best advice is just pick a topic that you feel comfortable about, whatever that happens to be.
For instance, you might want to tell us why you like ice cream, or where you went on holidays most recently and why, or tell us about your family, or where you work and what you do there. The main thing is to have something that you are familiar and comfortable with, so you can focus on how you deliver it.
At the end of the day, the objective is just to tell us something about you. Anything at all. You’ll be very surprised at how fast four minutes can whiz by!
