If you could tell us who you are with 3 pictures, which ones would you choose?
That was Vera’s brilliant idea for her Ice Breaker speech at our last meeting. The Ice Breaker is the first speech of all Toastmasters members. It is a challenge for many new speakers, and a real treat for the other club members. The idea is that the speaker talks about a very familiar topic, themselves.
The official objectives of the speech are:
- To start speaking in front of an audience
- To discover the speaking skills you have and find out which speaking skills you can improve.
In my opinion the Ice Breaker has two more important objectives:
- Let your fellow club member get to know you
- To start thinking about your personal stories
So many speakers create powerful speeches using personal stories. See Bill Clinton’s I Met A Girl’ speech about Hillary at the 2016 Democratic Convention for a perfect example of this technique.
Vera painted three pictures for us using words. She admitted at the end of her speech that we didn’t know where she grew up, what she studied or how she makes her living now. But through her pictures we got to know who Vera is – a person who approaches life honestly and doesn’t want to miss out on experiencing its emotional highs, lows and whatever it throws at her. She was inspiring and entertaining.
At the end of the evening, Michael, a special person in Vera’s life, presented her with the Ice Breaker Ribbon, to mark this first milestone in the Toastmasters journey.
This was just one of the great events of that meeting. To read more about what else happened see the Bamberg Toastmasters Facebook page for great pictures and a wonderful summary of the fun evening.