Mastering Toast 101

When I sat down after being Table Topics Master, I was flustered and irritated at how it went.  I was focused on how horribly I thought I had done.  While I was picking apart my performance, the rest of the group was talking about the next week's meeting.  The last part of every Toastmasters meeting is filling the next week's roles.  So, when someone asked if I would fill the ToastMaster role for the next week, I jumped at the chance to 'redeem' myself.

The ToastMaster is the role I expected to be the most difficult.  And while it was difficult, it was not nearly as hard for me as being the Table Topics Master had been.  I knew what theme I wanted, I had an idea I wanted to share with the group... I was excited.  I also knew it would give a second chance at the transitioning that I was so focused on from the week before.

The theme I picked was Music.  As ToastMaster I was required to give a brief intro to the theme and why I picked it, which was cake.  The speakers that signed up to give speeches are seasoned Toastmasters, and knew what they were doing.  My Table Topics master is an officer for our charter, and a friend, so I was comfortable going to him with questions on procedure and when the best time to present my idea would be and such.

It was a lot of work.  To hunt everyone down on email and IM and verify their speech numbers and titles and I worried a bit if I was being overly anal, but overall I was pleased to be The Organizer.  I'm a Virgo.  I organize, it's what I do, without even thinking about it most of the time.  And it can get on people's nerves, so when I am ASKED to organize, I do a little happy dance inside every time.

So my idea was to have a potluck for our last meeting of the year.  I love Potlucks.  When I was still in Support here at work we had potlucks all the time, but since moving to Engineering - I haven't had one, and I miss them.  With Thanksgiving right around the corner (this was, again, a couple weeks ago) big, happy meals were on my mind - but I was pretty sure the next meeting (the Wednesday before Thanksgiving) would have a pretty sparse attendance, and one week isn't really a fair amount of time to prepare for a potluck - so I spoke with a couple officers and we agreed on the last meeting of the year, December 15th.  And they said the best time to present it would be toward the end of the meeting.  Since we also needed to take a vote/discuss whether to have a meeting the Wednesday before Thanksgiving as well, I needed to make an announcement anyway before we started filling out the next weeks roles.

So the day came, and I mastered people's toast.  And I worked on transitions, completely forgot about working up a short 'announcement' for each speaker, and shook hands a bazillion times trading ownership of the podium.  Oh, and I said "Um" eight times and used bad grammer once.  :(  The bad grammer usage was called out by our WAG, whose first language isn't English.  It's funny the things you say without realizing it's bad grammer, but someone who had to learn grammer hears it.  The sentence was "If you dug in my ipod right now you would find...{insert eclectic music list here.}"  The WAG pointed out it should have been "If you dig."  And she was right.  I have spent a lot of time thinking about that.  And I wonder if "if you were to dig" would be even better...  /shrug

And then it came time to talk about the next meeting, and discuss with the group what we wanted to do.  We settled on a casual, table topics only, meeting and then moved on to my idea.

I said that there was an idea to do a Potluck, but I didn't want to say it was absolutely happening because I was Toastmaster and I said so... so we would be voting... and then asked "Does anyone NOT want to have a Potluck."

That was my second *headdesk* moment.  As someone laughingly pointed out, it was like asking "WHO HERE DOESN'T LIKE CHRISTMAS?!?!?" with my eyes all squinty and searching for someone to shake my finger at.

I'm not sure how it happened that way.  I had an entirely different presentation of the idea and vote scripted and written down on paper in front of me.  It was cool and casual and I was proud of it... but in the moment I spaced and got self-conscious about presenting my idea to the group... so I babbled and blurted whatever came to mind first.

I like to think that I covered it well by laughing and saying that we had already gone over the fact that I was an evil genius...but I. Was. Mortified.  I had done precisely what I was most scared of - given an impression with my words that was opposite of what I was trying to convey.

...and then I realized that noone cared.  That noone was judging me.  That they understood exactly what had just happened, and it was okay.  Or maybe they bought that I was trying to be funny.  Either way, I took a deep breath and on the exhale felt much lighter. 

...But it didn't stop me from being supremely grateful that the next meeting was only Table Topics and was being run by someone else.

And, even though I can see now that I was actually 'worse' (on paper) at being the ToastMaster, it is still the Table Topics Master roll that I am stuck on.  That I think will affect the most change in my life and communication skills...    It is what I have a driving need to do again and again and again until I get it right.  Maybe it's because I am stuck on this transition thing.  Because I think that is what I need to work on the most right now, and being the TTM is a focused study in JUST that.  No other bells or whistles or responsibilities to detract from the lesson I am convinced I need to learn right now...

At this point I have done all but two of the roles in a meeting.  I will fill one of those next week as the Time Keeper.  The other is the one that scares me the most...and I'm not sure if I will go ahead and face that fear or wait until I am more comfortable with Table Topics and ToastMaster'ing before I sign up to be an Evaluator.