I went to a kick off meeting this week. I’ve lost count of how many I’ve gone to. Some were very successful. Others… no. Not.
Many of those I’ve attended were corporate start-ups. I schedule my own working hours so I can attend these during the day, which makes me special? No, not really. Just available. There are a lot of Toastmasters up in Cleveland who can arrange their work schedules to go down the street to a site just as easily as I can drive up about 60 miles.
I have never been in charge of these meetings, but I think I’ve had enough experience to talk about these things and why I think you should make the effort to get to kick off meetings.
Today, on the table – topics for Toastmasters kicks the tires of the kickoff meeting.
[INTRO]
Kick off meetings sound like they may be something like the kickoff of a football game. Everyone’s in place, everyone’s waiting for the ball to be in the air and we take off and show our stuff. We can take that ball all the way to the end zone. Go for the touchdown.
That’s not a bad way to look at it. A well-done and organized kick off meeting has half a dozen or so people who know Toastmasters. We know the format, we know where we fit on the agenda. Organization? Who needs that?
This is an issue I’m having with my club and I’ve seen this in the kick offs as well: we’re gonna wing it. We’ll get a couple of DTMs, an area governor and or a division officer, and we’ll make the magic happen.
The magic does not happen.
Let’s go kick the tires of a kickoff meeting.
Kicking the Driver’s side front tire:
A good meeting has the team prepared in advance. I will know if I’m giving the speech or if I’m doing table topics. This gives me the opportunity to prepare and refine my speech. I have a speech I’ve used at 3 kick-offs. I must admit, every time I’ve given this speech, it’s bombed. Really bombed. Bad. Nuclearly bad.
So if I’m going to be the speaker, I’m going to need some time to write a new speech and maybe give it to my club. I can test drive it before I get up before a group of non-Toastmasters. I can be sure to get the sales pitch to work.
I recently had a surprise at a kickoff – I was the speaker.
Knowing that my last kick off speech is so bad and it had been so long since I’d given it – I wasn’t going back there. I pulled out my CC and found an empty speech (Visual Aids) (that completed that CC!) and started thinking. Smoke might have been coming out of my ears. I created an impromptu speech about giving impromptu speeches. I used my hat and scarf (it was cold in Cleveland up by the lake!) and a CC and CL manual as my visual aids.
Saying that this was a pretty good speech may allow you to think that everything I just said wasn’t true. I had a great crowd and they rolled with me – even when I picked up the wrong manual mid speech and then whispered to an area governor across the table “I didn’t really do that, right?”
I think I pulled it off – I did a lot of humor based on a table topics list I’d just done at my club last week. But boy o boy, that was not fun.
Passenger side front tire: Food at a kick off.
I have mixed feelings about food at kick off meetings. If the meeting is at lunch, then yes. If the meeting has the space to put the food out, then yes. If the meeting site was changed in less than 24 hours before the meeting, then NO. If the meeting is in the evening and is a community club looking for charter members, then yes, probably.
Food is distracting. That smell pulls people’s attention away. They’re trying to decide between pepperoni and sausage, I’m trying to not eat because I want to be able to tal...