Page 24 - September 2017 Voices

I coached were all educators at some level. They looked out past the stage lights and “connected”
were accustomed to presenting large blocks of with the audience for a full minute while Leila
information as handouts or Power Point slides, knelt to have her eyes on the same level as the
and their audiences were expected to assimilate cat. Her close was a strong call to action with
it. Pancake looking at the audience through those
In a TED talk, the supporting information deep dark eyes.
remains mostly secondary to the talk. I must
have been rather unpopular when I told them Taking Toastmasters outside the club setting
they had to chop away at the spreadsheets and has become part of my life. I have spoken to
charts. Another part of the exercise included most of the Roseburg area service clubs on
learning that vocal presentations are processed behalf of Toastmasters. I speak to audiences as
on one side of the brain and visuals on the other. part of my Senior Healthcare business, and I am
Once you move someone from left brain to right delivering talks in a series of one-hour seminars
brain, it’s difficult to move them back. on Medicare and all it’s permutations.
One of my favorite tasks was coaching Leila I believe that it’s just part of being a good
Goulet, who works at Wildlife Safari outside of Toastmaster to ask people to come visit your club,
Roseburg. She had hand-raised a Cheetah cub contribute to making every meeting fun, and
named Pancake. She had some good photos when someone does appear, have the courage
and graphics, but I suggested that I could take to ask for the deal . . . “Would you like to make
some new ones. The photo on the prevous page this a regular part of your week?”
was shot through a feeding port and the young I had the misfortune of being told a few
animal was trying to figure out how to eat that years ago that a friend thought he had done
tasty-looking arm holding the camera in their something wrong or offended someone at my
enclosure. Toastmasters club because no one had ever asked
The talk Leila finally gave included several him straight-out, “would you like to join us?”
photos I had taken. At the end, it featured a quote I recently did a comparison, belonging to
she really wanted the audience to remember: Toastmasters for a whole year is less expensive
than one semester unit at a community college.
Jim Daniel joined Toastmasters in 1997. He is a
No one will protect what they don’t care member of Roseburg Toastmasters and Wonderful
about, and no one will care about what Oregon Wordmasters. He can often be seen with his
they have never experenced. favorite camera taking photos at District events.
You can watch Leila’s TEDx Roseburg talk by
Sir David Attenborough clicking here.

I spoke with Cathey Armillas about it, and
we decided to put the quote on the screen. Leila
said it and repeated it as a Wildlife Safari trainer Today TED talks are viewed more
than two million times a day and,

in my opinion, they have become the

gold standard in public speaking

and presentation skills. It also

means that, like it or not, your next

presentation will be compared to a

TED talk.

— Carmine Gallo —
brought out the cheetah Leila had hand raised.
Pancake dutifully sat on the big red dot and

24 VOLUME 4 ISSUE 3 SEPTEMBER, 2017