“And the winner is…”
If you’re a Toastmaster who has competed in a speech contest, you’ve probably felt your heart race as the winners were announced. Maybe you were fortunate to hear your name called as a winner, or perhaps you’ve felt the heartsink of being left sitting while the winners take the stage.
As a five-time competitor in the speech contests, I can attest to the anxiety that comes with the winners being announced. Months of effort come down to that one moment of judgment. Honestly, I have been very fortunate to do as well as I have, but I also know the pain that comes from falling short.
Here is a part of the problem with the speech contests in Toastmasters: once the winners are announced, those who didn’t win start to feel bad. They are flooded with emotions they don’t want to feel. They start to discount their speech, they feel their efforts were wasted, they start to think the contest is biased.
I know these feelings well. Here’s what I’ve personally experienced (and hidden) over the years:
- Resentment towards the winners
- Frustration that I didn’t achieve my goal
- Disbelief that my speech didn’t win
- The desire to quit on my quest
All these emotions race through you, while you are smiling at people taking photos of you.
However, there is a hidden prize…
Rarely after a loss have I stopped to reflect on what I gained from the speech contest. What was the true value of being a contestant?
During the past few weeks, on the back of another contest ‘loss’, I’ve reflected on this question. Here’s what I realized:
1) You improve faster
When you practice the same speech over and over again, your skill as a speaker starts to accidentally improve. You focus on tiny components of your speaking, and you notice that people respond differently as you change your approach. Each time you take the stage, it gets easier to stand there.
Something amazing happens when a speaker does the same speech more than 100 times. The actual speech becomes better, but the speaker becomes more composed, more streamlined. The speech becomes a part of who you are, like a musician playing one of their classic songs.
I actually think that in Toastmasters we make a huge mistake by not repeating the same speech over and over again. In our regular meetings, we give a speech once and move on. But in almost no other discipline does this happen. Musicians play songs thousands of times, dancers rehearse and perform routines each day, writers rewrite and edit constantly.
Being a speech contestant gives you this same opportunity to improve.
2) You learn to take on feedback
The part of practicing for a speech contest that nobody explains to you is that you will get a LOT of differing opinions about your speech. People will love it, and hate it. They will compare it to previous speeches, and tell you that they’re not ‘feeling’ it. What they rarely do, however, is give you a roadmap of how to fix it.
I have personally found that people give you feedback, and you are left with puzzles to figure out. They aren’t skilled enough to offer you the answers, only clues. It is up to you to obsess and rework the speech until it’s better.
Learning to take on feedback from many people at once is a tough gig. You have to smile and thank them when sometimes you feel like screaming. You are at your wit’s end, and feel like giving up, and still, people keep telling you to work at it.
But the more feedback you can take, the better you will get. It’s a not-so-secret formula that all skilled speakers know and use.
3) You build character
This might be the most unexpected benefit of competing in a speech contest. There is something that changes inside you when you don’t hit your goal. You either give up, or you come back. Either way, you are making a choice that affects your character.
I have learned through several years of competing that there are a ton of behind-the-scenes aspects to the contests. You must be friendly and courteous to the other contestants. You must be respectful of the judges and their decisions. You must show up and give your best every time. All these actions start to change who you are. And the longer you continue to do it, the more it becomes a part of your character.
The past two years, in particular, I can feel my character changing. I am acting more like a champion, rather than just a speech contest winner. This is a subtle, yet crucial difference. The champion has been through all the same difficulties as those who don’t win. But the difference is they have changed their character along the way.
Not all those who win are champions. There are flukes and lucky breaks. There are those who fade away soon after claiming the top spot. But those who last are those who display character. They are leaders who can speak.
The journey continues
Every time you ‘lose’ a contest, people will say they are ‘sorry’ you didn’t win. They don’t often tell you that you have changed and grown as a speaker. But if you listen to yourself, you can feel that you are growing.
My mentor Danajaya Hettiarachchi gave me this sage advice before this year’s contest “Life is a journey, and the journey itself is your home”. For me, I am finally starting to understand what he means by this.
I can see now that the true gift of not yet winning is that you get to find new ways to become better.
The journey up the mountain is the prize.
Leave a Reply