This is one of my favorite scenes from WKRP. I can see someone doing something like this for a Table Topic in Toastmasters
One of our more advanced toastmasters mentioned last week gave us a demonstration of how to make a proper introduction. Although I got the gist of it, I wanted to learn more. Here is what I found from the Traffic Toastmaster site:
The T-I-S Formula for Introductions
Like a well-prepared speech, an introduction should be natural, smooth and free of grammatical errors and oral stammers. An ideal method is the T-I-S formula taught by Dale Carnegie in his public speak classes: T-I-S stands for Topic, Importance, and Speaker. When making an introduction, remember to maintain eye contact with the audience, not the speaker.
- Topic. This is the title and purpose of the speech.
- Importance. This explains the relavance of the speech to the audience. It can specify what the audience will gain or learn from listening.
- Speaker. This tells the audience why the speaker is qualified to speak on the topic, but includes only qualifications pertinent to the topic and the audience.
To see how this works, let’s pretend we are going to introduce John Doe who will speak on automotive safety to a group of driver education students. Using the T-I-S method, an introduction might sound something like this:
“Good evening and welcome to tonight’s symposium, titled ‘Arrive Alive.’ We all need to know how to operate a motor vehicle safely, because statistically out of the 40 people here tonight, 10 of us will be involved in as serious accident during our life. By reducing the number of accidents we not only save lives, but we lower the cost of insurance premiums.“Our speaker is the former director of the National Transportation Council. He designed and patented the first three-point safety belt and was instrumental in developing the airbag, now a mandatory requirement for all passenger cars. He has been a licensed driver since age 11 and has never been involved in an accident. Please help me welcome John Doe!”
Great suggestion and well worth remembering,
This is a video of a John Zimmer, a toastmaster in Europe, on his site he’s broken down the contents of his speech and his thought process behind why he did certain things. His commentary is just fascinating as his speech.
