Accountability: Public Speaking

Hello!

With the sprint rolling on I need to find a reason to keep the blog rolling between the backlog grooming, sprint reviews and retrospectives. The way I've decided to do this is by writing 'Accountability chapters', essentially updating you with what I've done so far and how using agile and scrum has improved my professional development.

In these sessions I'll update the charted backlog to keep you abreast of my progress but also give an in-depth update on what I've achieved, often breaking down individual items, looking at impediments stopping my progress, successes and documenting what I plan to do next, kind of like a daily stand-up report.

So, as the sprint is in motion, let's take a look at a big thing that happened. I won a ribbon!

Yes, now I understand to some this may appear underwhelming, however for many years I've been crippled by nerves and anxiety in social situations. With this new information you may be unsurprised to know that I am terrified of public speaking, ending up resembling some kind of stuttering wreck increasing in speed until I mumble my way to completion and sit down shaking.

So, by putting public speaking improvement on my backlog and prioritizing it as one of the epics I feel most important to my vision of an agile Timelord I was forced to do something about this. In my new role in the professional space I am having to speak more and I would one day like to be called on to speak in a professional setting, to other team members and perhaps one day in a local TEDx talk.

Public speaking is important and by speaking to other members of my team alongside researching techniques to improve public speaking I have decided to trial speaking at the local Toastmasters association.

Toastmasters International is a nonprofit educational organization that operates clubs worldwide for the purpose of helping members improve their communication, public speaking, and leadership skills.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toastmasters_International)

The ribbon I won was for the Table Topics segment of the meeting, as I'm currently not a member of the chapter this was the only part of the meeting of which I could compete.

"Table topics" is an extemporaneous speaking exercise where the speaker speaks "off the cuff"; that is, the speaker responds to a question or topic that is not known beforehand. The Table Topics Master presents the topic, calls on an individual, and then that individual has 1 to 2 minutes to respond.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toastmasters_International)

My speaking was reviewed as engaging, humorous, insightful with a positive grasp on the English language. Critiques on my speech were my speed and I said 'ummm' once. Safe to say that this gave me a huge boost.

Now in the spirit of scrum and agile I must review the outcome and improve what I've done, making my speaking skills improve incrementally. I'm in two minds whether to subscribe to the Toastmasters but I feel joining would be a positive experience.

With my experience complete, I can mark it down on my task board. The blue indicates 'in progress', green is 'done' and dark purple will be 'done done' and awarded to me by my scrum team.


Feeling pretty awesome about progress made in the sprint and I hope to continue this rolling along. If I continue with Toastmasters I will work my way through the tasks and 10 assigned speeches, in its own way is gamified and agile like in their design, in that a large task is broken down into small accomplishments, each valuable unto themselves.

Will I return to Toastmasters? Likely. Has this lit a fire under me that will hopefully see me deliver a TED talk? Definitely. One sprint at a time.

Thanks for reading;

The Noble Award Ribbon Winning Agile Timelord