In Toastmasters there’s no end to the kind of project we can take on to practise leadership and communication skills. Apart from contests that bear a competitive edge of speaking before our group, there are also individual projects and leadership projects that can take  us beyond the club.

My next project in the Pathways program is in Level 4 of Presentation Mastery. Having completed the elective of Writing a Compelling Blog, my next project is Managing a Difficult Audience. The idea is to present material while handling the variables of  the talker, the interrupter and keeping the meeting going. That’s the essential project in this level that others in our club have already successfully completed.

While it was certainly challenging to keep blogging twice a week for a month, I know this upcoming one will present different obstacles. Our Toastmasters group will role play those variables though they are quite an accommodating group who listen well.

Nevertheless it’s practise for the time we may manage a meeting where those factors are at play, and I’ve certainly seen a few of such challenges in some of the many meetings I’ve attended. The skill of the leader handling those well leads to a successful meeting.

For this project, I need to come up with a plan, build my material and then be prepared to handle those situations. The Education VP in our club knows my planned approach and now I wait to see which meeting date I will present.

Next task, build my meeting material, reread the project information, and get ready.