Latest / The Starfish Storytellers / Episode 9: Storytelling from the Podium - Achieving Public Speaking Mastery with Bob Avallone

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Episode 9: Storytelling from the Podium - Achieving Public Speaking Mastery with Bob Avallone · The Starfish Storytellers

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Starfish Storytellers, the podcast that makes a difference one story at a time by bringing storytelling to life.
• 0:07
  This speech is about my interest in reading the type of books that I read over the years and my favorite authors. My interest in reading as a recreation was supposed to school started with Superman.
• 0:38
  I really devoured them and I know some people say that's not real reading, but I found that it got me interested in reading. I read everything. I read the stories and I read the letters to the editor.
• 0:53
  When I got to high school and college, mostly I had to read the assigned reading and I didn't have a chance to really choose what I read, but I mostly liked what I was assigned. Occasionally you get assigned something that I didn't like and I just have to read it because that was the assignment.
• 1:13
  When I graduated from college I now had the opportunity to read for fun, read what I like and I quickly developed a favorite genre which was science fiction and then a favorite author within the genre Isaac Asimov.
• 1:31
  Isaac Asimov was a Russian immigrant. He came over to this country at two years old so he's pretty much an American and his family owned a candy store in New York City and when he got old enough he was required to work there.
• 1:46
  Besides candy they also sold magazines and some of the magazines were science fiction magazines and he was allowed to read them so long as he didn't disturb the magazine in other words so that his family could still sell the book.
• 2:02
  He got real interested in science fiction. He started to submit his own stories and after some false starts he was successful and he began selling stories.
• 2:15
  He grew up and he was still writing but he didn't feel he could make a living strictly writing so he got a PhD in chemistry and got a job at Boston University School of Medicine teaching biochemistry.
• 2:30
  After some time he got more successful at writing and he was able to drop the professorship and strictly write. He's well known for robot novels. He developed the three laws of robotics.
• 2:47
  He also wrote a series called the Foundation series which was Future History of the Human Race but he kind of avoided aliens and there's a reason for this.
• 3:01
  His editor believed that when you portray aliens they should be portrayed as inferior to the humans rather than superior. He didn't agree with this so to avoid the conflict he just didn't write about aliens until he finally got famous enough and powerful enough he could do what he wanted
• 3:24
  and he wrote a novel called The Gods Themselves which had both humans and aliens in them and it was very successful. He won the Hugo Award which is the science fiction equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize
• 3:40
  and he braced out into other genres. He wrote a lot of science facts for popular for the layman and he actually ventured on to probably just about every genre you can think of. He wrote over 500 books.
• 3:55
  I didn't read them all. I maybe read a hundred out of all of them but then he died in the year 1992 and so my favorite author is gone. No more books by Isaac Asimov. I better find another favorite author.
• 4:12
  By that time I had changed my favorite genre and was now Mystery Detective and I found Robert B. Parker was a novelist based in Boston. What I like about him was he wrote about his characters mostly in Boston.
• 4:32
  They live in Boston mostly Boston, greater Boston vicinity. Similar to Asimov he started out as a professor. He got a PhD in English and he taught for a while at Northeastern until he got successful enough. I guess this is a story a lot of authors have.
• 4:48
  He was successful enough to have the writing carry his income. He had three detectives that he wrote about. Spencer with no first name given, detective based in Boston. It was Jesse Stone who was a police chief of a small town in the North Shore, fictional town called Paradise.
• 5:09
  Sonny Randall was a female detective who was actually written to be played by Helen Hunt. This movie never came off but he continued with the character anyway. He also wrote in Westerns. I probably read almost everything he wrote.
• 5:27
  He died in 2010 which left me again without a favorite author. I've been searching around for another favorite. As I'm finishing up here I've talked a lot about fiction and I also read nonfiction. I particularly like history, biography and political books.
• 5:51
  So that is my story and back to you.
• 6:21
  I'm your host and passionate about storytelling. I'm actually on a mission to raise up the next generation of storytellers. We've named ourselves the starfish storytellers after the starfish story. The moral of the starfish story is based on the power of one.
• 6:41
  No matter how big the challenge, each action we take makes a difference and has an impact. One step, one starfish or one story at a time. Every episode we welcome a new storyteller who will share their story meant to inspire and connect with you.
• 6:55
  Then we'll break it down and offer tips for any listeners who are ready to tell their own stories. So thanks for tuning in. Now let's get started.
• 7:04
  Today's episode is about storytelling from the podium, achieving public speaking mastery. And with me today is Bob Avaloni, a longtime active member of Toastmasters.
• 7:15
  Toastmasters International is a non-profit educational organization that teaches public speaking and leadership skills through a worldwide network of clubs.
• 7:24
  And Bob is a member of the Lexington, Massachusetts chapter which is where we met. Welcome to the podcast. We're happy to have you.
• 7:32
  I'm happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
• 7:35
  So we'd like to get started by meeting our guests. Would you like to introduce yourself to our listeners?
• 7:41
  Tell a little bit about myself.
• 7:44
  Yes.
• 7:45
  I'm a retired software engineer. For many years I worked at various companies in the greater Boston area and as an independent consultant.
• 7:54
  I've been retired for about six years. Besides Toastmasters, the other activities they have is being involved in my town as a, in the government in my town as a town meeting member and other public service.
• 8:09
  And as a political activist, I'm a member of the Democratic Town Committee.
• 8:16
  I live in Lexington with my wife, Jan, and we have one son, Michael, who lives in New York City and works in New York City as a software engineer at NYU.
• 8:31
  Nice. Nice.
• 8:33
  So thank you for sharing your speech. As you were speaking, I was thinking good storytellers are also good readers and active readers.
• 8:46
  Being able to tell a good story, you have to know what a good story is and enjoying reading is really important.
• 8:55
  Good point.
• 8:58
  So, you know, from being a Toastmaster as well, you know, I've learned being a good communicator and a good public speaker can help in so many areas like advancing a career, growing a business, forming strong connections.
• 9:12
  Being able to speak publicly and comfortable with public speaking can help you promote ideas and it can move people to act.
• 9:21
  But in order to do it well, you have to spend a fair amount of time in front of people, in front of an audience delivering a picture and idea.
• 9:28
  A lot of folks have a lot of fear of public speaking. There's actually a very high number in the population, about 77% of the population.
• 9:37
  It causes them anxiety. In a class that I teach, I have a slide that lists like all the fears that people have and public speaking is at the top.
• 9:45
  And there's like fear of death by something else is near the bottom. So fear of public speaking trumps death for some reason.
• 9:52
  But you know and I know that you need practice. By practicing, you can overcome.
• 9:58
  And a great place to go to do that is at Toastmasters.
• 10:03
  So I was hoping maybe you could talk a little bit about your journey from when you became a Toastmaster and, you know, how long have you been a member?
• 10:12
  Or have this been the only group that you've been a member of? And, you know, why did you join?
• 10:17
  Good question. I first joined in around 2000. I was an independent solver consultant and I was underemployed in.
• 10:27
  I had some time. Meetings were Thursday at noon.
• 10:32
  I joined to, frankly, improve my net interview skills because I was trying to get new jobs.
• 10:42
  And also, even though I was software engineer, most of the time you're sitting at your desk working alone.
• 10:47
  You do have to make presentations. So I wanted to get help with that.
• 10:51
  And I enjoyed it as well. And I was a member for about four years until I got a full-time job and couldn't make the meeting.
• 10:58
  So I dropped out. When I retired, I went right back to it again because I kind of missed it.
• 11:04
  At this point, I didn't need it for my work, but I needed it for my application of government service and political activism.
• 11:12
  Plus the socialization and meeting people.
• 11:18
  So I was looking up what is a Toastmaster. I was on the Toastmaster site and I was looking up the history of Toastmasters.
• 11:31
  It's been around for a long time since I think the early 1900s, I think.
• 11:36
  Yeah. A Toastmaster is somebody responsible for proposing toasts, introducing speakers, making formal announcements.
• 11:44
  So I teach a storytelling class and I use a lot of the Toastmaster content in the slides that I use, cited, of course.
• 11:55
  And I use a lot of different tools that come from Toastmasters to help guide people in how to write speeches.
• 12:02
  When you are going to write a speech for presentation at Toastmasters, or even if you have to do a presentation for a town meeting,
• 12:11
  what is your process?
• 12:14
  My process for writing a speech is to, I may just speak it extemporaneously, depending on the subject.
• 12:25
  I'll do some research and take some notes, try to have bullet points, and then I'll practice it two or three times as I practice.
• 12:33
  I might modify the bullet points and I'll record myself. I used to do it on my phone.
• 12:42
  Audio and I do it on my computer video and audio. And I'll play it and I'll do it a few times and adjust it as I go along.
• 12:51
  Other people actually write down every word and then they read the speech.
• 12:56
  And that's fine for some people. I find that that's a little stilted and it's a little more natural if you're speaking extemporarily from notes.
• 13:06
  As a result, it's a little different every time I give it.
• 13:10
  So I, as you can see, I use notes.
• 13:15
  And one of the reasons I had come to Toastmasters was to eventually practice so that I could deliver speeches without notes.
• 13:23
  I spend a fair amount of time when I teach in front of people.
• 13:27
  And I've always wanted to be able to deliver what I'm talking about without notes.
• 13:33
  And so you're suggesting that having, just having bullets in front of you still, you can still look down at them, but you're not just reading it.
• 13:43
  I'll tell you the truth. The notes are just kind of a backup.
• 13:48
  If I give it a few times and I'm familiar with it, especially if it's about my life, I can pretty much not, don't need the notes.
• 13:56
  I, you probably know it. I didn't really, I didn't really go, looked out of the much as I was speaking.
• 14:03
  When you became a Toastmaster, were you just primarily going to the meetings at the chapter?
• 14:11
  Have you done service for the meeting at higher levels? Have you gone to any of the, like, Toastmaster conventions?
• 14:20
  Have you done any of that?
• 14:21
  I haven't done any Toastmaster conventions. Occasionally I'll go to the, they have contests at the next level, at the area level.
• 14:32
  Most of our members haven't been involved in the management of the club beyond our own club.
• 14:39
  I've also gone to other club meetings to compare what they do.
• 14:43
  When I was down in Florida, we, before we had the, we now do hybrid meetings.
• 14:49
  We had Stripley in person. I went to the local club in this town.
• 14:54
  I was staying and they said, well, you're a Toastmaster. You can have a role like anyone else.
• 14:58
  And they invited me to participate right off.
• 15:01
  Because if you're a Toastmaster with one club, you can go to any club and you can have a role.
• 15:08
  When you went to a Toastmaster competition, what was that like?
• 15:14
  It's been a few years since I've done it. They give you a topic and you have to speak on it.
• 15:21
  You know, you've got a time frame. You have to make the minimum, you've got to be within the time frame.
• 15:25
  You automatically eliminate it if you go shot along.
• 15:29
  And then there's another group of people. I think I've also been a, a value-aided.
• 15:33
  And then there's a group of evaluators. They evaluate the speeches and rate them.
• 15:38
  Each of the, maybe have three evaluators and they give everybody a score.
• 15:42
  And that's how they come up with a winner.
• 15:45
  How, how big was the competition? Was there, you know, 20 people, 100 people?
• 15:49
  How big was the one, the ones you've been to?
• 15:51
  There were only maybe three people competing. We wouldn't have time to have like a hundred people.
• 15:58
  So were the speeches longer?
• 16:00
  No, they're usually like, like the one I gave five to seven minutes.
• 16:05
  Okay, cool.
• 16:08
  So you were talking about evaluator for any of our listeners who have never been to a Toastmaster meeting, you know,
• 16:15
  and maybe they're interested in exploring this and, and, you know, becoming better public speakers.
• 16:21
  What would someone expect when they walk into a Toastmaster meeting? What, like, what will happen?
• 16:28
  For the first time as a guest?
• 16:30
  Yeah, yeah.
• 16:31
  So in our club at least, and I'm sure the other clubs, we try to make people feel welcome.
• 16:36
  The officers will greet the individual and how, how you do welcome to our club.
• 16:41
  What, what's your interest? Why did you decide to come? How did you hear about us?
• 16:46
  And the, as a guest, generally as a first time guest, you'll be asked to, during the formal meeting,
• 16:54
  the informal session starts and then you start the formal meeting.
• 16:58
  The guests will get like 30 seconds to introduce themselves.
• 17:01
  Why did you come and tell something about yourself?
• 17:04
  And they're also eligible to participate in table topics.
• 17:11
  This is impromptu speeches that are on random subjects.
• 17:16
  The table topic master, like, example of a subject was that I used recently is,
• 17:22
  tell us you believe there's life in other planets.
• 17:26
  If you had a time machine, where would you go?
• 17:29
  And they're eligible and if they're optionally, they can participate.
• 17:34
  But in order to give speeches and being an evaluator or participate in other roles,
• 17:38
  then you have to be a member.
• 17:40
  You have to become a member? Yeah, okay.
• 17:43
  Okay.
• 17:44
  One of the things that I do in the class that I teach is I use, like, a table topics list
• 17:51
  to give to students.
• 17:54
  So we do, you know, about 45 minutes of instruction and then about 45 minutes of people
• 17:59
  actually crafting speeches and then delivering them.
• 18:02
  And so we give them table topics to use just because they're great.
• 18:06
  I mean, they can be very deep kind of theme or something very light.
• 18:13
  And it's always interesting to hear people, the angle that they take when they go
• 18:18
  to tell their story through the speech.
• 18:22
  You know, because I'm a storyteller, the foundation of the class is storytelling.
• 18:27
  And one of the things that I teach people is that, you know, storytelling really enhances a speech
• 18:35
  and it makes it more memorable.
• 18:38
  Do you find that when you're going to deliver a speech, you really try to make sure that you're,
• 18:45
  I mean, do you have a story in every speech, you know, when you're delivering those for the group?
• 18:53
  For the most part, I have a story. Sometimes I do a review of a movie.
• 18:59
  I've done movie reviews and book reviews and I did a series of speeches on Supreme Court
• 19:07
  and some of the most famous cases.
• 19:10
  And there are stories, it really comes down to a story in almost every case.
• 19:19
  I was a member of this group, but I was also a member of another group and the sort of the head of the president,
• 19:28
  I guess, of that other group had given a training to everybody and he had talked about, like,
• 19:33
  when you tell a speech, it's when you're going to give a speech, it's, you know,
• 19:36
  tell people what you're going to tell them, tell them, and then at the end wrap it up by telling them what you just told them.
• 19:42
  Yeah, that's Leah Kalka. That's Leah Kalka's original idea.
• 19:46
  Yeah, but it was a great framework just for somebody who's never done it to just kind of remember like the sort of the,
• 19:55
  you know, the math of threes, you know, it's just the three things you need to remember.
• 20:01
  And, you know, I've been at Toastmaster meetings and heard speeches when people really infuse them with stories
• 20:08
  and didn't just list off facts or whatever, and I found that it was a lot more interesting.
• 20:15
  Are there any particular speeches that you've heard maybe recently at a meeting that really stand out for you?
• 20:23
  Maybe because of the storyline?
• 20:29
  Yeah, well, if you wanted to, in the table topics today, the person that you know, Rob, about Kansas,
• 20:37
  he was talking about losing his brother and how he talked to his brother in the final days,
• 20:43
  and that was very moving. Another longtime member out the fox, he was asked in the table topics to talk about a candidate.
• 20:52
  He backed. He had lost, and he said, George McGovern, I work for George McGovern, and we thought he was doing great
• 21:00
  because we were in Massachusetts, and everybody said they would vote for him, and then he discovered he only won Massachusetts,
• 21:10
  the only state he won, and it brought me right back. That's my story. I work for George McGovern, too,
• 21:16
  and then I ended up getting that bumper sticker that said, don't blame me, I'm from Massachusetts, I put it on my car,
• 21:22
  and I was working at the defense plant contractor, so there weren't a lot of sympathy.
• 21:28
  Most of my colleagues didn't agree with me, so that kind of brought that back.
• 21:33
  Sometimes you hear a speech and it brings back something in your own memory, and that's what makes it interesting, at least to me.
• 21:40
  Yeah, stories are memorable. So if somebody, one of our listeners, wants to get better at their public speaking,
• 21:50
  what tips would you give them having been in Toastmasters as long as you've been?
• 21:55
  Well, practice and more practices is really the basic answer.
• 22:03
  To join Toastmasters, you get a lot of feedback. You give a speech, you get an evaluator, and our club sometimes we have other,
• 22:13
  more than one evaluator, and our club also assigned you, if you're a new member, we assign you a mentor,
• 22:21
  and they'll help you understand how to fulfill the roles. So if you start going every week, you get more comfortable speaking.
• 22:29
  It'll be a friendly audience of people you know. I don't get nervous anymore at Toastmasters because I know everybody and I'm so familiar.
• 22:41
  You could also, another option is to hire a professional speaking coach, and I've actually done that myself in the past.
• 22:50
  Oh really? You get more professional response, and you get one-on-one help that way. That was a long time ago.
• 23:03
  Do you remember any of the tips they gave you, anything on the top of your head?
• 23:07
  Well, I've got to tell you this. We're on mics now and you've got the level control, but the biggest feedback I usually get is you speak too softly.
• 23:19
  There are people that have never been asked to speak up, but I'm not one of those.
• 23:27
  He's usually, he was telling me to speak up, and I have a hard time doing that because it feels like shouting to me.
• 23:34
  And I did read this book about introverts, and they say introverts tend to speak more softly.
• 23:41
  So that was a tip to speak up?
• 23:44
  Yeah, I got that hand from my coach, and I still get it today, and I'm still working on it frankly.
• 23:51
  Yeah, it's always a journey, isn't it? We're always evolving.
• 23:58
  I agree with the whole practice piece. I recently got an opportunity to speak on the moth stage.
• 24:11
  One of the things that they talked about, and maybe you have a thought on this, they said, you need to rehearse, you need to practice, you need to get the rhythm of the story, but it shouldn't just be a recitation.
• 24:26
  That's kind of what I was telling you earlier. That's why I don't write down every word and just read it.
• 24:32
  I kind of have, I know what I want to cover, and I've given this speech like four or five times now, and every time it's a little different.
• 24:41
  And I think that's, I was thinking about that this week, you know, what is the difference between, you know, presenting and speaking and recitation, and I think that that's it, you know, reading it word for word, every time exactly the same would be a recitation, wouldn't it?
• 24:58
  Yeah, I'm also a member of a memoir group, and that's writing week, so we write memoirs and then we present it to each other and critique them.
• 25:08
  So that's a little different. In that case, it's your writing word for word. So writing is a little different to speaking.
• 25:14
  Writing, you can, you have to go over it several times and you polish it up, try to get as perfect as you can, and constantly change it.
• 25:25
  But you're right, I think the speeches I've heard that are the most, that I connect with the most are the ones that feel most conversational.
• 25:34
  Right.
• 25:36
  You know, when it's just, when I can see somebody reading or it sounds like it's being read, I don't make the same connection and you're right.
• 25:44
  I've told a few stories a few times and they're just a little different every time.
• 25:50
  So there's some people that can speak, can read and actors are used to doing that. They can read and it sounds like conversation, but not everybody can do that.
• 26:00
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 26:04
  So as we're wrapping up, is there anything else you want to add, any other advice you might have?
• 26:10
  I would just add the advice really, what I've been saying all along is get out there and do it.
• 26:16
  I want to join Toastmaster a similar group and get, get the other, I guess another piece of advice I give would be, if you have to give a speech on an audience that you're not familiar with,
• 26:28
  give it first in a familiar audience.
• 26:31
  We offer that in Toastmaster. If you have to give a speech for another group, come to Toastmaster and give it there first. Get some feedback and get familiar with it.
• 26:41
  That's great advice. So, well, that's all the time we have for today. Thank you so much for coming and doing this podcast with us.
• 26:50
  I, I love public speaking and I want to just be good at it and I think, you know, I think it's such an important skill for everyone to have and I think when you infuse those speeches with stories, it just, they just connect better.
• 27:06
  So, so thank you for being here.
• 27:08
  Well, thank you for inviting me. This was great fun.
• 27:11
  And to our listeners, whether you hear us locally from the BTV studios in Bedford, Massachusetts or across the globe on such podcast channels as Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Amazon Prime, thanks for listening.
• 27:24
  We hope you enjoyed this episode and we'll see you next time. Happy storytelling.