Master the Impromptu Speaking

Impromptu speaking is very important part of our communication. As per google –

Based on these definitions, the speaker delivers his speech without any rehearsal or script. Speaker gets the topic and must speak for a given amount of time and gets no time to prepare.

Why do we need to improve impromptu speaking skills?

A famous quote goes

Nothing’s for sure, that’s for sure. –

Unknown

This is true for everything, we get in our life, even for speaking opportunities.  We need to improve our impromptu speaking skills as we may face them almost every day. Interviews, social gatherings, press conferences, class, corporate meetings, debates, group discussions, panel discussions are just a few examples.

How can we improve Impromptu Speaking?

Speaking is an art that evolves with more and more practice. As we saw in this article that Toastmasters gives a lot of opportunities to learn and improve our communication and soft skills. This is one and significant section of the regular Toastmasters meeting where we get random questions and give off the cuff response with the time limit of one to two minutes. As per Toastmasters International Guideline for Table Topics Contest – Less than one minute and more than 2 minutes and 30 seconds table topics response would be disqualified. Though I have seen some clubs having some deviation to this.

Your table topics response should have Introduction, body, and conclusion which can be approximately 30, 70, and 20 seconds respectively.

Other than that, the best table topic respondent will also be chosen based on the voting and in the end, this will be evaluated by grammarian and ah counter, and constructive feedback is given individually.

So, we can use the Toastmasters platform to enhance our impromptu speaking and apply them in our life.

In this article, we are going to get some frameworks, tips, and tricks to excel in the table topics section of the toastmasters meeting.

Types of Impromptu Questions?

Broadly, impromptu questions can be divided into these 5 categories –

1. Situational
2. Hypothetical
3. Personal
4. Opinion
5. Pointless

1. Situational Questions:

Situations can be from your past life or future. In job interviews, we get this kind of situations and that can be from scenario-based questions to case studies.

These are few questions in this category to understand it better.

1. What was the most challenging task in your professional life so far?
2. How are you going to fire your one employee for his performance issues?
3. What will be your action if you see someone is committing some crime?
4. Your company sales are going down, what are you going to do?
5. Your junior is not working efficiently and not giving the correct status of work, what will you do in this case?

Strategy to handle such situational questions

To answer such types of questions, we can follow the STAR framework, which is demonstrated here with the first example i.e. what was the most challenging task in your professional life so far?

Situation (S) – What the objective given to you?

For example – I had to write new application to accommodate COVID-19 situation in just 1 week.

Task (T) – What task was expected from you?

For example – I had to write code the system, get that tested and deploy in the production.

Action (A) – What action did you take?

For example – I did the task assignment among our juniors and had status call twice in a day. I also instructed them to talk to someone, if they face any issue as soon as possible. I also promised them to get 2 days paid leaves for this, in addition to appreciation from higher management.

Result (R) – What was the outcome?

For example – we deployed the application in records time with no defect.

So, our answer could be around these points. If it is a toastmasters meeting then try to finish it is 2 minutes, if it is an interview, then be succinct and to the point because speaking more doesn’t mean it will be heard.

Please ensure that you conclude the response on a positive note.

2. Hypothetical Questions:

Questions in this category can be totally hypothetical like this –

1. If you get the power to change the world, what will you do?
2. What executive order you will be signing if you become the President of the USA for 1 day and why?
3. When you are 80 years old, what will matter to you the most?
4. What are your 3 post-retirement plans?
5. If you had the chance to go back in time and change one thing would you do it?

Tips to answer such Hypothetical questions –

Here we can adopt LAND framework, which is explained below in answering the first question i.e. – If you get the power to change in the world, what will you do the first thing?

Logical (L) – Be logical with your answer.

For example – Don’t say you will distribute equal money to everyone rather you can use your power to provide education for everyone.

Attention grabber (A) – Try to get attention from your audience by putting any related question or quote to the audience.

For example – try to get some joke or funny quotes into it.

Neutral (N) – Don’t blame any political party, country, or religion for anything. This is the most important thing as your audience can from different backgrounds and political beliefs. Blaming anyone may be offensive for someone.

For example – you can say, there are many geopolitical, economic, and various other reasons which resulted in such a gap.

Decisive (D) – This should be a short and complete answer. After completing your response, please repeat your point again.

For example – and since education will enable everyone to decide what is right and wrong, I will use my power to provide free education to everyone.

3. Personal Questions –

This type of question is related to our personal past experiences or future expectations. It could be fictitious as well. Speaking invitation at the wedding, or at lunch or dinner table could also be counted in this category which may involve sharing your experiences with the person in the center.

In this class, we can get similar questions, like this –

1. When was the last time you tried something new?
2. What life lesson did you learn the hard way?
3. What would you do differently if you knew nobody would judge you?
4. How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?
5. If you looked into the heart of your enemy, what do you think you would find that is different from what is in your own heart?

Tips to answer Personal questions –

We don’t have any framework for this, but this following this sequence may help the speaker excelling the talk. To demonstrate this, we will take the first question i.e. When was the last time you tried something new?

Follow the chronology –

For example – Here speaker will be saying his/her any new try, maybe blogging, further studies, traveling, volunteering, joining a new venture or new career path, or anything.

• Prefer stories and anecdotes – if it is formal meeting then some data or stats are ok but normally people like to hear personal stories and sweet memories.

• Past -> Present -> Future – if talking about some personal incident or about someone, try to start from the past then talk something about the present and finally wish the best luck for the future.

• Message – It should deliver a positive and interesting message.  If you can infer any learning, it could be the best.

4. Opinion Questions –

Following questions can fall in this group –

1. Should politics and religion be tied together or not?
2. Should an academic qualification be mandatory to get good jobs?
3. What can money not buy?
4. If you could instill one piece of advice in a newborn baby’s mind, what advice would you give?
5. Is it more important to love or be loved?

Tips to answer Opinion based questions –

Answering such type of questions can be handles with two techniques, depending on the scenario –

Scenario # 1: When you know the exact answer and sure about it?

In this situation, we can go with PREP or PEP methodology, Which goes as below with the Question – Should politics and religion be tied together or not?

P (Point/Position) – First we can give our position of this.

For example – In this case, I will say – Yes Politics and religion show be dealt separately.

R (Reason) – Next we need to give the reason why we are making our point.

For example – Mixing of Politics and Religion will create polarization in the society and politicians will treat everyone as Vote bank and development, education and other necessary things for society will take back seat.

E (Example) – Here take chance to provide some relevant examples to back our reason and point.

For example – We can take examples from many countries have seen riots and conflict in the society for these differences.

P (Point) – Wrap up the response with the point we already mentioned.

For example – And for this reason, I think politics and religion should be taken separately and religion should not be a matter for any state.

Another variant of PREP is PEP with all similar meaning but leaving reason as for some complicated or alien subjects we may NOT know the reason.

Scenario # 2: When you are not sure about the given option?

For this situation, we will take the next question from the sample i.e. – Should an academic qualification be mandatory to get good jobs?

Give the pros and cons of both scenarios – Here respondent is NOT sure. He has equal opinion about both.

For example –
Pro – Academic qualification gives the minimum required skills to perform any job.
Against – Academics are too costly for many segments of society and we have seen many people doing a great job even without formal education

Give some facts or data supporting both sides.

For example –
Pro – Zuckerberg a college drop out and there are many who did well even without completing their education. Recently, Tesla’s Elon Musk advocated recruiting even without much education.
Against – Examples of Mr. Zickerberg and Tesla are very limited and less than 0.1%. What about others.

Conclude – Don’t set narrative rather ask the audience to decide what they think is better considering all facts.

5. Random Questions –

Following questions or table topics ideas can fall into this classification –

1. Make a story with some random words?
2. What would you like to be front when or a bike or rear wheel?
3. Predict and give the message from any random picture?
4. Explain the meaning of any new complicated word from the dictionary?
5. Weaving a story from the given random sentences.

Techniques to answer random questions

Some common Strategies to ace the impromptu questions –

1. Capture the Keywords
2. Take a pause to think
3. Storytelling/Broaden the topic
4. Use keywords from the previous sentence
5. Related message

Believe me, you can’t master the table topics or impromptu speaking overnight or just by reading this article. This article provides you some guidelines to follow and Never forget to enrich your memory bank by reading diverse topics as knowledge never goes in vain.

And In the last, for your every response, irrespective of the situation

• Be Confident
• Be Brief
• Be Sincere

and above all, there is nothing wrong or right. Everyone is there to learn and support in Toastmasters So