“Communicating Across Cultures”

October 15, 2009

Join us for an extraordinary ‘global meeting’ featuring extended Table Topics with an International Communication theme, International panelists, and cultural finger food and beverages.

Dear Fellow Toastmaster,

I’m really pleased to hear you are practicing for table topics.  I find table topics very challenging because I have a strong preference for control.  Table topics does not offer a lot of control, which I guess is how life really is.

However, I have developed some strategies that are useful for table topics that I call frameworks.  Frameworks allow you to place any type of content into a frame so it has some logical organization.  This helps reduce the thinking needed to plan what to say and helps increase confidence.

Here are some of the frameworks:

- Past, present future
– Why, what, how
– Situation, action, result
– Accomplishments, obstacles, next actions
– I believed this before, but I don’t think that way anymore because
– What I like and don’t like about this
– Dreamer, realist, critic

If you apply the frameworks to any topic, you can quickly communicate for 1 to 3 minutes about that topic without having to give much thought.

For example, using past, present and future if someone were to ask me what I think about grass (lawn grass) I could say:

In the past, I hated grass because my Mother made me mow a huge front lawn every week.
Presently, I watch the people I pay mow the grass for me, and enjoy the fact that I’m not mowing it.
In the future, I look forward to lying in the grass and enjoying the sun while not caring if it is mowed or not.

I just typed in quickly what came to mind because I used the past, present, future framework.

Give it a try.  Just select some random words or subjects.  Write them in index cards and then select (or have someone else select) a random card.  Then practice using some of the frameworks and see how it works for you.

Again, thanks for your support and I’ll talk to you soon.

Kind regards,

Ed