| Last night, we had an enlightening Dallas Adult Chapter meeting, facilitated by Brandon Crowley with the topic of “Changing the Scoreboard”.
We had 19 attendees with 2 first-timers last night, (Welcome Jay and Blake), and our introductory questions was “If you had a billboard in the city with something you wanted to share, what would it say?”. As usual, the big heart of our chapter members was evident, with Tricia Krauss-Lehrman’s “Just love one another”, Briana Pipkin’s “Tomorrow is a new day”, Jacob Colson’s “I’m always here if you want to talk” and Kate Cosway’s “Even if it seems hard, it’s fine, move on” being just a few examples. Dallas would definitely be a better city if our chapter had control of the city’s billboards!
After introductions and announcements, we were lucky to have a special guest, Monica Dirden from Toastmasters International, give us a quick rundown of the benefits of the organization. She talked about the importance of getting out of your comfort zone, the benefits or practicing speaking as often as possible, and the huge amount of improvement that comes with joining a public speaking group. If you are interested in joining a club or reading more, please head out their website www.toastmasters.org. They have a nifty feature that allows you to search for a club anywhere in the city based on your own schedule— don’t be scared!
We then moved on to Brandon’s main topic, “Changing the Scoreboard”. He shared how effective communication for a person who stutters should focus more on what they intend to say rather than fluency, and proposed that we should measure our success as communicators by how much people understand you, instead. He also added that many of the intangibles about communication (eye contact, posture, eloquence and humor) are in our control, and can help us become better communicators. |
