You’re A Competent Communicator. Now What?

by Promod Sharma, President 2011-2012

After you finish the 10 speeches in your Competent Communicator manual, you've graduated speaking school. You're now a Competent Communicator. You're among the elite. That's quite an accomplishment. Congratulations!

Now what?

You can stop but if you keep going, speaking becomes more interesting. You've mastered the basic skills. Now you're ready for speaking university. You get to pick what you'd like to learn from 15 advanced manuals with five speeches each.

1. The Entertaining Speaker
2. Speaking to Inform
3. Public Relations
4. Facilitating Discussion
5. Specialty Speeches
6. Speeches by Management
7. The Professional Speaker
8. Technical Presentations
9. Persuasive Speaking
10. Communicating on Video
11. Storytelling
12. Interpretive Reading
13. Interpersonal Communications
14. Special Occasion Speeches
15. Humorously Speaking

You'll find descriptions here.

There are three levels beyond Competent Communicator: bronze, silver and gold.

Bronze

Complete two advanced manuals and you earn your Advanced Communicator Bronze (ACB).
What's more, you get these two manuals free.

Silver

Once you're an ACB, you complete two more advanced manuals (not free this time). You also give two presentations from the The Better Speaker Series or The Successful Club Series. Now you've earned your Advanced Communicator Silver (ACS).

Gold

Guess how you get your Advanced Communicator Gold (ACG)? You complete two more advanced manuals, give a presentation from a specified set and mentor a new member through their first three speeches.

Overall

If you're going for the gold, you'll complete six advanced manuals (30 speeches). You can pre-select the manuals now. You might want to buy all 15 manuals as a set.

You might want to stretch by resisting the "obvious" choices for you. For instance, in real life I'm mainly Speaking To Inform (226B) and doing Technical Presentations (226H). While I can certainly improve, the incremental advantages are limited. I could get more advantages from straying further from comfort and taking greater risks.

Roadmap

Here’s my roadmap.

Bronze	Silver	Gold
Communicating on Video	The Professional Speaker	The Entertaining Speaker
Storytelling	Public Relations	Specialty Speeches

I’d like to finish one level each 12 months. What's your plan?

Links

• The Advanced Communication manuals (District 4 website)
• The communication track (Toastmasters International)
• Preplan all your speeches

Promod Sharma completed his Competent Communicator manual this month, exactly 15 months after his first speech. For more about him, visit promodsharma.com.