Being the Toastmaster geek that I am, you may be wondering why I’ve never done the International Speech Contest. I’m plenty competitive and have entered the other three contests. I won’t enter anything if I don’t the slightest chance at all of making it to District, though. And I’ve known I’ve had no chance of making it past a Division contest because I’ve never found anything I’m truly passionate about that I can speak about for 5-7 minutes.

Passion isn’t just energy and being manic. You have to be passionate because you believe and live what you’re talking about. It has to be something that you feel just has to be shouted from the rooftops. Your belief in whatever you’re talking about has to be infectious. And you have to feel the passion in your topic first and let the energy come from there; the energy can’t be bolted on after the fact for the purpose of pleasing judges.

I’ve seen many contest speeches where someone is trying really hard to be Tony Robbins-lite to win. It can work sometimes. But you’re far better off talking about something that you really care about than something you should care about. I go back to Ed Tate’s world-wide winning speech about an afternoon he spent in the airport trying to be nice when he didn’t feel like it. He clearly believed in what he was talking about and he had plenty of passion. Now Ed Tate at the airport isn’t King Lear. The fellow trying to over-dramatize, manipulate me with a story that’s trying to be King Lear just to win some contest isn’t King Lear, either. But the drama queen is in trouble since he’s trying to be something he’s not. He’s adding the energy after the fact.

Sadly I’ve seen Tony Robbins-lite speeches win District. (For the record if I tried to pull this I’d go for Zig Ziglar-lite, since I love old Zig.) The people that pull this off are way better speakers than I am. They can make the passion they’re bolting onto their speech look close enough to real that they win anyway. I don’t know how to tell you to do that, though. But have heart. It usually doesn’t work. Now maybe I’m a bad judge of character or too cynical towards these people, but I don’t think so.

As an even scarier example - I can recall five speeches that former world-wide speech winners gave to win the contest. Four of them were passionate, not manipulative, and seemed to be living their message. The other winner was not. He gave a talk about inner peace but he was so hyper, so off the wall, that it felt like he was on speed. He had lots of energy - too much - but that’s different than quiet passion, which is important when talking about quieting yourself! Let’s not focus on the one time the judges screwed up, though. Instead consider the fact that the judges rewarded real passion %80 of the time in this sample.

So get fired up, passionate, believe in your message and yourself, and throw everything you have into your speech. Good hunting!