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How to Give a Successful Icebreaker Speech

by | May 28, 2016 | Public Speaking and Communication

How to Give a Successful Icebreaker Speech
Read Time: 6 min­utes

ice breaker speech

And so, I’ve decid­ed to join toast­mas­ters after being inspired by sto­ries I’ve heard that strug­gle the same pain I have — which is speak­ing inef­fec­tive­ly in pub­lic.  At first, I have doubts because join­ing toast­mas­ters will be anoth­er addi­tion­al com­mit­ment and dis­ci­pline because you have to pre­pare your speech­es at least two weeks ahead of sched­ule (this works for me).

And last Thurs­day, I final­ly gave my ice­break­er speech. For me, I was so ner­vous that I felt my knee would fail me stand­ing in the front speak­ing about myself which at first, I am not com­fort­able with but in my mind, I need to over­come myself. But then I was glad that my peers said that I’ve done a good job break­ing my shy­ness and fear of pub­lic speak­ing and I was sur­prised that my speech turned out to be good.

Today, I would like to share what I’ve done to pre­pare and ace my speech project #1 which as they called “ice­break­er”

1. Sched­ule your first speech project.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I joined toast­mas­ters at first with a pur­pose of learn­ing pub­lic speak­ing skills and boost my con­fi­dence with­out a dead­line. Many peo­ple fall into the same trap. And so I decid­ed to vol­un­teer and sched­ule myself for the next meet­ing to give my first speech.

Set­ting a sched­ule for each speech project will def­i­nite­ly help you out to reach your goals and a def­i­nite amount of time. Start with an end in mind.

2. The top­ic is about your­self.

At first, I was hes­i­tant what top­ic should I give for the speech. Then I decid­ed to search for ice­break­er speech­es and watch them how they do it. But I real­ize, the goal of the first speech is to intro­duce myself to the club and to dis­cov­er my own voice and know what should I need fur­ther to improve.

Relax, if you will have plans to join toast­mas­ters in the future, the top­ic is just about your­self. It could be:

  • Per­tain­ing to some of your unfor­get­table expe­ri­ences.
  • Your first date.
  • Your wed­ding day.
  • Your fam­i­ly.
  • Your work.
  • Your com­pa­ny or peo­ple.

And the list goes on. What I gave in my first speech was some of the things that great­ly shaped for who I am today. I start­ed it with a pow­er­ful quote then end with a pow­er­ful con­clu­sion.

Be cre­ative if you wish to. I did my speech hav­ing a few print­ed illus­tra­tion in my hand then I showed to the audi­ence so I can gain their atten­tion and they would know where I am in my speech. It’s not required though but I just did it because I am a visu­al per­son and I think hav­ing it would help me empha­size the points I am shar­ing.

3. Last­ly, write down your speech and make time to prac­tice and pre­pare for it.

Noth­ing beats prepa­ra­tion. Prac­tice makes progress, not per­fec­tion. Some speak­ers write every­thing that was on their mind then eval­u­ate it then sum­ma­rize it into points that will help them remem­ber it.

What I did was, I think of a top­ic that I can share to my audi­ence then write some­thing about it. Then I mem­o­rized the first line and the last line, which have giv­en me an ace to my speech.

To give you exam­ple of an ice break­er speech, I am hap­py to share it with you:

The pur­pose of this speech is to intro­duce myself to you, but before I begin, I would like to start it with a quote from B.J Neblett:

“We are the sum total of our expe­ri­ences. Those expe­ri­ences – be they pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive – make us the per­son we are, at any giv­en point in our lives. And, like a flow­ing riv­er, those same expe­ri­ences, and those yet to come, con­tin­ue to influ­ence and reshape the per­son we are, and the per­son we become. None of us are the same as we were yes­ter­day, nor will be tomor­row.”

I am Dhenn (Dhenn Mark Espir­i­tu) and

Like all of you, I am the sum total of my expe­ri­ences and tonight I would like to share some of those expe­ri­ences that great­ly shaped for who am I right now.

  1. First, I will start with my par­ents. My mom nev­er failed to remind us of the impor­tant things we need in life. I still remem­ber when I was young, when my mom was mad at us, she repeat­ed­ly remind­ing us that “what if tomor­row we die? Who will take care of your sib­lings? Who will pre­pare the meal for you? Who will clean the house? Who will clean the back­yard?”

And so as a young man who doesn’t ful­ly under­stand why we need to learn it, every night I pray to God, “Lord, make my par­ents live longer because I love them so much”.

My dad was not usu­al­ly at home because he needs to stay in the camp to ful­fill his duty as a sol­dier.

I grew up as an intro­vert, I don’t like being with many peo­ple as much as I can, I don’t care if I don’t have friends but it changed the time I messed up, almost gave up that one day I was just roam­ing around a mall near to our home­town, and entered a large room that was full of hap­py peo­ple, and that place re-shaped and change the course of my entire life.

  1. Sec­ond, church because I’m a Chris­t­ian. Remem­ber the room that was full of hap­py peo­ple? That was the church. I don’t like to sound like reli­gious or preachy about here. But the church has become my sec­ond home and my sec­ond fam­i­ly, because when the time I messed up, I almost gave up, that’s when God showed up. In church, I learned every­thing I need­ed to know about life, about my pur­pose, about my sig­nif­i­cance and my exis­tence. They teach me that the rela­tion­ship with God and peo­ple is all that mat­ters.

In church, I expe­ri­enced mis­sion trips that entire­ly changed my life, approach­ing locals from dif­fer­ent nations and build­ing rela­tion­ships with them for two weeks. It was tru­ly life chang­ing. I nev­er envi­sioned myself to becom­ing a mis­sion­ary per­haps because of fear but then after my mis­sion trip in Myan­mar last 2014, it was fol­lowed by anoth­er mis­sion trips in Thai­land in the year 2015 and Chi­na just this year.

What else has shaped who I am?

  1. Books! I used to hate books. Men­tion­ing the text­books we car­ried in our bags for years, they are sim­ply bor­ing. But my hatred for books doesn’t last for a long time. My men­tors in church taught me the impor­tance of read­ing books, a lot of books. I only start­ed read­ing books at the age of 22, since then I start­ed to have an insa­tiable thirst for knowl­edge and under­stand­ing. And now I con­sid­er myself as a book­worm because the smell of book for me is addict­ing and I love to col­lect books that I’ve read and dream­ing myself one day to have my own library at home.

Books have shaped my mind and change my per­spec­tive towards life. I’ve become to be more opti­mistic than pes­simistic.

  1. last­ly, is Hewlett-Packard Enter­prise, I’ve been work­ing with HPE for 3 and a half years already, first as a Lev­el 2 Sup­port and just this year in my new role as an Automa­tion Engi­neer. In the past, I’ve worked with two dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies both are great but in HPE, I did not only grow pro­fes­sion­al­ly but also per­son­al­ly. What I love about HPE was its cul­ture. The cul­ture of empow­er­ing peo­ple to achieve both their career and per­son­al goals. Plus HPE is like a cam­pus, employ­ees have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to join dif­fer­ent clubs and ini­tia­tives being offered.

In HPE I also had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to join the toast­mas­ters. I joined toast­mas­ters because my men­tor influ­enced me to join. She is an author, she told me that she was like me when she was just start­ed, intro­vert, and she shared how she cried in front of the audi­ence dur­ing her first speech. Because of that, I searched google about the club. Then a col­league told me that she is a mem­ber of toast­mas­ters, so I joined meet­ings not just once but thrice as a guest than final­ly signed up as a mem­ber. And I am look­ing for­ward to devel­op­ing my speak­ing and lead­er­ship skills in this club.

And that how I was shaped as a per­son, speak­ing in front of you.

Going back to my point ear­li­er, we are the sum total of our expe­ri­ences, be they pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive, they bring out the best or worst in us and make us the per­son who we are today and what we will be in the future.

 
SEE ALSO:  TED's Secret to Great Public Speaking

Join­ing toast­mas­ters is fun. I am encour­ag­ing you to join one of the clubs to learn pub­lic speak­ing. You don’t need to be a pub­lic speak­er to join. I’ve known some peo­ple who were afraid of the crowd yet they make a bold step to over­com­ing their own fear of pub­lic speak­ing.




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Dhenn Espiritu

I blog about my dis­cov­er­ies and learn­ings with per­son­al devel­op­ment, blog­ging, writ­ing, pub­lic speak­ing, and pub­lish­ing. I am a Jesus fol­low­er. Each month, I send out a newslet­ter with free tips on those top­ics.
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