Leveraging Someone Else's Experience
When you speak from experience, does it have to be your own? Last week, my husband went on an extended bicycling trip across Nebraska. I used his experience to answer a table topics question for which I won "best table topic" and to give a speech (at a different meeting) for which I won "best speaker." I often encourage people to speak from their own personal experiences, but leveraging the experiences of others can be powerful as well. In the case of my husband's experience, I contrasted his experience of being out in nature, biking, and camping with my own of being in a house with air conditioning and a bed. I strove to make his experience interesting, even though I wasn't sharing it from first hand knowledge. For the prepared speech, I got stories and information from my husband. I got to learn more about his trip and then share it with others. I even got pictures from him that he was willing to share! I practiced not only my presentation ski...