Debates at a Toastmasters Meeting

Debates are a good way to vary your Toastmasters meetings. Some of the benefits are:

• They give practice in a different speech format.
• They encourage thinking on your feet -- similar to Table Topics, but not quite the same!
• They're a good intellectual challenge.
• They're fun ...

There are a number of ways to implement this. Here is a format that my former club Cleveland #351 used:

The Vice President of Education assigns a Debate Leader, as one of the meeting roles. The Debate Leader announces a debate topic and then assigns two debate teams -- "for" and "against." In other words, the side you are assigned to argue is not necessarily the way you actually feel. It may very well happen (and often does) that you are "for" whatever and assigned to argue "against" it. This is actually good -- it sharpens your thinking, we have found.

After these preliminaries, the following portions of the debate are timed:

1. The teams go to separate parts of the room, where they can not hear each other. They brainstorm ideas for their assigned side. They also select their debaters, three per side (a "leader" and two "rebutters.") Of course, all team members partipate in the brainstorming portion.

2. Team 1's leader presents an opening argument, followed by Team 2's leader.

3. Rebuttals are presented by a Team 1 member, a Team 2 member, another Team 1 member and finally, another Team 2 member.

4. Team 1's leader gives a closing argument, followed by Team 2's leader.

The debate leader selects the winning team -- objectively, by who argued better, not by which side he agrees with. Remember, he told them which side to argue, in the first place!

Here's something interesting we have found ... Sometimes, the winning team has people who had to argue the opposite of what they would have chosen. We think the reason for this might be that, when you have to argue the "other side", you are forced to think more carefully about it and actually ome up with better ideas!

Good topics are things that people are familiar with on a day-to-day basis, but not necessarily highly controversial and heated.

Also see The Art of Debating.