President's Tip of the Week

Do Table Topics Have You Floored?
(4/14/09)

By David Douglas, November 2000

They’re supposed to last one to two minutes. That doesn’t sound very long, but it can seem like an eternity when you’re trying to talk and think what to say next at the same time. Why not prepare for them? Sure, you don’t know what the topic will be, but you can prepare some strategies ahead of time with which to attack them.

For example, the topic handed to me at one meeting was, “Santa needs some help in his workshop. If you could have any job, what would you like to do?” The way I chose to attack it was using “past, present, future.” I thought of my own past. I told about my little toy wooden train that I enjoyed so much. For the present, that’s the job I’d like to have, making little wooden train sets to give to children. For the future, I’d like to find one of those sets to give to my new grandson, so he could enjoy those same experiences I had years ago.

Another possible approach is one I owe to my doctor. Whenever I went to him with a problem, he’d question me about the symptoms, examine me, do whatever tests were called for, then give me his diagnosis. But he didn’t just say, “Well, I think you have this...” He’d say, “Well, the symptoms could suggest this, but the lab tests don’t support it. Or, it could be this, but I didn’t see it in my exam.” He’d go through three or four possible diagnoses, but explain why he didn’t think any of them was the problem. Then he’d give me the diagnosis that he thought all of the evidence supported.

How would you apply this to a Table Topic? Take the same Santa’s workshop topic. Using the “process of elimination” strategy, I could have said, “Well, I wouldn’t want to make any guns; I think there’s enough violence in the world. I wouldn’t want to make anything that used batteries and buzzed, squeaked, squawked or vibrated when you pushed buttons; there’s plenty of noise around me already. I wouldn’t want to make anything that had to be assembled in the wee hours of Christmas morning. I wouldn’t want to make anything that talked back to me; I’ve got a TV set, telephone, and three family members who do that rather adequately. I think I would like to make plain, simple, little, quiet wooden trains. If you wanted sound effects, you could just make them yourself.”

There must be other strategies like these as well. As you discover them, be sure to share them. Help us all make our two minute Table Topic a feast.