Table Topics Master Hints

PREPARATION

  • Plan on asking between 3 and 6 questions.
  • Pick questions that do not require specific knowledge. Remember that your goal is to give respondents a chance to formulate a cogent answer containing an opening, body, and conclusion. Your goal is not to play Stump The Band.
  • It helps if you keep your opening remarks to a minimum and not have lengthy comments about each question.

PURPOSE

In addition to the obvious purposes of Table Topics, there are 2 additional (often conflicting) purposes ...
(1) to make sure everyone gets a chance to speak.
(2) to keep the meeting on schedule ... therefore, you may be asked to limit your questions to less than you have (or possibly to ask more).

THE PROCESS

  • At the beginning of the meeting, after all the agenda substitutions are made, write down who has no role (call on them first), who has minor roles (call on them next), and who the evaluators are (avoid calling on them). Then you can use this list to ensure that you call on the correct people later.
  • Ask the question, then wait a second or two to give everyone a chance to start thinking about their answer. Then call on a particular person. This way, everyone is forced to start developing an answer ... not just the person you call on.
  • At the end, don't forget to ask for the Timer's Report and call for the voting.

TIMING

You usually have about 10 minutes for the Table Topics segment. Figure 1 min 30 seconds average for each response, plus time for your question and the person to walk up, applause, etc, that's 2 minutes per person if your questions aren't too long and your opening remarks are only a few seconds. Thus, you can usually get 5 respondents -- if you use your time wisely.

Hopefully the TMOE will have the Table TOPICS ending time marked on the agenda. This will tell you when you need to finish up. Your last question should be asked about 2 - 3 minutes ahead of the ending time.

Table Topics is something that's used to keep the meeting on track. If we're running late, we use fewer Table Topics. If we're ahead of schedule, we have more. Please don't be offended if you're asked to limit your time, your number of questions, or even if the TMOE wants to skip Table Topics altogether. That sometimes becomes necessary, in order to end the meeting on time.

To me, Table Topics is about giving as many people as possible a chance to respond, so when I'm Table Topics master, I don't have a long intro, I use short questions, and keep the focus on the respondents not on me.

WHO TO CALL ON AND WHO NOT TO CALL ON

  • Do not call on Evaluators ... they're busy enough trying to write their evaluations.
  • Do not call on the Table Topics Evaluator unless absolutely necessary.
  • Try to avoid calling on people with major speaking roles (unless absolutely necessary). This includes speakers, TMOE, and General Evaluator.
  • First, call on everyone who has no role (in case you run out of time).
  • Then call on people who only have minor roles without much speaking (Grammarian, Ah Counter, Timer, etc).
  • If there's a guest and you have time, you can ask them if they want to participate, but do not put any pressure on them -- you want their first experience here to be fun with no pressure (unless they're a visiting Toastmaster).