My second rainbow example comes from a Toastmasters club meeting and proves rainbow speaking is not only for world champions or international speech contests. Aleen Andreou shows us how a Table Topic Speaker can use all the colors of the rainbow to connect with an audience in TWO MINUTES and win first place in a contest at the Nicosia Crusaders Toastmaster Club in Cyprus. To write my rainbow review I followed the points outlined in my previous post 10 Things an Audience Wants. I suggest you watch Aleen’s speech before reading further as my review will spoil the fun for you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-2H_g2Vb3U We know an audience wants something to happen and Aleen gives her club a love story with a seasonal twist. Audiences also want to be taken seriously and Aleen begins with an explanation for arriving late which suggests that she respects their time. And lastly the audience’s desire to connect is fulfilled by Aleen’s conversational storytelling skills which connect through the use of rainbow colors. Red: As soon as Aleen mentions her meeting with a gentleman, she connects to red as a love story is full of red emotional baggage for any audience. However, she controls her delivery and does not let red overwhelm the other colors in her rainbow. Orange: Aleen speaks with presence and her vocal variety and energetic gestures are clearly present especially when she reveals the name of her “gentleman”. Yellow: Aleen adds humor with her ironic comment “an attractive woman” and there are good laughs with the ironic “two hours spent” with the gentleman full of joyful inneundo for the audience. There is also the use of Santa “bringing joy to the children” which reinforces the color yellow. Aleen clearly has fun telling this story to her club and exudes this joy while speaking. Green: At one minute into the speech the story moves from red to green when Aleen says “Now this year he’s going to do things differently.” This shift from past tense to future establishes the green color of hope with lines like, “This year he’s going to bring real love and joy to the children of the world.” Blue: Even if this is an imaginary tale, Aleen gives her audience a personal story with a lot of use of “I”. She shares her vision of this season of the year throughout her creative story. Indigo: This story has a hook and depth. Aleen announces a love story with a mysterious gentleman who is, after some suspense, named. She also adds a layer of depth by turning it into a hero’s journey in which she makes an unusual “scarifice” for the good of all. The rule of three is used to announce what Santa is going to do for the world as her reward. Lastly, Aleen finishes her speech by restating her opening remarks and this adds more indigo structure. Purple: Aleen has a converstational style which addresses the audience and she pauses to listen too. Lines like, “Do you want to hear his name?” and “Peter, it took two hours.” add purple connections with her audience. Finally, although it is not obvious on the video, Aleen wrote me that, during her improvised speech, she felt from the audience “an incredible push to mention Santa”. By listening to her intuition, she surprised her audience and created the positive reaction which is clearly audible in the video. This is what Aleen’s rainbow looks like: This a full rainbow with balance, although red emotions and green hope dominate this Christmas story. Red and green are almost equally present. In addition, there is a clear balance between orange energy and indigo depth, and yellow joy is well balanced by the purple soul connections Aleen makes with her audience. Bravo to Aleen for sharing this super story and balancing her rainbow so well.