I recently had the pleasure of playing ‘cheer squad’ for Paul, in his debut representing the NSANZ. 

The evening was interspersed with Table Topics in the form of letters to the Agony Uncle.

Speakers from both groups stood up to improvise two minutes of advice on everything from “Should I let my girlfriend shave my beard?” (No, she might want to shave something else afterwards) to “I’d rather go fishing than be the stay-home dad like we agreed, what should I do?” (Give it up, Clark.) 

This year’s topic was “Reality TV should be banned”, and Paul Haggath was first speaker for the affirmative. For the non-debaters in the audience, that meant he opened and closed the arguments, and his team were arguing “yes, of course it should”. 

Between arguing the tremendous time-waste and general loss of higher brain function you risk by watching reality TV, and considering the shrivelled gooseberry problems inherent to both The Great Allotment Challenge and Embarrassing Bodies, Paul demonstrated a knack for humour in his public speaking. 

But of course, a great debating team requires just that – a team. Paul’s debating team mates were  hoodie-wearing hoodlum turned yoga-queen, Sabine, and prop-master Chris (who is, incidentally, the NSANZ Christchurch chapter president).  

What’s all this got to do with TEAM? I hear you ask.  

From the perspective of a TEAM Mate, the evening was a fantastic showcase of what you can achieve with teamwork. 

The very nature of a debate means your argument is built (and falls) on how cohesively you can argue a point together. It’s not just about what you’re saying either, but how you argue your points. In a debate, each team member has to listen to the other team’s speakers in order to understand and respond to  their points, before seamlessly segueing into their own argument. Not an easy task. In fact, it’s best achieved by all of your team working together to come up with counter-arguments and passing them quietly along to the speaker. 

Similarly, a debate is a great example in the values of preparedness and ingenuity. Preparedness, because your best counters come from knowing your subject well enough to both anticipate the other team’s arguments, and to answer confidently against any surprises they throw at you. And ingenuity, because you need to come up with many of your rebuttals and segues on the fly.  

Working together, a team can argue sequentially stronger points, back up each member’s argument, and support one another in rebuffing the arguments of the other team. 

Done poorly, you can get three people each making a short speech on a tangentially related topic – hardly convincing and at worst contradictory to each other. 

Basically, the lesson I took away from the evening was: to be effective as a team, communicate with each other, back each other up, and listen to what other people are saying.   Even if their arguments are counter to yours, there will always some validity that must be taken into account. No-one is ever completely right or wrong – life is not that black and white! 

On that subject, from a communications perspective, it was a marvellous display of communication in action. I should state for the record that there were certainly no bad speakers on the night! There were, however, a wide variety of approaches on display, and it was interesting to see which approach most resonated with the audience. 

Humour proved to be well received by the audience in general. Not surprising, since the Battle of the Bards is generally meant to be funny, and the audience is looking for a laugh. Conversely, very serious speakers struggled to get more than a polite clap, despite being very good speakers, probably for the same reason.  

The takeaways?  

Know your audience. 

Don’t try too hard to be funny – if it doesn’t sound natural, it’ll probably fall flat. If you’re the only one laughing you should probably move on. 

Dad-jokes are totally funny. 

I heard a lot of repetition on the night, and came to the following conclusions: 

One. Repetition is a good thing – it helps your audience remember what you said and repeat it to other people later. 

Two. Repetition is a bad thing – saying the same thing over and over with no other argument to back it up just makes it look like you can’t think of another argument.  

So, the takeaway: Repetition in moderation. I repeat – moderation.  

Some speakers backed up their arguments with statistics, some with anecdotes, and some with real life examples. Naturally, these had varied results. However, one thing was clear: If your approach involves using Donald Trump as an example – an easy target in this particular debate – you should maybe find a better example. It doesn’t matter which side you’re arguing, he makes everything worse. 

Takeaway: you’re fired! 

And finally, there really is no substitute for talking to people. I can’t wait for the next one!