Scout Leadership Course Session Activity Notes

Session activity

Speaking and Listening: Elevator Pitch

Time to allocate for this activity

15 minutes

Resources required

Elevator Pitch cue cards.

Activity Notes

This short activity is designed to encourage Scouts to speak for effect. It requires them to be careful with their choice of words as time is limited, to think through what they need to say and how they present themselves.

The task (10 mins)

Each Scout will make an elevator pitch - that is a sales speech that can be delivered in the time it takes for a lift to move up a building. In our case, the lift takes just 30 seconds.

This activity is all about preparation - thinking through what you want to say and how you want to say it in the quicket time, without rushing so much you can't be heard. The cue card resource will give some ideas of topics to pitch on.

By way of introduction, present each Scout with a topic and tell them they have just 5 minutes (and be precise - make sure you stick to just five minutes) to plan what they want to say. Make sure they understand who the audience is (on the card) and what they want to say. It might help to write up three headings to aid planning - "Who" - who are you? "What" - what are you trying to tell me? "Why" - why is your request/demand/sell better or more important that anyone elses?

Invite Scouts to deliver their Elevator Pitch to a leader and provide feedback as appropriate. Continue as time allows.

Conclusion (3 minutes)

Point out that this is just one way of speaking for a specific purpose. Invite comments and brain-storm a quick list of other types of speaking such as intructional, conversational, informal, speechmaking, demanding, warning, convincing, arguing, presenting facts. Conclude with the statement from Karl Popper:
"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood."