Category Archives: Get To The Point

Wise Recommendations

We enjoyed a lot during our last Club meeting: the Toastmaster of the evening and the supporting roles worked hard, the speakers were amazing, the Table Topics participants revealed hidden aspects about themselves… but the evaluators, they all were awesome gave us lots of wise and useful recommendations. We must put all of them into practice!!

We all know that Jesús is the Sergeant At Arms of Toastmasters Madrid, but he was not able to attend our meeting on 21st of October. Therefore, Masha opened the meeting and introduced the Toastmaster of the Day: Wanda.

Wanda chose Halloween as the topic of the day. How many of us do celebrate Halloween? Where does this tradition come from? Are we buying pumpkins instead of “buñuelos”? asked Wanda at the beginning of the meeting.

Before the prepared speeches, we discovered how thoroughly Iván and Maravillas had prepared their roles as Grammarian and Timekeeper:

  • Ivan’s explanation of his role was very professional. We will never forget that the choice of SASSY as word of the day was displayed with several excerpts from Classic Literature.
  • Maravillas was Timekeeper for the first time. She was very strict with the use of time and didn´t hesitate to start clapping when some participants went overtime.

All of us are happy when a recent member delivers her Icebreaker. It is the first step for becoming CC. And on 21st of October, Ana Belén introduced herself as a Toastmaster. Thanks to Ana Belén, we remembered that there were frontiers between Spain and Portugal not a long time ago. All the times she crossed the Spain-Portugal border during her childhood made a great impact on her.

“Is it about time to move on?” was the question that Javier asked to us when starting the second speech of the evening. The objective of his third project was to “get to the point”, to be extremely clear, and he was. We will never forget Javier’s explanation of many employees´ feelings after being a long time without a promotion: “I quit some time ago, but I forgot to tell it”.

Marina was the third speaker of the day. Her evaluator, Eric pointed out that the 5th speech of the Competent Communicator manual is very important, because the speaker has to use her entire body in order to communicate. She spoke about good manners around the table, how she learnt them thanks to her mother, and how everybody should behave during business meals.

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All the evaluators (Ana, Pedro and Eric) praised speakers, remarked their great job and gave wise and useful recommendations that all of us should learn too: breathe more, choose a specific topic, impersonate characters, and be sure all the audience is watching.

If you have ever attended a Toastmasters Madrid meeting, you know that there is something very important after the prepared speeches: Table Topics!!!

Maria was Table Topics Master and charged her victims of stealing, reckless driving, or committing environmental crimes. Jonas, Mabel, Christian, Julian, and Masha had the chance to defend themselves in front of the Toastmasters Madrid Jury, but Judge Maria took the Club gavel and found all of them guilty.

Table Topics have an Evaluator too: Teresa, who was shocked by the amount of criminals in our club. She gave useful tips to all of them in order to invent a better alibi next time.

After the Grammarian and Timekeeper reports, Wanda, the Toastmaster of the Day, introduced the last role: General Evaluator, who evaluates the meeting as a whole and gives wise pieces of advice to improve our events.

Wow, lots of things to learn from Juliet’s evaluation. Some of them that we should never forget are:

  • Having a backup or second Sergeant at Arms in case Jesús Clemente cannot attend again.
  • Having plenty of pens and evaluation sheets for crowded meeting.
  • Welcoming the guests (11 during our last meeting) and explaining them what is happening during the meeting. Juliet noticed how all the members tended to sit close to each other, without mixing in with the guests.
  • Speak loud and clear when somebody is having dinner in the same room!!

Written by Raquel

 

Strip Away Your Fears

The first meeting of October was ‘cool’ just like the time of season itself. Before Maria and Jesus would come up to explain their respectful roles as grammarian and time keeper, Eric the Toastmaster of the day, did something a little bit different in how guests are welcomed. Instead of the conventional “Hello and where are you from” form of introduction, he instructed guests to just say their names. Later at the end of the program, he gave the guests a chance to speak again by providing feedback on the evenings meeting.

In the main part of the nights program, Ivan lead the way with his Icebreaker in which he stripped off of his shirt to reveal his cyclist jersey. This was of course part of his plan to illustrate his passion for cycling as he delivered his autobiography speech. He talked about his brief childhood in Colombia, moving to the States and subsequently to Madrid. Marina who was evaluating him praised him for not using any notes.

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Mabel on her third speech, delivered an educational speech on Visual, Audio, and Kinaesthetic (VAK) learning styles. She practiced what she preached as she used visual aids to capture audience attention. And also pitched her voice clear and loud enough to be heard from afar. Maintaining eye contact also added a personal touch with the audience.

Juliet’s fourth speech in her fourth month as a member was entitled “The Power Of Many”. One take home lesson from her speech was her advice on coming out more when faced with tougher situation in order to receive help. Jane was her evaluator and applauded her use of anecdotes to add flavour to the speech. To keep the momentum going, Eric commented on Juliet delivering her fifth speech next month to make it five speeches in five months.

The table topics was conducted by Ana. To help her carry it out were, Lewis, Javier, Villy, Raquel and Christian who delivered impromptu speeches about their various job roles such as a hotel bed warmer, and a life guard at a nude beach. The quick thinking and improvisation skills of the participants made it an eventful session.

Written by Christian.

Together As One

Our second consecutive meeting in Retiro Park saw Toastmaster Excelencia and Toastmaster Madrid combine as a joint group.

Joint Meeting with Excelencia

Mauro, the Toastmaster of the day who spoke Spanish, English and Italian added a trilingual touch to the meeting. First in welcoming guests, and then throughout the leading roles of the meeting, he alternated between the 3 languages. After the guests had introduced themselves, Ana and Adolfo explained their respective roles as the timekeeper and grammarian.

For Thought of the Day, Carlos treated us to a soothing music as he talked about music. Next was Ana who spoke about the book “Finding Your Element”.

DavidThe first speaker was David who talked about his life experience, breaking up with his girlfriend and going to Camino de Santiago on a trip that lasted 25 days. David used hand gestures, and maintained eye contact through his speech. His added humour left the audience begging for more.

Second to deliver his speech was Yago who was smooth, and appeared calm and collected as he talked about the “meaning of words”. Taking full advantage of the stage he moved around and spoke in a convincing voice. Pedro, his evaluator, commended him on his in-depth explanation.

At this time of recession, Maria thought it was a good idea to base her speech on job applications. In her speech, she suggested tips to succeed in a job interview. Maria used visual aids and lots of humour to present her information, needless to say that it was enjoyable.

JosephineThe last prepared speaker, Josephine centred her speech on grooming. She shared the stage with a colleague who role-played various grooming routines as Josephine talked. This made her speech entertaining and eye-catching. From a public speaking point of view, her speech was humorous, loud and clear and engaging thanks to the role-playing.

Alex led the table topics with intriguing questions like personal relationships with partners. Pilar and Nacho were among the unsuspecting members of the audience to participate in the impromptu speeches but responded equally well to the questions they faced.

Written by Christian

Ethical Meeting

A good number of fellow Toastmasters and guests gathered together for our first meeting of the new Toastmasters year, which became the perfect refuge to escape from the heat. The news were even before the meeting started, with our new Sargent at Arms, Ana, kicking the meeting off and giving the lead to our Founder and Distinguished Toastmasters, Jim Dodson, who acted as Toastmaster of the Day, serving as a good example of how to exercise that role in an optimal way.

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The speakers and evaluators roster provided a good combination of novelty and experience. Julian gave an artistic Thought of the Day, Maravillas talked about her professional twist and Christian shared with us his key learning experience in their Icebreakers, while Marina’s speech about Ethics made us reflect. Alex, Masha and Alex formed a dream team to evaluate the speeches in a way that everybody learnt something, like the “Virtual Image” concept that Aline shared with us or the importance of keeping the structure and the sentences simple in a speech.

The Table Topics session was driven by Pilar who, based on her work experience, and Marina’s speech, challenged the speakers with questions about Ethics in our daily life, which was positively valued by the audience, as the evaluator Ana pointed out. The auxiliary roles were performed really good by Rosa (timekeeper) and Jonas as Grammarian, who chose the word of the day “Pull Off” and paid extra attention to the usage of the English Grammar, apart from the control of the filler words.

Written by Nacho.

Meeting Summary – 18/03/2015

Somehow in contrast with the required formality and ceremony of the Club´s International Speech and Evaluations Contest held in the previous meeting, the session on March 18th was a showcase for entertaining conduction of a meeting. In addition, high quality feedback for the participants rounded an enjoyable evening. Let´s review the highlights.

With at least half the audience composed of guests, Toastmaster of the Day Eric David nailed it with a cheerful and funny flow of his introductions of the participants. Humor always works with new audiences. Also important on his side was the clear explanation of the titles and merits of the speakers (Competent Communicators, etc…) to the guests so that they could get an glimpse on what the progress in Toastmasters means.

The members in supporting roles such as Timer (Catalina) and Grammarian (Rosa) displayed humour in their explanations as well, thus easily conveying the message on what their roles were about.

The two first speakers, Anselmo and Iñaki, delivered both their project #3 speeches, with the focus on getting to the point. Different use of body lenguage from their side to tell us about professional matters and personal journeys. Maria, on her side, reached project #5, so she will get soon her recognition for the achievement (as other members recently did, read about it here). She also mastered her facial expressions and body language to tell about personal growth.

All three speakers, and the audience as well, were fortunate to listen to high quality feedback from their evaluators. In this meeting they deserve special attention. Aline and Jane provided feedback to Anselmo and Iñaki, who had same objectives for their speeches. Great value came from the direct comparison between the two evaluations. Aline touched many aspects of Anselmo´s speech, i.e. from body language to structure so the audience got a thourough reiview of the speech, also addressing specific points of the speech that had been agreed beforehand with Anselmo, showing preparation. Jane, approached it differently. She focused on less points of Iñaki´s speech but could ellaborate more on each of them, i.e. providing detailed example on how to improve the informative value of the speech.

Alex Hristov came handy as replacement for a last-minute drop, acting as experienced evaluator for Maria. He made the introduction of the objectives of body language with a great example of it himself. The audience, again especially newcomers, would then have a visual reference to measure the upcoming speech against. He provided a comprehensive evaluation of Maria´s progress from her previous speeches regarding facial expression. His candid evaluation about a somewhat confusing use of props rounded his task.

For the improvisation part, the Table Topics, the entertainment gained the stage again with John Gonzalez as Table Topic Master, creating a musical and provoking atmosphere very engaging for the audience. All selected speakers (Jesús, Julian, Pilar, Mabel and Jaime) came up with answers to his questions. Afterwards Luci gave, in her role as Table Topic Evaluator, specific praise to all speakers and to the overall conduction of this section. However, the general evaluator (myself) did not let go unnoticed that no critic had been made about the absence of the presentation of the purpose and goals of Table Topics to the many guests present there.

To close the meeting, Eric went on with his last jokes, rounding a succesful and entertaining meeting that could prove useful in converting guests into club´s members. Great job Eric.

Nice post meeting atmosphere (Here after Club´s Contest)

Nice post meeting atmosphere (Here after Club´s Contest on March 4th)

Written by Jaime