Toastmasters is a Communication and Leadership Club, but also the best Teamwork Club, where their members deliver fascinating speeches to their targeted audience. Raquel, our Toastmaster of the Day, put speakers together last Wednesday to accomplish these magic goals, that is, members and evaluators outperform communication and leadership by teamwork.
Javier, our first speaker, delighted us talking about “things are not just black or white”, where he could explain many things of his life. However, he preferred to talk us about his personal story when he was in a leadership training in the UK. He explained us that he was encouraged to choose among “doer, thinker, talker or guardian” to define himself. So, the Ice Breaker goals were successfully achieved, as Pilar assessed in an evaluation as great as the speech! The second speaker, Masha was also amazing and it was absolutely validated by Jim, her evaluator. The “Fight or Flight” speech was a demonstration of courage towards facing public speaking. Masha delighted us with the best methods to reach a great speech in public, but she concluded that the most important key is “practice, practice and practice”. Nacho was the third speaker with an Educational Session part of his High Performance Leadership manual, and was evaluated by Luciana. He talked us about the wonderful word of this blog, that is “Teamwork”. The topic of this speech was the Division Conference, the great meeting in Spain where the best speakers enchanted the audience by their abilities and great skills. He explained us that the aim of a successful teamwork: the motivation of the great team, and the participation of each member in all details of the conference, where everybody wants to aid to reach the proposed goals. The result of the teamwork was an amazing event.
The Table Topic Master, Jose, was an excellent moment of teamwork as well. Aware of the importance of working with others, Jose increased the participation component with a topic related to the Master of Ceremonies in a Conference, where the one of the main workshop leaders failed. The impromptu speakers had to to find why another different topic would still fit in the conference. We enjoyed a lot with speeches, such as, the Art of Walking, the Lady Gaga fame or the history of Harry Potter. We enjoyed a lot, where the evaluation of the motivated participants and Table Topic Master were fine, so I would like to say congratulations to all!!
To summarize the meeting, our Toastmaster of the day, our Grammarian, our Timekeeper and our General Evaluator, demonstrate us that the prime advantage to working as a team is the ability to combine skills and talents. That is, we benefit from a wide array of skills and talents that no single member could possess alone. Thus, our outstanding meeting was an exemplary teamwork.
Written by David Martín.
The agenda contained one Thought of the Day by Mabel, one project speech (number #5) of the 
Eric’s speech, “Words speak, do you listen” dealt with the meaning of words. His speech pointed out that it is the time for ours to understand what words truly say. It is to be noted his particular spelling of the words “PEACE: Pacific Engagement Against Conflictive Encounters” and “STRESS: Simply Temporary Retrogressing Energy that is Severe System” evaluator, Jim, showed his humor just when entering the scenario: “Your speech reminded me when I was studying vocabulary lists” and praised his speech.
To close the meeting, the president came up to the stage for a Presidential Announcement, that was starting to be called, by request of the audience: “Let the president speak!”. We were relieved to check out that Jaime was alive after running the complete Marathon and he gave special recognition to María and Anselmo, who, in a record time, had delivered more than 5 speech. He concluded with a sadly news: his farewell (seems that we are going to miss to claim “The President likes to Speak” encouraging the members to apply for the 
Bobby our visiting DTM from China and General Evaluator, said how much he had liked both us and the meeting. He complemented Luciana on successfully bridging the gap between the speakers and the audience. He then came to the defense of Lilian, pointing out that in his opinion she had in fact done plenty of research which was visible on the graphs she handed out. This had enabled the audience to get the point even better but he felt the content of her visual aids had been overlooked by her evaluator. Luciana was delighted with the present he handed her for our club at the end of his evaluation and Bobby left the stage wishing us all a very happy 
And, not only we discovered Anselmo’s favourite toy as a kid, but he also shared with us his favourite book; because, the meeting agenda contained a first short talk known as “Book of the day”. Anselmo related how “Our Ancestors” by Italo Calvino made a long-lasting impression on him, since the first time he read the book: “I thought what Don Quixote must have thought”. Prepared speeches are always the core part of every Toastmasters meeting, and on February, 4th we recorded them for the first time.
Music, music was in the title of Pilar’s speech “What music means to us”, but mainly in the content: she explained her feelings towards this artistic expression, scientific facts related to music, she played the guitar and she sang, even including the Word of the Day: Fringe. Our Grammarian José was shocked.
