Category Archives: Your Body Speaks

Any wordmonger in the room?

On Wednesday 16^th we gathered at Anthony’s Place to see three of our members, Mabel, Ana and Alberto, demonstrate how the objectives of their respective speeches could be achieved.

The meeting began with the introduction of our guests. Jaime, a member of Excelencia Toastmasters club. Carla and Sam, both of them English teachers. Blanca, whose mother had recommended her to visit a Toastmaster meeting. And a girl, friend of our fellow member Masha, from Moldova.

Raquel, our Toastmaster of the Day, told us about the Toastmasters International new app. Before the meeting, she had contacted all the participants to ask them for the app they found most useful. That is how we learnt that the most useful app for Quyen, who was filling the role of grammarian, is Waze. She introduced wordmonger as the word of the day. I have to say, few of the participants found a challenge to use it correctly. Additionally, we learnt that Iván, our timekeeper of the day, most useful app is Fintonic.

Before the speeches started, Eric used the thought of the day section to tell us about the most dangerous word in the world: no. And how brain reacts to negative idea. Great start.

Mabel, whose favorite app is Runkeeper, delivered the speech “Superheroes”. After a moment of silence, she confessed she had superpowers. She used her movements, gestures and facial expressions to convince us that we could also be Superheroes. We just need to master the “Champion Position”. Those that were not able to make it, missed a great opportunity to be a more powerful individual.

Ana, who calls herself a Whatsapp addict, become a Competent Communicator after successfully completing project #10 of the manual. Her speech “Follow your hunches” was an inspiring tour of her life and why is important to act on our intuitions. Ana cleverly used well recognized songs to lead the audience through a self-discovery journey.

Alberto, who picked e-Park as his most useful app, completed the first project of the Storytelling manual by delivering the speech “The Pied Piper”. He started asking us to close our eyes and imagine that we were in bed. That peaceful moment was quickly left behind when he introduced one of the main characters in the story, rats. The plot was an intelligent reinterpretation of The Pied Piper of Hamelin with a tougher end.

Strangely enough, only one app was chosen by more than one person. Teresa and Luis, who were both evaluators, chose the app that informs about public transportation in Madrid. Both of them together with Carlos, Ana and Jim gave constructive feedback to all the meeting participants aiming to improve their skills. Ana, our VP of PR, confessed Raquel she doesn’t let Twitter rest.

Maria, as the table topic master, ask some “victims” to deliver an elevator speech to a capital investor while waiting in line at a coffee shop. The pre-set business ideas run from a matchmaking service for dogs to auction-based restaurants. I have to say all the participants, Jack, Navinya, Santi, Juliet and Rose, achieved their mission

I almost forgot to mention that Jim, our club founder, mentioned that Alberto’s speech reminded him of the book “A nation of sheep” by William J Lederer. I’m sure it is a worthwhile reading.

Written by Javier.

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 21^st 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 21^st 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 5^th 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.

20151021_202808

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

Clapping And Dancing

It floated in the air. In the first meeting after the Division Conference, there was a general atmosphere of excitement. Easy to tell, as human beings we still felt that adrenaline rush, consequence of enjoying with the best speakers in Spain. We all wanted to put into practice the great skills we admired in them. Can you imagine a better scenario?

Due to the number of attendants, we were obliged to use the big room. Happily, there were many members, and we were glad to welcome almost 10 guests, some of them curious after reading the “El Pais” article on the conference.

It was, in words of the General Evaluator, Carlos, an “unusually fantastic meeting”. It was conducted by José Alonso, the Toastmaster of the Day, who warned the guests with his usual ironic touch: “for those of you who are clapping, you will end up fed up with clapping”. He surprised us inquiring about the dance skills of the participants, since none of us were aware of this facet of him! This topic provided much fun, for instance, we discovered that Jim won one professional cha-cha-cha contest and that María loves to dance in her room.

The agenda contained one Thought of the Day by Mabel, one project speech (number #5) of the Competent Communication Manual by Anselmo and the first project speech of the Advaced Manual “Speaking to Inform” by Eric.

Our passionate storyteller Anselmo delighted us with a personal story about a chocolate cake that he prepared for the Golden Wedding of his parents… in only 5 minutes!! His evaluator, Teresa, challenged him to give a serious speech, because it is clear that he already masters the art of storytelling.

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.

The Table Topics Session was carried out by our uprising newcomer David Aguiar. He challenged the three selected speakers (Alex, Carlos and Luciana) to decide their destinations in function of two variables: the amount of money and mean of transport, and concluded the role with a personal story that showed how traveling makes it easier to make up one’s mind. María, the evaluator, was impressed with the first time of David as a Table Topic Master, and provide all the speakers with specific advice.

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 President and the other Committee Roles). Elections are near and you can be a canddate!!

Written by Pilar.

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 on March 4th)

Written by Jaime

What was your favourite toy as a child?

This was the question that our Toastmaster of the Day, Teresa, had asked all participants while preparing the first meeting on February. She used the answers to introduce members with roles. Therefore we all were able to remember our first bikes, skates, dolls and “mecanos”…

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.

Two of our youngest members of the Club, Alex Alves and Pilar gave their projects number 5 and 6 from the Competent Communication Manual. Alex conveyed a speech full of passion when he related his experiences as a volunteer in Ethiopia with the NGO “Living Meki”. We learnt that we can make this world a better place, that volunteers receive much more than they give. But, when Alex fulfilled his body language objective singing and dancing “A ella le gusta la gasolina”, we learnt and we will never forget that Ethiopians are really fond of reggaeton music.

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.

The Table Topic session is always the funniest and most creative part of the meeting. The Table Topics Master, Aline, had announced on her Twitter account, she felt especially creative when she was preparing the questions.

Feeling creative this morning. Perfect time to prepare my #TableTopics questions for tomorrow.

— Aline Casanova (@CasanovaAline) February 3, 2015

We were delighted when Mario, a first time guest, acted as if he were a tennis ball.

But this meeting had something new too. Toastmasters Madrid held a short Awards Ceremony for those members who show commitment and have done 5 speeches or more. This recognition will become a tradition in our club. But beyond celebrating our past success, we are focused on the future. As an incentive to keep on learning and improving, Alex, Pilar, Alberto, Lilian, José and Aline received a homemade Certificate and a Toastmasters International pin. Our Club President, Jaime led a warming and friendly presentation, in which members who could not attend (Guillermo, Ana V., Javier and Irene) were also recognized for achieving such an important milestone in their Communication Track.