Tag Archives: evaluations

Motivation

Weren’t you able to attend our June 17th meeting? If that’s the case, keep reading to know what you missed.

Being an international group means that our guest usually come from all over the world. This time we had people from US, New Zealand, Colombia and of course some Spanish people. Around 30 people filled Anthony’s place back room.

John was the Toastmaster of the Day. He chose music as the general theme for the meeting, but accidentally, motivation became the common thread of the session. In any case, we got Pink Floyd playing during all the evaluation pauses.

Christian introduced us to Napoleon Hill work: “the Law of Success”. A book aimed to identify the secret of the success of self-made rich men as Henry Ford or Thomas Edison. Something worthy to be checked out!

Raquel explained us who the new club officers are. Quite impressive team, to be honest. We are taking our new members development so seriously that we have now two VP of Mentorship.

The two main Speakers of the day were Alberto and Eric. Alberto’s “Earn your Black Belt” speech inspired us to remember that “where there is a will, there is a way”. Rely on your internal energy and do not give up. Eric’s “Chants, affirmations, songs… and haka” electrified our unconscious mind. Eric started with an impressive haka that left us breathless and I mean all of us, including him. But 2 minutes later he was singing, could you believe it?

Eva and Julian were the speeches evaluators. Both of them demonstrated why feedback is the heart of the Toastmasters Educational program.

Finally, Jane, Benito, Pablo, and Alex were the “victims” of Juliet, the table topic master. She made them communicate difficult information while motivating the audience. Could you imagine having to explain in your company that a new company rule force employees to dress according to their salary?

Written by Javier.

What is behind a name?

Eric opened the meeting inviting our guests to introduce themselves. Therefore, we met Felix, Veronica from Venezuela, Darío from Dominican Republic, Elena and Lee from Korea. The last two names are not real names but easier for us to remember than the real Korean names of their bearers.

Names were very important in our last club meeting: Eric had thoroughly looked for the meaning and popular bearers of the names of all the participants in the meeting. We learnt popularity statistics and that most of us share the Biblical origin of our names.

We all loved how members who recently joined our club (Maria Mirat, Christian, Maravillas, Juliet and Ana), played a very important role in the first part of the meeting.

During the introduction of her role as Timekeeper, Maria Mirat made us remember the story of the “Men in Grey” from the novel “Momo” by Michael Ende. Those “Men in Grey” represented the “Time Saving Bank” and promoted the idea of time saving.
Christian, our Grammarian, chose “Impeccable” as the Word of the Day. And he confessed that he had just learned that the Spanish word was very similar.

Just before the prepared speeches, Maravillas recommended us to see a film: “The good lie”, in a longer than usual, but very interesting Thought of the day.

Two prepared speeches were Icebreakers. The Icebreaker is the first speech in the Competent Communication Manual, the first milestone for every member in her Toastmasters journey.

Juliet, the first speaker, remembered with emotion, her first working experiences in the city of Jos (Nigeria). She taught us how we can influence and touch lives with something small and trivial: Chocolate!!

The second prepared speech of the meeting was Ana’s Icebreaker. With “the pets of my life”, she presented the different stages of her life, her family, the period of time she spent in the US… and how animals have always had a prominent role.

Masha is nearly Competent Communicator!! She delivered her 8th speech on last Wednesday. With her magnificent body language, vocal variety and all the visual aids she was requested to use to reach the objectives of her project, we learned “The true story of Matryoshka”. According to Masha, originally Russian Matryoshkas consisted on 7 figures. Each one was painted in a certain rainbow colour, from red to violet, in the same way that the 7 chakras or 7 life force-energies in yogi tradition have a corresponding colour.

When speakers are finished, evaluators take their turn:

Both Teresa and Raquel focused on the opportunity that new members give the rest of us to know them better with their Icebreakers.
Jim evaluated Masha and he pointed out that “as always, it is a pleasure to listen to you”.

Julian, the Table Topic Master, gave us the opportunity to travel through time (as Rosa and David did), and through space, because Elena flied over Ibiza. During Table Topics Evaluation, Nacho focused on the great Rosa´s performance and that Elena “gave us more than a short speech of a minute”.

Before the meeting is finished, our supporting roles (Grammarian and Timekeeper) gave their reports:

According to Christian, paying 0.10 € for each filler word is always something to celebrate, as we are helping others with the money we get.
Maria divided us in three groups: the frugal, the moderate and the talkative ones, depending on how long we talked.

General evaluator is always the last role of each meeting. Jane, Gift of God, as her name means, pointed out that we had struggled against noise and heat during the meeting. Something that the new Club Committee has to face for future sessions, next one on 17th of June.

Written by Raquel.

Thanks For the Feedback

A Toastmasters meeting is not complete without a Toastmaster of the Day, and this week was the turn of Alex to take the lead role. He braved the audience into addressing the crowd of the 33 people who showed up. Teresa, the General Evaluator, thought Alex showed leadership when he raised his voiced to get the audience attention and established control, just at the beginning of the meeting. Alex spoke with clarity and confidence as he gave an introduction to the 12 guests that were present.

Next on the agenda was the Thought Of The Day, which was conducted by Alberto, who informed us of a book entitled “Thanks for the Feedback” which served to encourage us to received feedback gracefully and not despise them. Which happen to be what Toastmasters is all about.

Just before the speeches, Raquel had some good news to deliver: Toastmasters International has sent a certificate, congratulating Toastmasters Madrid in our 15th anniversary. Great job, Toastmasters Madrid!

There are contradicting views about the Ice Breaker speech being either easy or difficult: there is no doubt that David made it look easy as he took to the stage and enlightened us with a story about his life. After a brief introduction about himself and his job role as an engineer, he spoke about his time travelling in Germany as an Erasmus student. David appeared confident with his nerves well kept under control as he delivered his Ice Breaker speech without notes, and even moving around frequently and using gestures to maintain user attention as noticed by his evaluator Jane.
Alberto on the other hand, performed his ninth project, Persuade With Power, titled “Flying under the Radar”, with emphasis on speaking to persuade. Alberto told an anecdote about his charitable works and challenged us to find ways from time to time to fly under the radar by pretending to be an aeroplane. Maria, his evaluator, congratulated him on using visual aids, and also using anecdotes to develop a strong connection with the audience. Maria then suggested him to incorporate a more emotional touch in his next speech.
In the second part of the meeting, the Table Topics Master, Mabel, randomly picked members to give an impromptu speech about a job that will exist in 2045. Alex seemed to love his future job as a “Nano GPS Rresearcher” to aid people keep track of their partners and socks. Marias motivation for becoming a “Memory Orientation Surgeon” in 2045 was to meet the demand for increased life expectancy and improve life of the elderly.
All in all it was a successful meeting, the Grammarian Ana, was pleased that her selected “Word of the day” Opprobrium was used numerous times. The Timekeeper, Juliet, was also delighted that she did not have cut short any speeches. All participants performed brilliantly. And most importantly constructive feedback were given from which participants would fine-tune their Public Speaking skills.

Written by Christian

Teamwork

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.

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

Toastmasters Madrid – Public Speaking and Leadership Club

Where Leaders Are Made