Tag Archives: public speaking

Take To The Stage

Although the word of the day was “scorching”, it is fair to say that our last meeting was not the hottest evening of the Madrid summer, as we gathered open-air in Retiro Park.

20150715_203158After a brief introduction to the guests by Alberto, who was the Toastmaster of the Day, the show was good to start. Marina led the way with his brief talk on Self-Confidence and Self-Investment.

 

In the first speech of the day, we saw Alex chant and scream (he is not crazy) as he told a legendary story from his native country Brazil. Benito, his evaluator, thought it served well in grabbing audience attention and interest.

Eva gave us a “touching story” about inheritance which had the audience intrigued and connected to her family. Jane, who was evaluating her, liked the structure of the speech.

19541365330_6eb5e22492_kFor her Icebreaker, Mirat filled us in as to why she had a mixed set of jobs on her CV. Her speech ended on a high note as she quoted the words of Buddha “the path is the goal”. Her evaluator Jose commented her use of humour in the speech.

Time for the fun part arrived when the Table Topics Master, Luciana, magically turned Jim, Raquel, Manolo, Sonia, Raul, Anthony, Christian and Julian into salespeople and were tasked with selling various related items like holiday accommodations, modes of transport or relaxing holiday destinations.

Pilar and Ana played their roles as Grammarian and Timekeeper with enthusiasm. It was only right at the end of the meeting, that the General Evaluator Nacho pointed out the lack of usage of the podium for delivering any of the evening’s speeches and activities. Only if he had reminded us much earlier to Take to the stage…

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.

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.

alberto-karateThe 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.

TimingDuring 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

20150520_205519A 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!

20150520_205803There 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.
20150520_210420In 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