30th January 2020 – Chinese New Year – Year of the Rat
Kevin Prohl – The President and Chairman for the evening opened the meeting welcomed the guests. He especially recognized the Club Growth Director – Stephen Budai, and Past Division Directors Marlene Krone and Christine Alcott. Kevin also recognized first time guests, and participants of a Speech Craft the club is running and participants at his Speech Works Course. Kevin also recognized two past members Gavin Logan who left the club about 20years ago and Supriya.
The theme of the meeting was “Celebrating the Chinese New Year.” The meeting room was decorated well to reflect the theme of the meeting. There was a small band of willing helpers including one or two guests to assist Kevin.
The Grammarian – Jeffrey Liang gave a challenging word of the night “Serendipitous.” He was going to allow variants serendipity and serendipitously. Did not quite catch the meaning of serenditious from the Grammarian but according to Vocabulary.Com the meaning is “ Serendipitous is an adjective that describes accidentally being in the right place at the right time, like bumping into a good friend in some unusual location, or finding a hundred dollar bill on the ground.”
How one could use the word of the night in a sentence – We are really excited about this totally unexpected and serendipitous discovery.
Um-Ah Counter – Les Johns and Time Keeper- Heather Robertson explained their roles and what they were looking out for.
The meeting moved quickly on to a Smile Story – delivered by Jessica Fitzgerald – tips on being a Flight Attendant on how remember a customer’s name in business class.
Tips were:
1. Repeat a person’s name at three times
2. Remember some characteristic about the person
3. If all fails remember that they have a big suitcase of money under their seat for you.
However, these tips can backfire when one day a sexy Irish Flight Attendant called a couple Mr and Mrs Small instead Mr and Mrs Little.
However, this tip was a handy tip for all of us to assist us to remember fellow Toastmasters names.
Liz Day – did a proficient job as Toastmaster welcoming up the five speakers and five speech evaluators and handled the changes.
The first speaker up was Saane Tuakalau working on Pathways Leadership Development Level 2 – Introduction to Mentoring. Her title of speech was “Work in Progress.” She mentioned we are all protégé at one time or other. We all need to be mentored by someone with more experienced.
If you have a choice in your mentor – ensure that they have the skills that you want and they walk the talk. To be a great mentor one needs to be a great protégé. Another tip Saane gave is enjoy learning from your mistakes: Always laugh and enjoy and move on.
Never graduate from learning – everyone is always learning. Probably why there are still people still in Toastmasters 20+ years (My opinion).
Second Speaker up was Ramesh Sethuraman delivering his Ice Breaker titled “The Coffee Club.” He described his life as if we were having a coffee. It was very entertaining that I forgot to take notes.
Ratul Bhattarcharjee – was Speaking from Team Collaboration Level 3 the Compulsory Project for this level. He told us the importance of:
1. Law of Significance (Need a purpose and share the purpose)
2. Law of Catalyst (How it would operate)
3. Law of Accountability
Communication – is highly important to build trust and share a goal. To get the buy in.
Raymond Mok was the fourth speaker up. Working on Innovative Planning level Two also delivered a speech on Introduction to Mentoring – titled “A New Beginning.”
Raymond spoke highly of his mentor Reena (Sp) who assisted him over a two year a period 2014 – 2015 for him to achieve his goal to live more independently and go flatting.
He described Reena was very:
· Experienced and knowledgeable,
· Positive and Supportive
· Respectful and Empathetic
· Committed and Trustworthy
Who assisted Raymond in achieving his three goals:
1. More Independence
2. Go Flatting
3. Manage his own Support workers.
The final speaker was Richard Watting working on his path “Effective Coaching” – Level 4 – the Compulsory Project. Told us something what was coaching about and how he serendipitously found someone to coach he called Felicity.
He asked Felicity what she felt she was competent at – and that he benefitted just as much as she did.
Next up were the five evaluators. Steve Peeters an accomplished evaluator evaluated Saane. He felt Saane came across confident in her delivery and had a whole lot of energy. He felt the only thing that was missing was a personal story. He thought the speech was well structured and informative.
Next up was a guest Marlene Krone who gave an effective and encouraging evaluation. She found it a great opportunity evaluating an Icebeaker and stated that Ramesh Sethuraman met his objectives. She also liked how he injected humour throughout his speech. She gave 4 recommendations:
1. Throw away the notes – personal story don’t need notes
2. Stood too far to the audience’s right – stand nearer to the middle so able to connect with the audience.
3. Use more pause – especially when the audience is laughing at a joke
4. Get a mentor if he does not have one.
However, Marlene praised Ramesh for having the courage to take up the challenge in speaking in front of a large audience
Supriya a guest evaluated Rahul. She gave a succinct evaluation for Rahul of his speech. She felt Rakul spoke confidently and from the head. However, she would like to have heard a summary to recap what e were told. She found Rahul’s speech was very inciteful and the take away message was the importance in building trust in the team.
Jessica evaluating Raymond loved the personal story from Raymond – and the story talked from his heart. Raymond came across confident and the speech flowered. Her only recommendation was that she would love to hear a Sequel What happened to Reena? Came across warm and encouraging.
Gavin Logan evaluating Richard. Said that the speaker had a logical structure. He had three recommendations:
1. Would love to have seen more gestures
2. Hear more vocal variety – gave examples where Richard was good and where he could have improved
3. Challenged him to inject more humour.
Overall said he learnt from the speaker.
Table Topics sessions was short and sweet to time constraints. There were 5 topics giving guests opportunity to speak. These were evaluated by Laksman and Kevin.
Reports followed by the Grammarian who claimed that the word “Serendipity” was used throughout the speech and there were wonderful word pictures. Jeffrey especially like the word pictures used throughout Ramesh’s speech.
Les Johns – gave a thorough report on the ums and ahs and there were a couple of “you – knows” thrown in the mix.
Heather Robertson gave another thorough report giving all the timings of our speakers etc.
Steve Budai – claimed it was a “top class” meeting. Reminded the timer could clap off speakers and evaluators who go over time. As timing was running out he reminded the evaluators it was a moment of sharing and a moment of learning – and reminded one to evaluate in the third person as everyone is learning from the evaluation.
Steve ended his evaluation with “Everyone can do it!” “Even a Newbie Can Do it!”
Over all the meeting was actioned packed, well catered for in the refreshment break. Everyone was warmly welcomed and majority of the guests received a name tag. After the refreshment break all guests and members received a Red Envelope in relation to the theme Chinese New Year – The Year of the Metal Rat 2020. All those with the number 8, 18 and 28 etc received a lucky prize.
Well done Kevin Prohl and the Three Kings Executive for putting together an actioned packed meeting.
