So yes, let’s face It, It has been a very “unique” session.
Last Wednesday I had the chance to participate in my 5th Toastmasters session. My expectations were very high, but at some point I kind of knew what to expect. I know about the structure of the session, the timings, the roles, the content and rituals. But Toastmasters, as any other good and fun things in life, couldn’t surprise me more: all the sudden everything was turned upside down. Let me explain It: we had an unexpected guest from Hollywood (LA), lots of fun at the table topics and some chaos at some point, which resulted in a very fresh and dynamic session and also a speaker (Rose) that wasn’t evaluated since she was providing tips on how to evaluate others!
The evening started with Mariyana (our Toastmaster for the evening) introducing Marlene and her husband our guests from the US. They are in Barcelona for other matters but wanted to get a taste of how we do things around here.
Mariyana continued the session stressing the importance of the smile, which was the theme of the session. Also, interesting enough, the word of the day was Chuffed!
Mariyana introduced the Tech Roles and after that we went directly to our first speaker of the night: Rose Chong.
Rose Chong speech: Keynotes to become a good evaluator
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Rose is a very senior speaker; she looks very confident and secure. Rose makes eye contact and smiles
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Rose starts talking about her mentee, which gave her first speech last week, starting the speech with an «oh my god… why am I here, you are going to scrutiny myself…»
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The speaker points out that a good evaluator is one that evaluates to encourage the speaker, not to criticize for the sake of It.
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There are 3 pillars for a good evaluation
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Mindset
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Preparation
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Encourage. Live demo
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Rose speaks about the importance of each role, evaluator, audience, guest, speaker (most important)
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She empathize with the speaker, introducing some very funny remarks in her speach
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Preparation is the most important part for an evaluator. No last minutes are allowed. It’s very important to know the goal of your speaker, so you can evaluate upon those goals: what do you look in your speech? Voice? Body Lang? Improve hand movement?.
Skills desired for a good evaluator:
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A good evaluator can point out very specific themes. Provides the example of Florian Muek
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Rose recognizes that a bad evaluator make a big impact on the speaker… even discouraging the speaker to come back to a TM session.
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She recommends providing examples with every comment, so the speaker understands the content and the context.
Rose brings an Evaluation template. Areas to cover:
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Picture the speech
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Analyze the speech
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Structure your Evaluation
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Rate the body language
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Summary
Lastly, Rose recommends providing encouraging feedback to the speaker for his/her good development.
Second speech: Henric Obegi, Graduation speech
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Henric starts heading the audience, asking for help and empathy: he will need to provide a graduation speech in few days and he needs to practice and the feedback.
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He makes an analogy based on claiming a mountain and getting on top by different ways; depending on the role, the character of each person, priorities, values and experience. Examples of R&D people (creative) vs finance folks or sales and marketing groups. Each group takes a different path and experiences the climbing in a different way.
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He makes a good hearted speech about what has been accomplished.
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Also, he brings some poetical expressions along but always very confident and natural
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The final message turns into looking at tomorrow, but living the today fully (proposing a good party)
Third speech: Thomas Ron Hold, Entrepreneurial
Thomas has a very positive attitude; he shares a natural smile that generates a nice atmosphere in the room.
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He starts speaking fluently about the subject of his speech.
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Early in the speech he shares a personal experience, which resulted in losing his former job. He makes jokes about It, being quite funny about the situation.
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He mentions that life is a roller coaster, with all the ups and downs, and everything is great but the way his bank statement looks like!
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He claims to be an entrepreneur, and seems to be proud of it
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He shares his story after his former job, being a consultant. Explains the desperation of little activity on the very beginnings (no phone calls nor emails from customers)
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For Thomas, to create something new is what really drives him, not so much the income itself
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He explains that he gathers with other professionals, in a similar situation. They tell their stories, share their experiences, share challenges, meet people, help each other. They network and support each other. This generates a lot of satisfaction.
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Thomas looks very genuine and natural. I have the feeling that he is sharing his story with a group of friend.
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He recommends jumping into it. Get entrepreneurial, realize your dreams. Not be afraid of failing.
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He wrapped up saying that he might like to create a toastmasters club in an area where there is none.
Jelena, Evaluator of Henric
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Jelena remarks the opening and the engaging style of Henric.
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Rapidly she mentions 3 good things.
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Humor, which can be used more often.
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Confidence.
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Good content.
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As well as 3 things to improve
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Vocal variety (Jelena provides examples)
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Play more with pauses, provides examples… silence can be golden
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The take home message: provide more depth
Lidia, Evaluator of Thomas
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Lidia opens up highlighting the confidence and smiling that Thomas showed
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Also she brings up the good body language and the good use of the ups and downs
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Lidia mentions that It was a good idea to use Thomas’ personal experience since it was inspirational and created connection with the audience
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Some aspects to improve: the way to come into the stage, be careful with the hands in the pocket
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Lidia wants more passion, more emotion in the speech
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As a final remark, she mentions that Thomas could do better at the opening and closure (call to action, more powerful)
Rose is back on stage
With Rose now back on stage, she now evaluates Jelena and Lidia as evaluators. Some key points she mentions:
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Jelena was encouraging towards Henric
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Rose provides examples of good Evaluator’s characteristics
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Finally Rose reminds the 3 steps for a good Evaluator: Mindset, preparation, encourage
Laia, table topics.
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Laia explains with examples the importance of selling
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Participants need to sell a mysterious object. This object cannot be seen by participants, who can only touch the object they need to sell.
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The 3 speakers were very funny and good sellers. Audience laughed a lot.
MARLEN, General Evaluator
Marlene, the colorful lady from LA explains certain differences between her club and ours. She highly compliments the Evaluation templates facilitated by Rose, as well as her presentation. She explains that in her home club, they do table topics first, and they don’t ask for volunteers, the person in charge just chooses the participants! Marlene recommends having the time keeping and Tech Roles always in front of the speaker… speaking of time keeping, at this point we are far from keeping the time set for the session, but Marlene keeps on providing examples of differences between the clubs. She constantly remarks that there is no better than the other… they are “just different”. Way beyond the time scheduled for the session, when we all thought that Marlene’s part was over… we were all mistaken! Mariyana points out to Marlene that she needs to give the word to the Tech Table since they need to evaluate the participants. After that, we all thought now It was over… everyone but Marlene!!! At this point she insists on having pictures with all of us and the brochures of her club back at home (the brochures were really important to her). In the middle of a kind of messy wrap up, Mariyana concludes the session for the day… in the middle of an intense photo shooting conducted by Mr. Marlene’s husband.
The evening comes to an end with some group pictures with Marlene (and her brochures), good wishes to her and of course, as the theme of the day required, lots of smiles around the room.