Winnipeg Toastmaster on Taking Leadership

Our President, Andrea, opened the meeting with an inspired pitch for taking a leadership role on our club’s executive.  It’s time for elections and everyone is encouraged to consider taking on a role.  June reinforced the theme by using the word Leadership for our word of the day.  Members used the word of the day in their introductions by telling the group about the leaders who had influenced them in their lives. 

We were treated to an icebreaker speech which is always a great way to get a peek inside a new member.  Matt delighted the group by telling us about the three areas that would help us to get to know him the quickest:

• he likes to help others
• his habit of procrastination
• why he joined Toastmasters

Matt’s speech offered all of us something to think about and helped us get to so much more about him!  Congratulations, Matt on doing your icebreaker speech!

This meeting was a special meeting because we had time for two speeches and our second speaker was Bev Doern.  Doing the Research Your Speech project from the Competent Communicator manual, the title of her speech was Stress 101.  Bev’s work mission is to help people sail through life without capsizing so this speech topic was definitely one that she is an expert in!  She sited statistics that indicate that stress is the #2 reason for long term disability in Canada and mentioned that stress is now a socially acceptable form of mental illness.  Fortunately for the members in the room, Bev also gave us a few ideas for helping our bodies stand down from the stress response:

• become aware
• create rituals around relaxation
• take charge of your life

Our evaluations and reports were supportive, effective and well delivered.  Tiffany demonstrated great evaluation technique by reminding the audience that evaluations were the opinions of the evaluator only.  Selena gave excellent, succinct examples of what she liked about Bev’s speech.  Both of them used the sandwich technique very well.  Vicent did a great job of the ah counter role even though he was not even a member yet and it was clear that June was listening very closely for colorful language and phrases.  She gave us all some great examples for future grammarians to emulate!

Andrea ended with the quote for the day by J.P. Morgan – “ Go as far as you ca see; when you get there, you’ll be able to see farther.”

If you are in Winnipeg and are interested in dropping by and visiting our club, we meet Wednesdays from 12:05 – 12:55.  We have currently “moved house” for the summer to room 125 St. John’s in the University of Manitoba but please do drop by and see what our members are up to next week.

If you're in Winnipeg and interested in sitting in on a club meeting to see if Toastmasters is right for you , please feel free to contact Dianne Winser at dianne_winser@umanitoba.ca, phone 204-256-7550.

Toastmasters – the proven way to grow your communication and leadership skills.