Public Speaking and Leadership Skills – 9th August 

Tuesday 9th August and Eleanor G was Toastmaster, introducing the theme of festivals for the meeting. She had a team to assist her, Pranav was Timekeeper, John was Sergeant At Arms and Christophe was Grammarian introducing Jovial as word of the day. Every week we have meetings to support our members in building their public speaking and leadership skills.

Eleanor B was harkmaster, informing the audience of the importance of listening by stating “Hearing is uncontrollable whereas listening is a skill”, citing 5 types of listening; pseudo, appreciative, empathetic, comprehensive and critical listening.

We had three speeches on the night, first on stage was Miller delivering her icebreaker which is the first speech in the competent communication manual. Miller informed the audience about challenges she has overcome, how in life sometimes things work out differently than planned. Her speech ended with the message, that only by repeatedly asking ‘Who am I?’ do we truly start to know ourselves.

Second on stage was Cleo, delivering the second speech from the competent communication manual “Organise Your Speech”. Cleo informed the audience of the traditional Brazillian and Portuguese food, Feijoada. Likening the dish to a magic potion, Cleo informed the audience of the history, ingredients and how the Feijoada dish came to life in other parts of the World.

Lastly was Yyvonne delivering speech 3 from the Competent Communication manual “Get to the point”. Her speech was about the Olympics including some interesting statistics such as how there are 13,000 athletes competing in Rio, in 33 sports and 400 different events. Yyvonne also informed the audience of when her dog competed in doglympics in Taiwan!

Fahad then hosted the table topics inviting impromptu speaking volunteers to the stage to deliver a 1-2 minute speech. Speeches were then evaluated by Isabelle, who provided each speaker commendations on what they did well and also included tips on how to make their impromptu speech better. Join us next week to see how we help our members improve their public speaking and leadership skills.