February 14th,  2018

Welcome and introduction to new members, by our President, Sean Palit.  We had 10 new people interested in the session. 

The theme was Valentine’s Day and our Sergeant of Arms, Soledad Castellano, created a special atmosphere with special decorations and chocolates for all the participants. 

In the technical team we had Cristina De Medrano as the Timekeeper, Adrien Frouin as Grammarian and Marc Majoral as the Ah-Counter. Adrien chose the word GLOWING for this session.

The 1st Speaker was Mona Tellier with the theme:  Self Help.  From the “Competent Communication manual – 2 – organise your speech.  

Her goals were: a strong opening and conclusion.  An outline that can be followed an understood.  A clear message with supporting material and appropriate transitions. 

Mona’s speech did master these objectives, with a strong introduction and conclusion and with good transitions.  We were all hooked to the story that Mona was telling us about “self help” and her findings about this industry.  She provided us with good stories and examples with a rich language and interesting findings that provided us all with new knowledge.  We all loved the end of the story where she challenged us to keep on listening to her next speech.  

Well done Mona!

The 2nd speaker was Isabel Montero  with the theme: ”The Effective Feedback.  From the “Competent Communication Manual 8 – Get comfortable with visual aids”. Her goals were:  Select visual aids that are appropriate for the message and the audience; Use two or more visual aids correctly with ease and confidence.

Isabel’s speech was divided in 3 structured parts and it was a 15 minutes speech, it was very interesting and I could see many people taking notes. 

In the first part, she explained us the reasons why feedback was so important, as we are all aware from our experience in the Toastmasters sessions, and the 4 steps on how to provide this feedback.  She then explained us the need to give constructive feedback and which language to use, for example: be specific, be sincere, speak for yourself (the “I” technique), emphasize how actions affect the team, recognize improvement and end in a positive note.  

Isabel then ended offering us 3 different techniques on how to deliver feedback, which are:

1. The sandwich technique:  Bread at the top:  explain a positive situation, Meat in the middle:  explain the ideas for improvement, and bread at the bottom:  end with a positive tone.

2. Stop – Continue – Try:  e.g.:  Stop doing “x”, but continue doing “y” and try implementing this new idea for the next meeting.

3. Bridge technique:  link the past and the future. E.g.:  talk about how she was performing before, continue on how she is performing now and what she could do if she put into practice a new skill, for example, participating more in the next team meeting providing more technical data.

She ended her speech with a quote from Frank A. Clark: feedback helps us to keep learning and growing, but it has to be given in a sincere and humble way.

We then had Emilie providing feedback to Mona, and she put into practise the sandwich technique that Isabel had just explained us.

In the table topics we had Paul Conde introducing the theme for this session, which was related with love and Valentine Day.  

We had Dina Niculaes, who had to declare herself to her boyfriend.

Maria Blanca’s whose boyfriend had a special confession to give her that day.

Sean who had a girl friend who wanted to move into a more intimate relationship and Sean had to explain that his preference was the “friend zone”.

We all had a good laugh at the situations created by Paul, and the three of them were excellent in organizing their impromptu speeches.

Beatriz Garcia gave us her feedback on all the session and so did the technical team.

Our president, Sean Palit, then closed the session providing us with further knowledge:  grow the passion inside of you and surround yourself with people who flare your flame.  And last but not least, regarding today’s theme:  brighten someone else to make them glow.  
We all left this session GLOWING.