Changing Times

Procrastination and Change 29/06/2016

Change. Change is life, there is no life without change and evolution. And this session marked the last day of the Toastmaster’s year and the last day of the now former committee.

This was a very inspiring session, like always, and an emotive one, with the farewell of our beloved Jelena as president for the last year, and her team of leaders. I’m sure we are all going to miss the energy and positivity of Jelena. 

But change brings new things, new doors open, and a new team will take the reins of the club from the next week so it can keep being the best club in Barcelona!

The new team will have to set goals and work to improve the group…as we all do in our daily lives. And this was the topic of the day: 2016 goals and which ones are we still procrastinating on.

Special mention for the guests we had today, one of them from San Antonio, Texas, and another one from Sagrada Familia Toastmasters Club, among others.

The toastmaster of the session was Paul, our former VPR, our toughest VPR ever I’m sure and he did sure joked about it. Paul invited us to review our personal objectives for the year that are still hanging and work towards them for the rest of the year and take action.

After the presentations of the technical team we proceeded to the first speech. As a timekeeper we had Beatriz, Marc as a grammarian, Maria in the role of Ah-Counter and Gerard, one of the new brand members in his first job in toastmasters, as a blogger.

1^st Speech of the day: Juan – Resignation Letter (CC4)

Juanmi offered all of us an inspiring speech about courage, about fear, about guilt, about pursuing your passion…about all the black and whites that go with a big change in life. Juanmi just quitted his job and he shared with us all the feelings and thoughts he is experiencing these days. 

Change can be a scary thing, and negativity can come and get you in uncertain moments and can snowball and affect all areas in your life. But Juan reminded us that we have to stay positive, everything is for the best, and we should not feel guilty for taking action and ending a situation that wasn’t fulfilling anymore. And fail as many times as you can, failure gets you closer to the goal, failure is success.

Juan gifted all of us with an amazing sentence: “Fear does not prevent death, it prevents life”. And we cannot let fear determine what we are able to do or not

2^nd Speech: Cristina – The cost of primping (CC5)

This speech’s challenge was to use a lot your body to deliver your speech and express the message. Cristina unveiled herself with an amazing use of postures, movement, and characterization to share with us an embarrassing experience she had one day going to work.

That day started with Cristina waking up feeling the desire to dress up a little bit more than usual, to show off, to primp, to feel pretty in the end. And this turned to be a crazy ride to work when she found out that her panties started rolling down her knees! Furthermore, she had to walk up a stairs in the train station and in the entrance of her work! Then she realized that the long skirt she was wearing had a long cut in the rear part to ease the walking and that people behind could see all the mess………when suddenly a man screamed to her: “Señora que se le caen las bragas!!!” 

In the end it wasn’t that bad, she could get to work, fix herself and it only was a little embarrassing experience, one we all should laugh about if we find in one of them.

Cristina used a wide repertoire of body language to convey the message and it was one of the funniest speeches I’ve seen.

3^rd Speech: Jelena – At the manager office: why has the successful sales person performance faltered? (IC – 4)

Jelena divided this speech in three parts: 1^st she explained the coaching method, 2^nd she role played a situation with Sean where she had to coach using the methodology previously explained, 3^rd a brief open discussion about the roleplay. 

Coaching is about improving your life, it’s not only for when you’re sad, and coaching is about changing and learning and becoming a better person to improve all aspects of life.

In the role play Jelena was playing as a manager that wants to address a decrease in performance of the company’s best sales person. Jelena showed great connection with Sean and showed that she is a very good listener as well. She displayed a trustworthy attitude and helped Sean open up and share a bit of his personal problems. Skills of a great coach, that I’m sure she could be.

After these series of amazing and varied speeches we proceeded to the evaluations and then table topics.  

In the evaluations we reviewed and learned some important things like using the 3 second rule when giving a speech to contact with the audience, use 3 seconds to look in the eyes to one person, and then switch. We also learned that is important to have a strong final to wrap up the speech. MA gave us a great view on body language, everyone has a defensive gesture, and we may not even be conscious about it, and it’s a posture we use when we feel nervous. It’s good to be aware of this and try to fix it to grow as a speaker.

Then Morgane hosted the table topics with the participation of our American guest and Alba. Morgane proposed a little game where the participants had to improvise a speech about a future challenge for them using two different attitudes that were selected randomly.

This gave us great detail into how attitudes can change what happens to us. Because attitude makes all the difference, we can never change what happens to us but we can always choose how to respond with our attitude. And it’s a power we all should learn to use every day.

Wrapping up the session Paul welcomed on of our new members, Manuel, and Rayane evaluated the session as General Evaluator. She pointed out once again that the time management is a bit off and that we should work a little more into it and encouraged everyone to be more welcoming to the guests, as is one of the projects of the Competent Leader manual.

Lately it was time to say goodbye to the former committee and everyone congratulated and thanked Jelena for being a great and supportive president. She even got a couple of gifts! Lucky her! Jelena talked for the last time as president and she reminded that the most important thing is friendship. It’s the thing that keeps the club together, that gives the energy to have these amazing sessions and the motivation to keep going on because persons are the most important thing in the club.

Thank you very much Jelena, thank you very much to all the members in the committee. This is a change but I’m sure the new leaders of the club will continue the great job you’ve been doing and that the next president will be probably different, but not worse :D


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