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.
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.
We all left this session GLOWING.