Compassion and Faith, are the 2 essential pillars of humanity. Without any of it, we would turn into a ruthless, uncivilized, and unworthy person. In this meeting, we are going to discuss deeper around this topic.
The meeting started with President’s opening speech. Our president, Julia Leong, DTM, led the theme discussion by telling us a story that happened to her son-in-law’s dental clinic where the value of compassion was shed to a less-fortunate patient. It ignited the motivation to the members and attendees to share their personal stories of the moment they contribute without asking for any return.
The Toastmasters meeting program usually comes in 3 sessions, which the 1st session is called the Table Topics® Session; 2nd part is the Prepared Speech session where the members came prepared with their speeches according to the Toastmasters education requirements; while the 3rd session is called the Evaluation session where all the speakers that had spoken earlier were given a thorough feedback for their further improvement.
The first session kicked started by Abulrahman, PM2 who was the Table Topics® Master for the day. His topics related the impromptu speakers to the core of compassion and faith. We were fortunate to have seasoned speakers volunteer themselves to take up the impromptu speaking challenges. Among them are CS Ong, PM1, Datuk John Lau, DTM, Manish Jha, IP1, and Vijaykumar, CC.
The 2nd session of the meeting started with Hai Liang, our newly-minted VPE, took the lead to deliver the 1st project speech. He was delivering on Effective Coaching pathway Level 2 Project 2, Understanding Your Communication Style with the speech title “The Evolution of my Communication Style”. He shared with us his different experience and encounters while working abroad in many region and continents, and the communication style varied from place to place.
The second project speaker was Rey Thean, PM1 who was presenting a Level 2, Project 3 program from the Presentation Mastery path. Her title was, “My Blind Spot: The Button”. Through a personal incident that happened to her, she was able to learn a valuable lesson from her mentor. As she said,”A mentor is able to see through your blind spot immediately”
The third speaker was Mathew Philippose, EC2, whom would be delivering a Social Speech from the Effective Coaching Pathway. He delivered an eulogy to commemorate the memorial day of Late Francis Ng, DTM, who was our passionate founding member and Past President. Although it was a short speech, we could feel the courtesy and sympathy it brought.
The meeting adjourned for a short break and resumed to the 3rd session, the Evaluation session. We need a freash pair of eyes to observev the conduct of the meeting for our improvement. The honor of this role fall on the shoulder of the General Evaluator (GE), who is Past District 51 Governor, Ramdas Nayer, DTM.
He invited his team of speech evaluators for their feedback to the speakers. KL Loh, ATMG provided his laser sharp observation towards the Table Topics® speakers. Next, Mr. GE also called for the project speech evaluators which included Manish Jha, IP1, Julia Leong, DTM, and Datuk John Lau, DTM to give their views and feedback to the project speakers
After the Technical Role Players had also delivered their report, Mr. GE took over the control to give his evaluation speech on the conduct of this meeting. By his observation, our club had done many things right. He like the way our evaluators gave their evaluation speech which was not meant to ‘white-wash’ the speakers. They provided a lot of constructive feedback and encouragement to motivate the speaker to perform better.
The
meeting came to a closing when finally President Julia Leong, DTM took over the
control again. SHe announced the best performers of the evening.
Best Table Topics ® - Datuk John Lau, DTM
Best
project Speech - Mathew Philippose, EC2
Best Evaluation Speech - Datuk John Lau, DTM
In her closing speech, Julia reminded our members that this is the club that has the safe environment for members to learn and grow as our motto will always be “Friends Helping Friends to Succeed”. She spoke her closing message with strong compassion and faith like a caring mother, just like what the theme of the meeting had called for.
The
final highlight of the meeting was to have everyone turn on their camera to
pose for a group photo. The meeting adjourned at 9.45pm.
Blog Writer: Ron Yeap, ACG, ALB
