Music

Music is love, passion, destiny, relaxation, feelings, intelligence, patience and effort… Music is one of the most beautiful things that humans have created. We were lucky that music involved last Toastmaster's session: Prince as a Toastmaster, with his pleasant and rhythmic voice, and Ricardo, delivering his Ice Breaker, who spread out in feelings and passion about jazz.

Jazz is not planned, it is improvised. It flows with creation, risk while executing. There is so much to say and express through the jazz. But jazz is not easy, it requires effort, practice, either alone or with musicians. Genius are made by reharsing not by divine creation.

With this relevant metaphor Ricardo captivated (word of the day) the audience, who almost forgot he was giving his first speech. Both, jazz and public speaking require effort, courage, positivity, improvisation and last but not least perseverance. His evaluator Gianluca remarked how Ricardo felt so confident in his first speech, and suggested him to control the space a little more.

After our energy was raised up after the Ice Breaker, the session was followed by an advanced speaker, our VPR Robert who gave us a lecture about coaching. He had a great challenge to achieve, by means of a role playing he had to coach Pilar to improve her body language during her speeches.  Although his suggestions were quite subjective, the message of how we can help people to perform their best was clear, and we ended up with some tricks to put in practice.  Beginning with questions of why this poor performance, then showing some bad consequences and finally giving some suggestions in a positive but helpful manner.

This coaching speech reminded me to our last session, where it was said from now on we are going to give more constructive evaluations. We want to learn by delivering speeches and by giving and receiving valuable evaluations, so that evaluators must not be reluctant to give suggestions, their mission is to help the speaker to improve and to motivate. Cormac, Robert’s evaluator, gave his valuable evaluation pointing out some weaknesses of Robert’s speech that could help him and us in a future. For instance, he mentioned to use more the space even if is a role play, and to start always with a strong opening.

Impromptu speeches are also a goal in Toastmasters, not only for giving the impromptu speech in one minute but also for becoming a volunteer.  Volunteers struggled for the survival, because Leticia’s goals were not easy to achieve, however both Michael and Ben nailed the table topic!

Finally, our General evaluator Angel T., asked for the reports such as the grammarian from Céline, the Ah-counter report from Patricia, and myself as a timekeeper. Angel congratulated the good job from Prince, his first time as a TM and remarked the importance of the time during the session, above all when the bell rings.

Prince, my mentee, performed very well his role as a Toastmaster. He reached one step further in his path to achieve leaderships skills, and he will get one more in the “Apocalypses night”. I hope Mayans made a mistake with their predictions because I want to keep enjoying my weekly sessions in Toastmasters.