Leadership, Possibilities, and Perfectionism- Meeting highlights for April - Report by Ursula Beatty

Leadership, Possibilities, and Perfectionism were 3 of the interesting , different  yet related themes for our meetings in April 2017.

  For Meeting #719, Christine chose Leadership as her theme.
Her intro question (for all attendees): “What leadership roles have you held or aspire to hold?”

The answers to this question gave a wonderful insight into each members leadership accomplishments to date.

Christine demonstrated her leadership skills at the beginning of the meeting, when her assertiveness was required to to keep the meeting on track.

 Interesting too, as Christine pointed out that being a leader of a voluntary organisation teaches you many skills. I certainly agree with this.

Attitude was my chosen  word of the day.

Tying the word in with the quote:  ” It’s your attitude and not your aptitude that determines your altitude.”

Nicole led the table topics with some interesting thought provoking questions such as this one:  “Would you rather be the leader or the follower? ”  

Paul presented and facilitated a mini-workshop on relationships.

First, he gave  examples of important relationship  qualities. Then,  he asked each of us to write on a piece of paper, what we considered the 3 most important qualities.

Just like a raffle, a few people were selected to tell us in 60 seconds what words they chose and why. The different points of view from young and old , male and female members were fascinating to hear. This stimulated discussion and got the involvement of entire group, which I particularly liked.

Mark gave a very inspiring speech about ‘living your life’ ,  taking responsibility for pursuing your goals and achieving financial freedom etc, through following your inner compass/intuition.

My own role as Word of day and Grammarian.  Grammarian is a challenging role as you are required to listen to word and grammar usage of all participants throughout the meeting and report back at the end of the meeting.   It is a different listening skill to evaluating a speech, plus if like me, you do not claim to be an expert on English grammar, it can stretch you - in a good way.

All in all, the meeting was lively with a good vibe. Sadly though, it was Nicks last day in our club due to a change in his work and family commitments. He has been a wonderful asset to our club as a member and in his role as SAA. We wish him well in his future endeavours.

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For Meeting # 720, Rivella chose Possibilities as her theme.
With the intro question: If it were possible, what would you do?”

Some interesting answers to this question. such as: ” If it were possible, I would travel by hovercraft. Then any damaged bridges (from the recent flooding in SE QLD) and congested traffic would not be a problem for me getting to TM in good time.”

Ian was the Table Topics master with some innovative Table topics.
Being a Non-native, ( I am Irish),  I was called on to do a table topic which to be honest, I didn’t think would be possible to answer:
Ian read out a list of many Aussie slang words and then gave me the list on a page.  My job was to use as many of the words as possible, in a one min table topic!  What sort of a Galah did he think I was?   To be able to use all these ‘non-queens English’ words in a story.  But, by Crikey I think I pulled it off, as I gave it a fair go,  much to my own and everyone else’s surprise and amusement!!
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For Meeting # 721 Ursula Chose Perfectionism as her Theme.
Intro question “Perfectionism and your Toastmaster journey…”

The meeting was good fun even though we only had a small group.  Despite the meeting not going to plan  (2 scheduled speakers gave apologies),   everyone  adapted as.

Julie Anne stepped in with an interesting speech about ‘Mind over matter’. She took us through an exercise on how to bend her perfectly good kitchen soup spoons, using the power of the mind. Sarafina proved her theory correct,  and gave Uri Gellar a run for his money. She completely bent the soup spoon!!  There is a new career for you Sarafina. Well done.

I think Julie Anne was a bit surprised and aghast to see her ‘perfect’ spoons looking so  … well…  very  bent and imperfect.

Then somehow or other, the ‘round robin’ section took us in a very different direction. Thanks to Zach, there were some very amusing stories from members about their siblings behaving badly toward each other, resulting in broken bones and other  interesting/dreadful injuries and scars. Of course, we know,  they were not funny at the time for the poor ‘victims’ and to the parents of these ‘imperfect children’’ playing badly.   

All in all 3 different but highly entertaining and/or interesting meetings. Do you have any other interesting stories or highlights to share from these meetings?

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