The meeting on the 6th of May was scintillating. We started the meeting with an award ceremony. Dyane officially handed over the Revitalized Education Program Learning Masters Certificate to Khushi who, along with Anna, is a Learning Master. Khushi has worked on the REP for more than one year, where she invested her time, talent, ideas and wisdom. If you would like to know more about it, here is an interview with our Learning Master. Dyane‘s speech entitled “Revitalized Education Program Recognition” was delivered as Project #4 from the Special Occasion Manual.
Dyane, Dyane’s assistant Dorian and Khushi
Khushi‘s speech entitled, “Learning Masters: Service Leadership,” was Project #5 Receiving an Award from the Special Occasion Manual. She shared with us the information about her leadership experience at Toastmasters. She also motivated us to work on the Competent Leadership manual and to step up for a board officer position. One of her key messages was “Don’t wait until you are ready: Toastmasters is a learning environment, it is a place to experiment; the support and help you need is all around you.”
Toastmaster of the Evening Prateek, introduced the theme of the evening “Murphy’s Law” and reminded us that if something can go wrong, it would :). Being prepared as much as you can is always the best solution. Afterwards we listened to Icebreakers from Beate and Iveta and the speech of Florian who delivered Project #8 thereby completing his CC manual.
Beate told us about her life changes. In her speech entitled “Transition” she told us about her shoe store and about her transition from managing it to becoming a life coach and trainer for 4D system workshops. If she didn’t feel fulfilled in her shoe business, that is no longer the case.
In her speech “Me & Toastmasters” Iveta told us about her first experience with Toastmasters. She was as a guest in 2011 at a Toastmasters club in Brno, Czech Republic, and was picked to do a table topics speech. She finished her speech telling us her reasons to join Mercury: to become a better public speaker and to get to know our members better. Welcome Iveta! We want to learn more about you too.
Florian told us about the first time in his pilot experience when his plane had to land with only one engine. The landing was successful because the pilots in the cockpit knew how to to handle the tense situation. However, the plane guests didn’t know about it, for them the flight was a “normal flight”. Florian related this to other events in life: people work behind the scenes in order to make other people happy and to provide them with what they need. As an example he mentioned our club, where our Sergeants at Arms set up the room to provide us with a great learning atmosphere (n.a.: Thank you to our Sergeants at Arms Mariana and Robert!). We are sometimes not aware of how much work was put in the things around us. We just take things for granted.
Throughout the evening, another theme permeated our meeting, namely leadership. We learned about traits a leader should have like authenticity, autonomy, listening or communication skills or being compassionate. The two inspiring speeches at the beginning promoted leadership as well. Prateek and Florian also mentioned leadership in their pep talk or speech respectively. “Leadership is a posture and a choice, not a role that must be bestowed on you. Step up and be a leader when no one is watching or expecting you to do so.” – John Izzo and Marshall
What is there for you as a Mercury member?
I would encourage you to enter the board. As Khushi mentioned in her speech “If you focus only on speaking, you’re getting only half the benefit Toastmasters can give you“.
Lesson learned: 4D system is a way of building successful teams. It was developed by Charlie Pellerin, leader of the Hubble Space Telescope development team. The 4D System addresses basic human needs: appreciation, belonging, positive future, and structure. 4D was developed after the failure of the 1990 launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. This was a “leadership failure” rather than a “technical failure”. Wrong leadership can lead to failure.
Word of the day: splendid.
