Our President Claire welcomed members and guests to another great meeting with a full agenda as usual — combining education and fun. We had a bit of ‘malarkey’ (our word of the day) while working on improving our speaking and listening skills.
One of our members, Ellen, took on the role of Toastmaster for the first time and did a great job presiding over a smoothly run meeting. We started off with a wonderful poem from Noel – “Mid-Term Break” by Seamus Heaney, a very personal and moving account of loss and grief.
This was followed by Patricia’s lively Table Topics session which gave us lots of food for thought.
Our speeches section got off to great start with another entertaining speech from Aoife as she reflected on her cultural experiences living in South Korea. This was followed by a more serious discussion on leadership styles from João as we learned about the lasting impact that a great leader can have on a young company manager.
Our President treated us to a speech on successful event management and we all gained a few tips on how to plan meetings and encourage participation.
Towards the end of the meeting our three speech evaluators delivered constructive feedback to help our speakers and audience to further improve their skills and also benefited themselves from the very constructive evaluator feedback from our esteemed longest-serving member Peter.
Judging by the quick responses to our Listening Post questions posed by Eileen before the meeting wrapped up everyone had been listening attentively over the two hours.
Looking forward to our next meeting already!