Coping with change

Chaired by Ron, Spinnaker’s 16th July meeting theme was “Coping with change”; Ron said change is inevitable.

Grammarian Janine’s word of the day was an unusual word “vicissitudes” which means change. It was used 13 times during the meeting.

Table Topics was run by Dieter whose theme was along the meeting theme of coping with change.

Angela – what’s one idea that you have changed your mind on throughout the years? Angela described how her mother made corned beef and how she hated it, but things change and she actually had corned beef at a restaurant recently and rather liked it.

Kathy – do you think people can change and why or why not? It depends very much on the person and whether they choose to change or not. I have changed my ideas on lots of things over the years, but there are people who dogmatically stick to their point of view even in the face of evidence and are too scared to change their mind. Toastmasters is open to many different views, people at your workplace have different views.

Sarah – What is one goal in my life that has turned out to be a win? Teaching has meant lots of change for me over the years at different schools and with different levels of students.

Katina – Share a personal experience where you have had to adapt to a major life change? One major change was when I was ordered to leave the maternity ward and take your baby with you. With a child you are in a constant state of change.

Ron – imagine you wake up tomorrow with a completely different career? That has literally just happened to me, as we had a restructure and I have had a change of role. Now I have to do the jobs of 4 people who have left, and I still don’t know what to do.

Janine – the impact of technology on our ability to cope with change? There’s a few different schools of thought on this. Despite my age, we all learn to cope to change and so long as good parents exist, young people will be able to cope with change. The only constant in life is change, we all cope with it and just get on with it.

Evaluator Megan liked how the topics matched the meeting’s theme, and how they were challenging but broad enough for everyone to speak to. Katina won the best table topics speaker award.

Speech 1 by Dale was on the subject of “Mentoring – a match made in heaven”. Dale’s purpose was to describe the mentoring process envisioned by Toastmasters, and to outline her recent experience as a protégé. Evaluator Angela said Dale’s speech was a sales pitch about mentoring and got the audience involved by asking them to raise their hands in answer to questions.

Speech 2 by Darrell was from the Engaging Humour pathway “My brush with celebrities”. Darrell reported when he met a Dalek from Dr Who, singer songwriter John Rowles, and a Commonwealth gold medal winner Dave Prouse who became Darth Vader in Star Wars. “Exterminate exterminate exterminate”.

Evaluator Kathy reported that she liked the way that Darrell cleverly used the word of the day in his introduction, and how he used three parts to highlight the famous people he had met in the past. Kathy thought his eye contact brought everyone in which was entertaining, gave the audience laughs and had the theme running through the entire speech.

Speech 3 by Ron was a Table Topics workshop following a proposed change to the District level contests of dropping the Table Topics contest in favour of an Online Contest. Ron explained the various methods a speaker can use to structure their two-minute table topic speech using some information he recently encountered at a two-day impromptu speaking training course. He then divided the audience into groups and after a couple of minutes preparation, one from each group was invited to present a table topics using the information he had handed out.

General Evaluator Jacqui complimented the chairperson on running an excellent meeting, and the evaluations were spot on.

If you would like to experience the Toastmasters way of public speaking, then contact us on spinnaker@toastmasters.org.nz and we’ll invite you to our next meeting. We’d love to see you!