Pathways Workshop by Toa Payoh Central CC Toastmasters Club

On a breezy evening one Wednesday on 4th April 2018, eight (not so) young grasshoppers marched down to Toa Payoh Community Centre armed with notebooks and pens to learn more about the fabled Pathways. Fees for this workshop was fully sponsored by our club, Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Club, to encourage members' attendance.

There were 4 esteemed masters that day:

• Pathways Guide Alicia Chia Poh Lin
• Toa Payoh Central CC Advanced Toastmasters Club President Christophe Hamchin
• Past International Director, DTM Poh Kim Siong
• District 80 Program Quality Director, DTM Harikrishnan Muthusamy

After a brief intro by emcee Roger Sng and organizer Janet Haw, Sensei #1: Pathways Guide Alicia Chia spoke on (surprise surprise) pathways! She introduced Pathways as a flexible education system that’s customizable to achieve our unique professional and personal goals. With no time limit to the curriculum, there IS time to stop and smell the roses.

Pathways is a system built on 5 core competencies:

• Public Speaking
• Interpersonal Communication
• Strategic Leadership
• Management
• Confidence

And to help us develop these core competencies, there are 10 paths:

• Dynamic Leadership
• Effective Coaching
• Innovative Planning
•  Leadership Development
• Motivational Strategies
• Persuasive Influence
• Presentation Mastery
• Strategic Relationships
• Team Collaboration
• Visionary Communication

Every path has a total of 5 levels, and each level has projects for us to complete before clearing that level. The good thing is that the projects in level 1 are the same for all the 10 paths. It only starts differing from level 2 onwards, as level 2 focuses on helping us develop our personal style. Of course, some projects overlap for certain paths, so be sure to choose your projects wisely to give yourself some flexibility in your pathway selection.

After finishing all the projects in all 5 levels, you would have to do a reflection speech to reflect on your journey through that pathway.

Online basecamp is free for your first pathway, and US$20 for your subsequent pathways. If you want printed materials, it is US$25. While there are no refunds should you decide to quit that pathway, there is a 30-day path exchange deal for those with buyers’ remorse. Of course, all these is on top of your club membership fees.

For those who are undecided about which pathway to take, there is an online assessment with 20 questions to help you decide which path would best meet the goals you want to achieve. It takes about 12 – 18 months to complete a pathway if you are consistent in completing your projects.  

The next speaker, Sensei #2: Toa Payoh Central CC Advanced Toastmasters Club President Christophe Hamchin, very kindly showed us how to navigate through the confusing online system: Base Camp. He showed us how to view video tutorials, download project checklists, and access the vast amount of learning material available on the website. 

He even gave us a handy tip: if you find that you are unable to move on to the next level in the system, double check that you have answered all questions in the pre and post assessment of your projects. Failure to answer even 1 question will result in you not being able to move forward in the system.

He also showed us how we can ask for feedback/give unsolicited feedback ;) to members of the same toastmasters club. Through the ‘Feedback Submission’ feature on the website, we can indicate the type of feedback we would like to receive and select the specific club members we wish to receive the feedback from. 

Those club members would then receive an email, and we may choose to make their response open to all club members/just the exco/or only ourselves for viewing. The limitation is that we won’t be able to ask for or give feedback to guest speakers/external evaluators from other clubs.

After a short break with delicious homemade refreshments, Sensei #3: DTM Poh Kim Siong talked about how important it is for clubs to grow with Toastmasters International, and start on the Pathways instead of sticking to the traditional program. His speech can be summarized by analogies from the Wizard of Oz: 

• It takes commitment to achieve your goals—the Pathways journey is not easy and requires you to dedicate time and energy towards it. 
• Sometimes you need to lean on your friends – ask your fellow club members for help if you need guidance during this journey.
• Running away is not the answer – if you quit Toastmasters halfway you will not achieve the goals you set out to accomplish.
• Follow Your Own Yellow Brick Road – don’t compare your Toastmasters journey with other people’s. Everyone’s experience will be different, so do things at your own pace.
• No one else can do it for you—no matter how much help others extend to you, if you don’t put in the required effort on your own, you won’t improve. 

He also shared another nugget of wisdom with us: “A leader is a reader.” He recounted how he hit a roadblock with his 3^rd DTM application because of technicality in the rules, and used this to urge us to read up more on the pathways so that we can avoid similar hitches.

Poh Kim Siong also showed us some handy websites that summarized what pathways is about on a single page:

https://www.toastmasters.org/education/pathways

https://pathwaysexperience.blogspot.sg/

After that was Q&A with the 3 speakers as panel.

Qns 1: Can we do 2 pathways simultaneously? Yes.

Qns 2: Since the first level is the same for all the 10 pathways, when you start on your 2^nd path, do you have to repeat the projects in the 1^st level? Yes. Repetition is the mother of learning, so it will do us good to repeat the projects anyway.  

Finally, Sensei #4: DTM Harikrishnan gave a short speech on leadership and what it takes to be a leader. According to him, a true leader is one that helps others develop their leadership potential.

Overall, it was a highly informative and useful workshop and all the grasshoppers left wiser than they were before.

Thank you.

Written By:

Audrey Lim

Disclaimer: Photos in the blog are from Toa Payoh Central CC Toastmasters Club, reproduced with their permission.

118th Chapter Meeting - 10th March 2018

On this wonderful Saturday we had our 118th Chapter Meeting at Anchovale CC

Our Sergeant-at-Arms- Manonmani started the meeting by asking the opinions of toastmasters about organic food.

While there are some people who enjoy it, some of the toastmasters actually skeptical about the benefits of organic food.

After the introduction by the Toastmaster of the day, Badriprasad, our president Salma Begum shared how global warming affects women more than men. It is mainly because women need to travel further in hot countries in order to take care of the family and the fatality rate is higher for women in natural disasters because they are more likely to struggle physically compared to men.

In Marice Hung's speech, she talked about an online game- virtual world,developed by Linden Lab. It is a game dollar could be exchanged to US dollar. There are a lot of transaction among its 1 million users. She said that the difference between the game and other online game like world of warcraft is that it provides freedom which we can not get in real life. Linden Lab is creating another game with VR. Furthermore Marice said that VR became the focus of technology giants like Microsoft and Apple. It will be the next big thing.

Evaluation

Jeff said that Marice did the speech so well that she sounds like a TechCrunch.com’s reporter. He likes her confidence and proper eye contact with the audience. 

Suresh gave a speech about criticising. He said that criticising is not comforting  and most people do not think thoughtfully before speaking out. It creates negative emotion. However, listening to criticism is sometimes a good thing because other people might be more knowledgeable in a certain area. Thus, we all have to accept or give criticism that is constructive and can encourage people.

Evaluation

Hemant thought it was a relevant topic to us since we often encounter criticisms in our lives. He felt that Suresh has a good posture but not enough eye contact.

In his prepared speech, Vicky told us why procrastination is a fatal habit. It has a bad effect on students' grades and finances.

Reasons people choose to procrastinate are because of:

1. Perfectionism 

2.Fear of the unknown

3.Do it later 

4. Working on small tasks because they are easier

5. You experience a lack of motivation

6. You are unclear about how you started 

And we could overcome the problem by writing a daily review and be critical about ourselves and find your “why”.

Evaluation

Weite hilariously said that it is the first speech that is not about Vicky's wife. Wei Te likes his style of speaking. She labeled it “bro style” that can build rapport with audience. However, she feels Vicky could have made the advice more memorable.

To react or to respond. In his prepared speech, Norman said that in life we face problems but we have a choice of how we deal with them. We are empowered by our decision. He thinks that we have to accept certain situations that we cannot change and embrace them. It is our responses that govern the outcome.

Evaluation

Chee Sian thought it was a good speech but the message could be further reinforced.

Sathiya taught the “nontechnical audience” the process of rice cultivation. They are

1. Germination and seeding 

2. Transplanting

3. Watering 

4. Take out the weeds

5. Tillering stage

6. Pesticide

7. Heading

8. Ripening

9. Harvesting

Evaluation

Zulhafni thinks that Sathiya was able to capture attention, using beautiful comparison. It is a clear presentation with good clarity. However, he thinks Sathiya could put a timeline of the whole process of rice cultivation and to have a recap section.

 In her speech Valli demonstrate how to make a delicious tuna roll by using white bread, can tuna, mayonnaise, red peppers, spring onion.

Evaluation

Salma said Valli has a good choice of topic and give out sample of the food while sharing the different variety of the food. However, the structure of the demonstration could be better and there are many silent moments in her speech.

  

Our table topic master gave out famous quotes from some great people to the participants. They are mainly about how to conquer fear and cultivate hope. 

Lastly, we have double winner for both Best Speaker and Best Evaluator today:

Best speaker: Sathiyamoorthi and Norman

Best Evaluator: Weite and Zulhafni

Best Table Topic: Francis

Written By:

Vincent Wong Cing Shen

From Motive to Message: How to be the Biggest Fish in a Small Pond

A cool and confident person, dressed up in blazers with nice wet gel on his hair, came up in front of the crowd at Anchorvale Community club to give a speech craft and introduced him as “Justin Timberlake “aka “Jaz.” The audience was immediately hooked by his introduction as his actual name according to the programme sheet was “Hijazi” and the synapses in the audience brain fired over other possibly interesting things were in store during his speech – “How to be the biggest fish in smallest pond?”

Over the next 35 mins, he didn’t belie the expectations and took people on a roller coaster of insights from his own experience on public speaking, relationships and life in general. He told us how he learnt during his journey and audience learnt from his life experiences. 

There were 3 key messages in his speech

1. To have authentic self-transformation you need to ask “Why?”
2. To be the biggest fish in the smallest pond and to be a public speaker of repute, share one key message, a message so unique that only you can share to the world.
3. Use the 4M Model to draft the message – Messenger, Message, Method and Motive

He concluded with strong practical ways to apply these ideas in our speeches

Message 1: To have authentic self-transformation, ask “Why?”

His story was about a typical Toastmasters journey.  Jaz like all of us toastmasters went “on road” in search of one thing as part of their TM journey– Ability to impress girls, social skills etc and wound up discovering, especially after the down turn he faced in life after giving up toastmasters for 2 years ,  that Toastmasters was important to him because that is where he discovered himself through learning.

Jaz shared a prolific insight based on his journey. We all know what we want from TM journey – better presentation skill, better communication skill etc. However, when we reach our goal our growth stalls because we never ask “Why do we really want those skills?”

To have deep and authentic self-transformation, Jaz mentioned that we should ask the deep, searching question “Why do we want what we want?” His view is that our deep probe of using multiple “Whys” will lead us to the truth of our personality, unlocking the meaning of life.

This theme set up in the initial part of the speech and was underlying throughout his speech.

Message 2: To be the biggest fish in the smallest pond, to be a public speaker of repute, Share one key message, a message so unique that only you can share to the world.

Jaz, took us on a thought experiment to illustrate the importance of having a message that only we can communicate.

The story was of a fish tank with 5 guppies and 1 sucker fish. Guppies did a lot of things to attract us, but the sucker fish only kept cleaning the pond. At the end while all the Guppies died, the Sucker fish survived.

As public speakers, we can be of repute only if we have a message that only we can explain to the world. That would make us the biggest fish in the smallest pond because nobody else would have that message with the authenticity as ourselves.

Message 3: Use the 4M Model to draft the message – Messenger, Message, Method and Motive

Jaz explained a fabulous view of how to be good public speaker using his 4M model. He shared that while Messenger, Method, Message etc can be mastered, what sticks in people’s mind is the Motive. He used the analogy of Martin Luther King’s speech to explain how great speeches transcended time because of their intention or Motive not because of the messenger, method or message alone.

As such, we should focus on the motive of the message – that was Jaz’s direction.

4M Model                      

In concluding, he explained about 4 kinds of speakers for the audience to benefit from. He mentioned that we should identify which category we belong to and use that to our advantage to communicate the message.

In conclusion to implement the theories, he had a few practical suggestions.

1. Whenever we have to prepare a speech, identify first what we want the audience to do,  then the title and finally the content. When you are delivering you can follow the order as title, content and finally action.
2. Apply the “onlyness” framework – Are you the only one who can deliver the message in your way? This is important to ensure your message sticks and clicks.
3. Always ask, “What next?” So that we can move forward not only in our communication journey but also in our life

Overall, it was a highly illuminating session. We are most grateful to Jaz aka Mohamad Hijazi, ACG, ALB from Jauhari Bilingual Toastmasters for his sincere sharing.

Written By:

Muthu Rama Ganesh, CC, CL

Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Club International Speech & Table Topics Contests 2018 10th February 2018, Saturday

It’s the one weekend to feel the approaching festive mood of the Chinese New Year coming the following Friday. At Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Club, this mood is one up further with the anticipation of the highly awaited International Speech & Table Topics Contests 2018. A yearly event at Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Club is known to have customary huge attendance.

Such crowd only exude our brave contestants’ finest. And finest is an understatement to describe what the audience took away. With such deep treasures of messages from our International Speech Contest Participants:

Cherish every moment with your loved ones (Ricky Setiawan)

Do not wait to tell how much you love them…the important family, friends (Deepthi Valsan)

Talking a troubled youth into the correct path, it is possible (Salma Begum)

Don’t look back, don’t attempt to change the past (Muthu Ganesh)

Emotion is the key to motivation for motion (Owen Lorena)

Step out, step in (Zulhafni Zulkeflee)

Keep the wisdom of our ancestors…do good be good…to move from real life hell to real life heaven (Hareesh BN)

Good spread of food and drinks during the refreshment break followed after the International Speech Contest. Beside an opportune mingling time, as if to hint at anything, the Table Topic Contest commence right after with the hand picked topic by our Chief Judge, Carolyn Street, DTM, … “Food or drink? What is your poison for 2018?”

Our stomach filled contestants tackled the topic with great humour; our audience however, took it all in with jest even though they are no longer hungry, literally.

Balance is the key. Just like her love of perfume. No excess. Eat in moderation (Deepti Monga)

Grape growers funded research stating red wine is “good for health” (Hareesh BN)

Food beyond what you need is not appropriate. Just look at me (Muthu Ganesh)

Coffee during day time to keep awake. Alcohol at night to lower the energy for a good sleep. As long as you know how to use it (Owen Lorena)

Liquor - can be poison to many people. Overeating is poison – antidote is to exercise. Worked hard at poison. Need to work harder on the antidote now (Ricky Setiawan)

Excessive bulge comes from overeating after marriage. Abundance of food she cook now becomes “poison” to her husband (Salma Begum)

Poison is sugar drink. To cut body fat, cut sugar drink – Coca Cola. Painful but necessary (Vincent Wong)

She drinks alcohol. From vodka, to tequila shots, to cocktail, to finally appreciate wine – not just for old ladies. (Gu Weite)

Tried cutting out gravy on food. Only to prefer no mental stress, over stressing on reducing fatty food. (Zulhafni Zulkeflee)

Photos with some of our appointment holders.

Norman Tan - Organizing Chair

Mishrita Gundluru - Timer

Sarah Ong - Food I/C

Richen and Manonmani - Tally Counters

Anchorvale's Adopted Member - Debbie He

Carolyn Street DTM - Chief Judge

Many thanks to our appointment holders who made the Contests a great success. What better way to show our appreciation than to give them gifts of love ……. Carolyn Street (Chief Judge); Sarah Ong and Norman Tan (Organizing Chairs); Chye Bei’an (Contest Chair); Sathya, Vincent Wong, Debbie He and Narayana (Sergeant At Arms); Hu Richen and Manonmani (Tally Counters); Mishrita Gundluru and Suresh Subramaniam (Timers).

Drumroll….. and the winners are……….

International Speech Contest:

Champion - Salma Begum

1^st Runner Up - Muthu Rama Ganesh

2^nd Runner Up - Zulhafni Zulkeflee

Table Topics Contest:

Champion - Salma Begum

1^st Runner Up - Zulhafni Zulkeflee

2^nd Runner Up - Gu Weite

Come support our winners representing Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Club at the Area A1 International Speech & Table Topics Contests to be held on 24^th March 2018 at Function Hall, 2 Bishan Street 25 #26-07, Singapore 573973! See you there!

Article by: Wee Chee Sian CC, ALB