Speaking Your Way Towards Magical Transformation

This is a commentary for a very special Toastmasters meeting – A Toastmasters Seminar “Speaking Your Way towards Magical Transformation combined with a demo meeting. It took place at Kopi Bali House in Sanur, Bali on June 5, 2010
Jerry Jones, our Sergeant of Arms opened the meeting at 10 a.m. sharp, informing the audience that the meeting will commence in 10 minutes as some of our key role takers were still on the way.TOASTMASTERS SEMINAR Arlan Setiawan DTM, our Division Governor, begantheseminar with the story of how he climbed up the success ladder through honing and developing his communication skills. He spoke of his communication mentor, the Robert-Kiyosaki look-a-like Japanese boss, who instilled in him the importance and passion for communication. Arlan, an extremely quiet man who usually only says yes or no, learned to become a very successful salesperson, and subsequently built his multi-million, multi-national petrochemical equipment company based on his communication skills. He credited Toastmasters for most of his success in the business world. Very recently in Singapore, the presentation skills learned in Toastmasters had earned him a country distributorship of new highly priced andprestigious products many bonafide compatitors had vied for.

This soft spoken 60-year-old man captivated the audience with his storytelling skills. He drew quite big laughs throughout his speech. He drew a particular huge laugh from the audience when he mentioned that his unofficial title in the industry is “The Quick Erection Specialist”… for his expertise on erecting scaffolds quickly.
His inspiring quote: “Your destiny is not written for you, but by you” made notable impact on the audience; it drew many murmurs repeating and commenting on the quote. A very fine speech indeed.

Next, Ritchie Chong DTM, district 51 District Governor delivered an inspiring, moving and eloquent speech on why and how Toastmasters inspired him and made him a better communicator and leader which helped him tremendously in his profession and success as the Chief Steward and Instructor of Malaysian Airlines.
He first joined Toastmasters because he thought it was a fun place to

be, much like the environment of the service industry he belongs to, where people are positive and friendly. As it turned out Toastmasters offered so much more than he expected.

He expanded on examples of how Toastmasters leaders brings out the best in its members; how members not only developed themselves, but in turn, through Toastmasters learning by doing method, also naturally and organically learn to extend support to the development of other members in their growth and development as communicators, as leaders, and as human beings in

general.
Ritchie’s passion and love for Toastmasters is palpable throughout his speeches as well as his attitude and conduct as he spent two precious days with us. He ended his speech by presenting the Outstanding Toastmaster pins to the President and Vice President Education of Bali Toastmasters Club, Ina Jones and Miranda Suryadjaja respectively.

TOASTMASTERS DEMO MEETINGToastmaster of the Meeting, BTC president Ina Jones greeted the audience and explained about what would transpire in the next session. She introduced the General Evaluator, Ritchie Chong who then invited his team of evaluators to introduce themselves and their roles: Michele Cempaka as Grammarian, Vaughan Hatch as Ah-Counter, Jerry Jones as Timer and Cakra Sudarsana as Ballot Counter.

PREPARED SPEECH SESSIONAgung Prianta, our newest member opened the session with his speech from the Competent Communication basic manual project 3 on How to Get to the Point with a speech called ‘The Struggle to Grow’. An inspiring speech about not being afraid to work hard as it usually pays off eventually in unexpected ways. Agung spoke about feeling like an alien when at 15, without speaking a word of English he was thrown in an English-speaking school in Singapore and had to learn it very fast if he wanted to stop being laughed at by his classmates. Agung exuded poise and confidence previously lacking in his earlier speech.
Agung was followed by Reskiana Ramli, the club’s newest CC, taking a shot at her first speech from an Advanced Manual, Interpretive Reading. She read a hilarious human interest story from ‘Hong Kong On the Air’, the book that her husband wrote. The story was about a Bra Company.

TABLE TOPIC/IMPROMPTU SPEAKING SESSION

Amran Hidayat led this 1-2 minute Impromptu Speaking Session; usually the most entertaining session of a Toastmasters meeting, as the questions usually are interesting, funny and unexpected. Although small in stature, Amran filled the room with his baritone voice, which is a huge asset in public speaking. The table topic speakers, picked randomly from the audience, drew even more interesting and

unexpected responses, often ended up with gales of laughter.

The first person picked was Jerry Jones, our Sergeant of Arms and the president’s other half. He was given a topic on the child who was not allowed to drink coffee by his parents. Jerry made the audience laughed numerous times with child-parent dialogue and voice impersonation.

Next came Guffron, the Marketing and Sales Manager from the currently developed The Seminyak, was asked to talk about hotel sales. Guffron was definitely in his element, his sales pitch flowed confidently and effortlessly.
Derry Hasibuan, Sales Manager from Hatten Wines was given a topic on how to sell Kopi Luwak. Derry's smooth delivery belied the nervousness he felt, as he later told us.

Ari Susanti Personal Assistant from Hatten Wines was invited to answer the next question, which was about being a teacher, she did very well, despite appearing rather nervous when speaking in front of a room full of strangers.
Nyoman Suwidjana, deputy chairman of Bali Tourism Board was utterly surprised when asked to come forward. He came on stage bringing his bag along with glasses in his hand, which drew amused laughter from the audience. Nyoman was asked to speak as a bungee jumping instructor trying to calm a student who didn’t want to jump after she had gone up to the jumping board. Nyoman was being his most persuasive self, using soothing voice, facial expression and calming words to change the distraught student’s mind. The audience enjoyed huge laughs from Nyoman’s delivery.

The last impromptu speaker was Paul Widhi, assistant Sales Manager from Bir Bintang. He had to persuade a shoe salesperson to hold the shoes he wanted while he went home to look for the money. Widhi went all out and enacted a whole script that resulted in him being overtime. He entertained the audience with his creative

expressions and acting.

EVALUATION SESSION.

The General Evaluator Ritchie Chong came back on stage and began this session with the speech evaluation.

In her debut as an evaluator, Novi Gehlen evaluated Agung. Novi gave a well-structured and encouraging evaluation of Agung. She found that Agung was notably more confident and relaxed as he spoke this time. She suggested that Agung try to

minimize pacing forward and backward so much, as well as to manage the timing better so that he could utilize the time allotted to give more of the story instead of stopping short of the minimum time requirement. Novi did very well as a first time evaluator.
Carlo Warella with his deep booming baritone voice we all love so much evaluated Reski. Carlo said that he really liked the story. He read a few paragraphs from the story that particularly impacted him. He suggested that this entertaining story would be more alive if Reski step out from behind the lectern and use more expressive gestures as well as interact more with the audience as she read. Carlo was particularly impressed by the quote used at the end: ‘In Hong Kong everyone walks slow and talks fast’, which he considered as a powerful way to close the speech.
The Grammarian Michele did an extremely wonderful job noting down incorrect grammar and pronunciation usage from all the speakers as well as giving suggestions for improvements. She also took note and mentioned some good use of words and particularly well-phrased sentences. Our District Governor was extremely impressed with Michele’s performance as a Grammarian and wished that he could join our club if distance was not an issue to benefit from such high quality grammar evaluation.
Vaughan did his first role as an Ah-counter and did a great job noting down the number of times speakers used ah’s and um’s, repeated words, awkward pauses, other unnecessary filler words as well as uses of the word of the day – magical. This role definitely will challenge your listening skills to the hilt, and Vaughan certainly listened very well.

The General Evaluator mentioned that Timer is a role whose import

ance is often overlooked. Indeed, it is fact that a Toastmasters meeting cannot happen unless there’s a timer. Jerry, the timer, was highly praised for his exacting timing.

Ritchie, as GE, showed us how a proper general evaluation should be done. He did a really thorough evaluation of the meeting, none like our club had ever seen before; every role was evaluated including the table topic speakers, which we never evaluated on before. We will definitely incorporate this to our future meetings, as it makes perfect sense; a table topic speaker, usually guests, could easily feel left out from not being given a feedback on how they do while every other role-taker is evaluated. And it is a known fact that the experience of receiving a positive and constructive feedback/evaluation is what brings people back to Toastmasters again and again.
As for other roles, he suggested that Ina as TOM elaborate more information about the speakers when she introduces speakers. Amran as Topicsmaster was given suggestions to give simpler and more general questions which are easy to answer without leaving room for misinterpretation. Ritchie lauded high praises for the superb performance of all attending Bali Toastmasters Club members and thank them for staging such a smoothly run and highly energetic public event.

Throughout the meeting, after each session, the audience had been asked to vote for the best speaker, best table topic speaker, and best evaluator. The ballot counter, Cakra, collected and tallied the votes and announced the winners; they were

respectively: CC Reskiana Ramli, Toastmaster-to-be Nyoman Suwidjana and CC Carlo Warella. President Ina Jones presented each of the winners a pen with Toastmasters insignia.

After the wrap up of the demo meeting, the 2009-2010 Executive Committee members were presented by the president, a Question and Answer session for the guests ensued.
Thus ended a truly magical meeting, thanks to the great work of members of Bali Toastmasters Club, a superb cooperation by Kopi Bali House, and most definitely the inspiring and powerful speeches by our visiting distinguished Toastmasters, Arlan Setiawan DTM, division G Division Governor and Ritchie Chong DTM, district 51 District Governor.

At the end of the meeting 12 guest signed up as members with more to follow. We're well on our way towards chartering a new club in Bali, to be called Magical-Bali Toastmasters Club
BTC, You Rock!

By Miranda Suryadjaja ACB, ALB
VP Education
Bali Toastmasters Club