Is attendance important ?

Is attendance important ?

Yes , of course attendance is important.

On the other hand, the importance of attendence should not be over emphasised.

Some clubs give special awards to individuals who have achieved 100 % attendence.

Lets examine what are we recognising these individuals for.

• Dedication ? These individuals may be coming for meetings but never wanted to attempt any speeches or always ask for the same simple roles .
• Diligence ? In respect of making themselves physically present , yes. What about actively working to achive their educational roles, participating in meeting roles etc ?

So the next time you want to give regcognition to someone for 100 % attendence, do consider whether the award will send the wrong signals to the rest of the club members.

Single driver bull dozer

Toastmasters is not only a public speaking club. It is a communication club. After joining the Toastmastes program for a while, you will come to realize this.

There are many things we can get done alone ourselves. We are not learning such skill in Toastmasters.

We are also not trying to get things done alone in the Toastmasters either.

We have actually come to Toastmasters to learn how to work as a team. We are here to pick up the communication skills necessary to motivate a team of co workers to work for a common goal.

So even when we can perform the job alone , we involve the other members......so that together we achieve more.

There is no place for a "Single Driver Bull Dozer " in Toastmasters.

I miss Bali Convention

36 hours before I was due to leave for Bali, my 84 years old mother fell and crushed her 3rd and 5th lumba vertebrae. I spent the next 6 days rushing to the hospital, rushing to business appointments , rushing here ,rushing there.

During this tireing week , I was swamped with SMSs from concerned Toastmasters who asked " Are you in Bali yet?" . " Which flight are you on? " And when they learned that my mother fell again , there was another round of SMSs to wish my mother speedy recovery.

I must thank the Toastmasters for their friendship. My own home club , the Johor Bahru Toastmasters Club, sent flowers to the specialist hospital. Thank you members.

My mother is now at home and recovering. With the grace of god , she has a slim chance of being able to walk again. Howerver I am thankful that she will at least be able to sit on a wheel chair.

I have always wanted to go to Bali. Not so much because I am receiving the President's Distinguised Division Award for the second time this Convention .

I like Bali, I used to go there to do consulting work on fish farms, mainly in fish farm design and nutritional regimes. Oh , I like the beaches and the temples. Well, I missed this chance this time. Looks like I have to take a holiday there on the next opportunity.

Vision 2020

After we have achieved full division status at the end of my term as Division A Governor, I have a vision. I called it Vision 2020.

Vision 2020 simply means aim for 20 clubs and each club having a minimum membership strength of 20.

When a club's membership falls below charter strength of 20

• meeting quality deteriorates
• club does not enough members to play even the basic meeting roles
• guests who visit the club do not have a good impression of the club and so normally do not even consider joining
• the finacial status of the club is challenged. The membership collections simply cannot cope with venue and meeitng expenses.

When no action is taken , most clubs like this drift into oblivion. There are many examples of such clubs even within our own Division.

After we have attained the minimum requirement of 12 clubs to claim full Division status, it is logical to launch vision 20 20.

More clubs and more members means we have a larger pool of talents to ensure varied and stimulating meetings.

And should you sit back and reflect at this moment, you will realize that the primary objective of you joining the Toastmasters movement is to tap that intelledctual stimulus to spur you towards improvements in leadership and communication skills.

When we have the critical mass, meaning enough clubs and enough members,

• meetings become interesting
• clubs have enough participants and financial strength to organize bigger events
• guests are impressed, and ready to consider joining the club

And all the clubs in the Division is poised for many years of fulfilling and rewarding Toastmasters programs.

Drama

The idea of having a drama or sketch session as a time filler came to me sometime last year while talking to some members. They thought we "must " have "interview " as part of a speech contest.

We interview participants after the speech contest at club level. At the Area level we do the same. Then at the Division level we found ourselves interviewing almost the same few people again. Although we do try to vary the questions, interviews at division level often go without attracting any applause. Interviews become a mundane part of the event.

To fill up the lull between the completion of a speech contest and the time when the results are announced, we can be actually be more creative eg. have a humour session, someone do an advanced project like " talk show" , interview .....or do a sketch, as long as it falls within the objectives of Toastmasters


Well, I am happy that we had two sketches in a recent Division event. The results were astounding. The participants enjoyed it and the audience loved it.

It served two objectives:

1. show our members that we can do more than just "interviews" at speech contests.
2. As true Asians, we tend to be monotonous in the way we speak. We thought by having some drama in our programs, we help bring awareness to this probelm and probably also help to change that tendency in due time. We achieved a certain degree of success at this first trial. The participants were clearly seen trying their best to incorporate vocal variety.

We actually had two groups:

1. The first group had the scripts days before hand. They did well.
2. The second group were given the scripts on the spot but allowed to hold the scripts as they perform. They were asked to concentrate on vocals, like doing a radio show, except that it was almost impromptu.

Both groups did well, and the audience responded with thunderous applause.

What is a Speakerthon meeting?

A " Speakerthon" is also known as "Marathon Speaking session". As the name implies, Speakerthon is a meeting devoted to speeches and evaluation only. The usual table topics session is sacrificed.



This is not a typical Toastmaster meeting nor it is a properly structured Toastmaster Program. Some clubs are organizing " Speakethon Meetings " for following reason:

• The club is too big, there is not enough speaking slots


• Most members are not doing manual speeches , so much so that the club is lagging behind on achieving DCP (educational) goals

However organizers and presidents should be cautioned on the following:

• This is not a typical Toastmaster meeting as many of the usual meeting roles are not included.
• Do not organise it thinking it is a "special" program equivalent to speech craft etc.

When many speakers are doing the same project in the same Speakerthon session, speakers can bench mark themselves by watching the performance of the other speakers. Otherwise they will have to wait till they participate in the next speech contest.

Division A is President's Distinguished Division

Division A was President's Distinguished Division for the term 2007/2008.

I am truly elated.

This accolade is especially meaningfull to me for several reasons.

Firstly, I inherited a division that has been on the chopping board for years. This achievement is going to be the turning point for many of us here as far as the perception what we should do to stay strong as a division. I fulfilled my pledge when I took office as Division Governor ie. to make Divison A a full fledged division with minimum 12 clubs. We actually finished the term with 13 clubs. Wow! mission accompished.

Secondly, the good performance is almost across the board.....so to speak. 2 out of 3 areas were Preisdent's Distinguished, 5 out of 11 clubs were President's Distingushed. The award is only part of it. What is more important is that we were able to bring back that committment to excellence at every level- divison,area,club and to the level of individual members. Wow ! this is almost equivalent to " reengineering " of the whole division.

And thirdly, the last time we achieved President's Distinguished status was in 1998, when I was Division A Governor. Wow, I really feel good!

E T Lee

Vote E T Lee as your LGM for term 2008/2009

District Officers,
Division Governors ,
Area Governor ,
Presidents ,
Vice presidents of Education,
And all delegates to the Penang Annual Convention,


Good Morning,


My mother fractured three of her left ribs about a week ago and she is still suffering from excruciating pain. As such I am not able to attend the annual convention this time. I will see you in the Convention in Bali.

Instead I take this opportunity to write to you from my blog and to convince you to vote me in as your Lieutenant Governor of Marketing for the term 2008/2009.

I joined Toastmasters in 1980- 28 years ago. In fact I mooted the idea of forming the first Toasmasters Club in Penang, The Butterworth Toastmasters Club , right in my office in Perai, Butterworth. Today this club is still thriving in Penang.

In 1997, I was the Organizing Chairman for the PANSEA annual convention in Johor Bahru. At this convention we organized the world's first District level Mandarin programs which included the first- ever District level Mandarin Speech competitions. For the last ten years , Mandarin programs have elvoved to become an important part of all anual and semi anual conventions in District 51.

Over almost three decades of being a Toastmaster , I have served as clubs officer at all levels. I was President of the Seberang Jaya Toastmasters Club in 1986, the President of Johor Bahru Toastmasters Club in 1995, just to name a few. I have conducted many Toastmasters educational modules and served in different capacities at Area and Division levels. I have in fact served as Division Governor for two terms ie 1997/98 and 2007/08.

I have never served as a senior officers at the District level. In fact, nobody form Johor has been elected to the District administration. We do not even get an invitation to serve in appointed positions.

I believe this is about time Toastmasters in Johor get the opportunity to go higher. You can help us to do that.

Please use your vote in your hand and VOTE E T Lee, DTM in as your next LGM.

Your have seen me worked diligently for the District in the 2006 Annual Convention in Johor Bahru. Some of you have heard me spoke passionately about issues that need attention at the 2007 Medan convention. So do not hesitate. Vote me in as your next LGM at this convention.

If you need further information about me you may visit

• my Blog at http://dtmetlee.blogspot.com/


• My Division A web site http://www.permas.biz/toastmasters


• my Division A blog at http://groups.google.com/group/real-toastmasters


• my photo album at http://picasaweb.google.com/jbetlee

Or speak to me in person on skype , skype ID : feedtech

I reaslise that some of you may not be attending the Penang convention. If you are unable to go, please make sure that you make use of your vote through a proxy and VOT ET LEE, DTM in as your next LGM.

I thank you for your attention. If you vote me in this year, you will be assured that I will bring in a lot of new dimensions to the next district administration, member services and the long -awaited improvement in communication between District and the members.

Have a nice stay in Penang.

E T Lee, DTM Candidate for LGM 2008/09

Back to Basics

Most of our clubs here meet twice a month and each meeting normally last for two and a half hours. That means we spend only about five hours a month on Toastmasters. It is a very small time slot indeed. And during that limited time we were hoping to be able to achieve what we came to Toastmasters for.

It is very important to be focused in what we do in order to achieve any degree of success in our quest to be a good Toastmasters. Any distractions (acitivities conducted in place of normal meetings ) such yoga sessions, treasure hunts, mountain climbings etc will eat away time we have allotted to Toastmasters. Such activities are not what we came to Toastmasters for !

We were drawn together by the desire to be good speakers and leaders. Lets just make sure that we involve ourselves in activites that will enable us realise those aspirations.

How big should a Toasmaster award be ?

Some years a ago I organized a Toastmasters Division Level International Speech Contest in KLuang. The participation was good and I decided to give every participant something to take home to remember the occasion by.



A few days later, I received an email. One of the participants wrote and I quote " How can you give a pencil box as a prize to a winner of a Toastmasters Speech competition ? You are being disrespectful to an international organization." Incidentally this participant was not placed in the top three positions. Each of the top three positions receive a trophy and a certificate . All other participants , including Timers ,Tally counters etc received a pencil box each from me that day.


So what is enough as a token of appreciation ? How big should a Toastmasters award be ?

I have been instrumental in forming a few clubs throughout the 28 years as a Toastmasters member. When a new club is being formed , the treasurer usually do not have money to buy expensive trophies . I have seen a club in Johor Bahru that gave ,winners and participants a like , "just" a certificates all these years. Yet I have seen many of these "past" winners carefully framed up their certificates and hung them proudly in the most conspicuous place in their offices.

So, how big or expensive a Toastmasters award should be, before the recipient feel proud to receive it ?

In the last Toastmasters convention in Medan, the organisers felt a need to reward past leaders with big plagues, the kind that you have to hold with two hands to keep it steady. I met one such recipient in the airport on the way home. I expected him to hand carry his award because it was fragile. I asked " hey, you checked in your award ? you do not worry that it get damaged in the luggage compartment?

He relplied " I left it in the hotel. It was too difficult to carry."

The District must have spent a lot of money to get such an pague to his hands. What would have made him treasure this plague and at least take it home ?

I have no answer, If you have , please record your comments here.

Your ability to use the internet greatly affects your performance as a leader.

There’s little doubt that the Internet has elvolved into an important part of our lives – providing instant communication capabilities and an almost bottomless source of valuable, up-to-date information on just about any topic.

In the recent general election, Malaysian saw how Opposition parties successfully used the internet to bypass the the mainstream media and reached the masses.

Toastmasters International has recently improved their web pages to include a lot of information and made communication with headquaters possible online.

The internet is indeed a powerful communication tool.

Yet , I still find some Toastmasters members, ironical to their enthusiastic quest to be better communicators, snub and shun the use of internet as an effective means of communication. In their mind , internet is only for the younger generations, for the computer savvy, and not for the serious guys. Anyone above 40 years old is not using the compouter, so they claimed. They give themselves a thousand and one reasons to feel good for being a computer illiterate.

Do'nt get me wrong. The purpose of this article is not to get you to start using the internet. The fact that you are reading my blog, you are already using the internet. So there is no need to preach to the converted. My intention is to share with you my experiences of using the internet in Toastmasters.

During this second term as Division Governor I have a effectively used the internet to communicate with a large group of members, some of whom are not too enthusiastic about using the internet at the begining.

1. Web page

I published a Division web page where I

• list all Division activities under the heading Division Calender. This calender of activities is continuously and promptly updated, so members are kept informed what is going on in the Division
• published thousand of photos on our activities ( they say pictues tell a thousand stories, it is true ! )
• set up a " stop press section " to publish what is most recent, be it annoucements, past events etc
• gave every club a link to their respective web pages, thereby giving them more exposure to publicise their club or to attract new members to their club.
  

2.Google group

• This is actually an interactive web page where I allow members announce forthcoming activities, express their views on certain topics etc without help from the web master. Yes anyone can read and writye on this page as long as they have been accetped as a member of the group.
• This is also where we accumulate the email contacts for all the members without the risks of spam mails.
• This is also how we stem out looped spam mails created by members. In the past when the announcements were made by emails, any alterations ,comments etc made by any members will triger a long string of "mails when he user chose attached past emails". Sometimes the emails were soo many that one lost track of which was the latest. On the orther hand when an annoucement is made on the group, everybody read the latest from there. There is no loger need for looped emails.
• I used googles group, there is also a host of other like the yahoo group etc

3. Skype

This is a free video conferencing program available from the web and I used it to communicate with specific group of Toastmasters on a regular basis .

There are several distinct advantages when using these programs

I classifed telephones, handphones, SMS etc as intrusive communication tool. They always ring at the wrong time and demand you to attend to them immediately.

When we use skype ,

• we know who is on line and messages is instant,
• larger file tranfer is possible
• we can choose vedio mode where we can see each other
• groups can be created in skype to allow group conference calls. I used this feature to dicuss with sub-commitees of certain groups of toastmasters on specific subjects. These web meeting can be scheduled, adhoc and on demand , as long as you can get the people on line.
• this mode of communication saves time, and above all its free.

In the past , certain District officers asked me to give them a missed call so that they can call be back. By doing so, they thought they have taken away the burden of the cost of the call and I will be encouraged to call them more readily. If these officers are on line in skype at specific time.... there is no need to do this. And they can actually shedule conference meetings to be at top of things all the time.

We have come to the time when the ability to use the internet greatly affects our performance as a leader. If you want to be an effective leader these days, you just have to learn how to use the internet, and don't stop only at emails.