Photo by: Yann!s

In this month of March, I have gone through four FIRST TIMEs in my life.

The first FIRST TIME was my endeavor to take part in a MANDARIN humorous speech contest. It was the first national mandarin humorous speech contest held in Singapore, organized by Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry. In the first round, there were 60 contestants and I was fortunately to be short-listed into second round. Only 16 contestants were selected. Unfortunately, I lost in second round. Contestants from China took me to the cleaners. 7 out of 8 short-listed contestants were from China. Nevertheless, this was indeed a great learning experience for me. I have learnt that there are some differences between crafting a Mandarin and English speech; I have discovered some different speaking styles from the contestants.

The second FIRST TIME was to set up a booth in The Frontier Community Club to promote Toastmasters Speechcraft Workshop. I just got the idea while I was inside a train heading back to home. I thought… Hey, why not setting up a booth to promote my club workshop? I immediately asked the person-in-charge in the Community Club and the Community Club was quite supportive. I got a positive answer. Never try, never know… During this session, I noticed that actually there were a lot of people who were searching for help in conquering their fear in public speaking and this group of people, most of them didn’t know about Toastmasters Club. I have a plan to set up a booth regularly as my club marketing campaign. I think this campaign will not only benefit the public but also to my club members to learn how to explain the benefits of Toastmasters to the public. It is like a real life example for them to apply their communication skills which they have developed in Toastmasters Movement. And most importantly, it is a great satisfaction if we could successfully help people to conquer their fear in public speaking and transform their life.

The third FIRST TIME was my first time to serve as a judge in an International Speech and Table Topic contest. I noticed that being a judge is neither a difficult task nor easy task. Being a judge, I got a true experience of the process in how I allocated points to each contestant. Good speakers are selected by experienced judges. Not-so-good speakers are selected by inexperienced judges. I believe I have made the correct choice as my preferred speaker was emerged as Champion eventually.

The fourth FIRST TIME was to coordinate The Frontier Toastmasters Club Speechcraft Worskhop. The first session was conducted today. Of course, there are some rooms for improvement and I will try to take note of them and have a review after the whole session. I have discovered one thing. A lot of participants thought that they have fear in public speaking and could not think of any topic to talk about. But actually, most of them have already possessed a certain level of speaking skill. When they spoke, the flow of the content just came out naturally. It was only the mindset of “I have fear in public speaking” that holds them back. Being a coordinator of the workshop, injecting public speaking information to the participants is only part of my responsibility. My main responsibility is to motivate them and nurture positive mindset to them that speaking in public is actually not as fearful as they imagined.

FIRST TIME, FIRST TIME, FIRST TIME, how many FIRST TIME have you faced in this month? What have you learnt from you FIRST TIME? Think about it…

In any aspect in our life, we will face a lot of FIRST TIMEs. Some people are trying hard to avoid them. For me, I find that by pushing myself to face as many FIRST TIME as possible, I have become a better person.

LET’S WELCOME FIRST TIME!

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I was browsing TED videos on presentation and found this video clip unintentionally. I would like to give this performer three WOWs… “WOW, WOW, WOW!!”

His name is Kenichi Ebina. He is a self-taught dancer who blends hip-hop, martial arts, modern dance and magic in his performances.

I was thinking, in speaking arena… Maybe we can try toblend something out of speaking into our speaking presentation. Perhaps, magic? dance? or… think about it! You may get an idea to make your presentation a creative one in the future!

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Photo by: cw

Contest rules are designed and meant to guarantee the process of the contest. For example, no photo can be taken during the contest; this is to prevent participants get distracted by the camera flash or audience’s movement.

I have to admit that I dislike one of the contest rules very much. That is no video-recording during the contest. Some of the contests are not so strict on this rule and in fact most of the time, nobody will care whether you video-record the contest.

Since last year August, I video recorded most of the speeches that I have made. It is a very powerful educational tool for me. I can do a review of my own presentation over and over. Sometimes, I also feel that no video-recoding is a waste. After spending days or weeks or months of preparation for only a 5-7 minutes presentation, at the end, you could only bring back the smile and claps from the audience. Why not bringing back your presentation and memory in video format?

I have good and bad days, not only me; actually everybody has his good and bad days. I have discovered that the videos that I have taken in my good days can serve as a confidence booster to me. Whenever I have doubt in whether I can be a good speaker, I can always view back the GOOD videos of myself. It’s a good thing to collect your own video.

Recently, I was competing in a speech contest where I was strictly prohibited to do video-recording. I was so frustrated and disappointed. I just wanted to video-record my OWN presentation, not others. As a good organizer, if no video-recording is allowed, I would suggest him to get his own video team to record the whole process and sell or give away the CD to the contestants and audience.

I understand that in some events like concert and performance, no video-taking is due to copyright issues. Will I infringe any copyright issue in taking my own presentation? Some people may argue that who knows you are only taking your own video. Ok, fine. Rules are there to be obeyed. I have no authority to alter the rules. After all, having a contest video team is the best way to please the audience and contestants, if not, at least me.

There is no perfect rule. Sometimes, when we design rules, we have to think of whether the rule does serve the main objective of the event. To me, a speech contest is a learning hub, it’s not a place where we really fight with each other and treat each other as opponents. No, no… It’s a learning hub.

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Left: Jack (new member), Right: Kwee Choo (Area Z2 Governor)

I don’t know whether you all still remember him. His name is Jack! I have mentioned about him in my first article on “Influencing Non-Toastmasters” to join a Toastmasters Club.

Finally, on 19th February, Jack decided to join The Frontier Toastmasters Club. He is the only one among my friends whom I have brought to Toastmasters Club, joined as a member. I was truly glad for his trust on me and his hunger for self-development.

Throughout this process, I have discovered that recruiting a member is not an easy task. It takes time and courage. For my case, I have brought in more than 10 friends to visit my club. Eventually, only one signed up as a member.

Here, I would like to share with you how to I successfully recruited Jack as my club member.

1) Identify the needs of the individual
Jack is working as a Sales Engineer and I shared with him the importance of having good communication skills as a sales person.

2) Follow-up
Human has to be reminded. Whenever approaching my club chapter meeting, I would send Jack a SMS to remind him to visit my club. Sometimes he was not free, however when he was free, he would make his effort to come by.

3) Close the deal
After the chapter meeting, I told everybody that Jack was our new member. I think before I made the announcement, Jack had interest to join the club. However, I wanted to stimulate his urgency and I used the method “assume-closing” to close his deal as my club member.

4) Mentorship
This part will be in charge by his mentor. As for my role, I will think of ways to groom him as the next term committee. I am thinking of giving him a challenge to be the Vice President of Education of the club. I feel that this role is the best way to practise socializing and networking skills. As a sales person, he needs to master these skills.

My next target is my roommate. He has rejected me for so many times and I am still thinking of ways to invite him to attend my club meeting…

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Photo by: eyeRmonkey 

Recently, I was very busy with a mishap happened in my company. This made me traveling to my customer place and my company factory for quite a number of times. However, I enjoyed doing that. Don’t misunderstand me. I am not a bad-hearted employee who always tries to make troubles to the company. More importantly, the mishap was not created by me. I said I enjoyed doing that is because I have learnt a lot of things throughout the process and I have discovered that communication is still playing the most important role when mishap happens. Miscommunication is the killer to a good relationship. Miscommunication happens in our daily life. In fact, it happens very often. And the good news is they are actually avoidable.

Here are the lessons that I have learnt throughout the mishap to avoid miscommunication.

Receive the correct information
In case you need to convey your message to “party A” and that message you have to get from “party B”, you have to make sure that the information that you get is absolutely correct information. It happened to me quite a number of times that the information that I got from my supplier was totally wrong information and the worst thing was I have already conveyed that information to my customer before it was found out that the information was wrong.

Verify the received information
You may want to verify the information that you got with another person who knows about the situation. Look for someone who is more trustable and seek his help to verify the information.

Check the information
Before you reveal any information to another party, make sure that you know inside out what is happening.

Summary of meeting
During a formal meeting, there is a secretary who will prepare the minutes of meeting. However, in a daily meeting or casual meeting, minutes of meeting will not be provided. In this case, to safe-guard yourself that whatever is conveyed by the other party is what you heard, send out a summary of the meeting immediately after the meeting. If possible, ask both parties to sign on the summary of meeting.

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