Linda Li gave an interesting speech about leadership and its potential misconceptions. She used her earliest concept of leadership (learned from her family) and showed, using specific examples from her own life, the process by which she shifted her perception to the leadership model she values today.

She didn’t write out her speech and recite it – rather, she used the following as notes to refer to when needed. (But, as with most heartfelt speeches, she barely referred to her notes at all.)

1. What is leadership?

I’d like to ask you to close your eyes and ask the following questions in your mind:

• Who is the leader in your family?
• Who is the leader at your work?
• Who is the greatest politician leader that you really admire?

What’s the first impression that they bring to your mind? Is it power, respect, or taking control?

2. Leadership = power, respect? NO

As a teenager, I read biographies of great leaders. I interpreted great leaders to be above all other people, powerful, and controlling everything.

But recently, through observation of things surrounding me; I realized I was so wrong! Leadership is more about motivating other people to grow and achieve the common goal.

The leaders from Toastmasters are excellent examples. We have very great leaders here, not because they have power to collect the dues, but because they help other members conquer their fears and improve their speaking skills. At my workplace, I’ve been seeing that a great manager helps employee achieve their own goals while contributing to the company.

Leadership = helping a group of people to achieve common goal

3. What are the barriers blocking you from becoming a great leader?

Barrier 1: Overemphasizing Personal Goals

True leadership is about making other people better as a result of your presence—and making sure your impact endures in your absence. That doesn’t mean leaders are selfless. They have personal goals—to build status, a professional identity, and a retirement plan, among other things. But the narrow pursuit of those goals can lead to self-protection and self-promotion, neither of which fosters other people’s success.

I once heard a friend say, “I don’t want to work with that manager anymore. Everything he does is to secure his position.” At first I thought, Yeah, that’s what a leader is supposed to do. But my friend continued, “So because this guy is so self-serving, a lot of my co-workers are applying for jobs somewhere else.” Something clicked for me in that – I started to think that maybe to be a good leader, overemphasizing personal goals could do more harm than good.

Barrier 2: Protecting Your Public Image

Another common impediment to leadership is being overly distracted by your image—that ideal self you’ve created in your mind. Sticking to the script that goes along with that image takes a lot of energy, leaving little left over for the real work of leadership.

For example: as a leader, you may want to build a friendly manner. But a friendly image may restrict you from asking tough questions sometimes. Or maybe you want to build a no-nonsense, tough leadership image. But that will make you unapproachable, blocking people from communicating with you.

A good leader needs to draw their image from within, and be flexible with it – being tough when a situation calls for it, and approachable when an employee has an idea or an issue they’d like to discuss. Being a slave to a rigid public image is not leading – it’s more like following a script, and doesn’t foster anyone’s growth.

Barrier 3: Going It Alone

Another barrier is going it alone. In my family, my dad plays the big role of leader. The whole family listens to him, because he supports not only our small family, but his sibling’s families as well. He is highly respected, but I think if he would only listen to other family members’ suggestions, he would be a happier, stronger leader.

 Linda concluded with an appeal to the audience to rethink how we see leaders – if we share any of her misconceptions, she suggests we take a close look at the style of leadership that helps us grow, and try to model our own leadership on that, not on some fixed image of what we think leadership is supposed to look like.

Toastmasters gets a lot right. They know how to encourage, motivate, and teach members to find their best speaking voice. Contest season highlights these strengths with a bang.

On April 5, 2011, the 17 clubs in Division E, covering all of Richmond and Delta BC, met to battle it out in the International Speech and Evaluation contests.

Let me start by oh-so-impartially saying that Richmond Toastmasters took home the gold. Our one little club can sure foster excellence. Reg Boaler and Richard Belleza took top prize for International Speech and Evaluation respectively. Both will move on to represent Division E in the District level (that’s all of British Columbia) at the Osoyoos Spring Conference. (There are still 25 spots left – book now to cheer them on.)

But the success is not Richmond Toastmasters‘ alone. Members from the entire division pitched in to pack the WorkSafe BC Auditorium with an enthusiastic crowd. Competition was both fierce and friendly.

Opening the event was Jim Horne, VP Ed at the Comp-Talk club and the man who scored us this free auditorium. (Hey, when you’re a non-profit, free is what keeps you in business.) As Sergeant-At-Arms, Jim set the stage with a warm welcome. I dream of being that smooth and personable one day.

Next up came Cindy Chan, DTM and Division E’s governor – dressed to kill as the evening’s MC & one o

f thehard-working organizers.  Her enthusiasm coupled with her professionalism created a dynamic and organized evening.

Jared Nicola inspired us with a beautiful story about overcoming adversity. He’s new to Richmond Toastmasters, but you’d never know this from the way he tells a story – heartfelt, and with a killer choice of words that bring you right to the scene of wherever he’s taking you.

Freddy Irani chaired the International Speech contest – another relative newcomer to Richmond TM who already owns the room with his polish and charisma. I also love his quirky humour – his speech, Best of the Best, will forever make me remember the drunken monkey in my brain.

The three competing speakers came next:

1. Patsy O’Connell, from MDA Toastmasters, made us laugh at her family quirks and drama with a comedic speech entitled “Dining Out.”
2. Reg Boaler represented Richmond Toastmasters with his winning speech about bullying. He managed to pull our hearts in all kinds of directions, making us laugh, then gasp, then feel our hearts sink through the auditorium floor.
3. Jeff Huang from Richdel gave a speech we could all relate to, talking about how Toastmasters’ many roles have helped him grow as a human.

While the ballots were being counted, Christophe Bignolas (yup, Richmond TM) interviewed the contestants with some off-the wall questions, like “How good a husband is your husband?” and “How would you convince me to drop my job to be a software engineer.” Another new member who is already shining with originality and polish.

We had a break with some mingling – has anyone else noticed their cocktail party confidence increasing since joining Toastmasters? I fully credit the mingling portion of the evening for this.

Sylvia Orellana was next to take the stage as Evaluation Contest chair. I found this fitting – Sylvia evaluated my Icebreaker speech, and I always marvel at her warm, insightful evaluations. Sylvia was also a co-chair of this contest night, and is our current club president at Richmond Toastmasters.

Our test speaker was Jack Ja (someone please correct my spelling – for secrecy reasons, he wasn’t listed on the program and I’m going by phonetics alone). His compelling topic was “Are You a Prisoner of Your Comfort Zone?” Of course we were all glued to his advice to “throw out the bow lines and sail away from the safe harbour.”

When the evaluation contestants were escorted out of the room, Doug Thiessen took the stage to give us an education session about how to deliver a winning evaluation, including the valuable advice about always going more specific. Too bad the evaluators were unable to listen in!

Evaluating Jack were 4 evaluators with extremely different styles:

1. Linda Wu from MDA Toastmasters owned the stage from moment one. She opened with a quote,used no notes until the middle of her speech, and kept the audience riveted with her insightful evaluation and dynamic performance.
2. Norman Kotze could have walked right out of a high-level think tank. His detailed analysis was thought-provoking, and his European accent made him sound even smarter. (Can someone let me know what club he was repping? I didn’t get a chance to interview him.)
3. Richmond Toastmasters‘ Richard Belleza was full of specific observations and clear points of improvement. He made it personal and he sandwiched his meat with positive summation as opening and closing remarks. I learned from him – both as a speaker and an evaluator.
4. William Mok from RichDel came front and center stage immediately and gave a detailed analysis with excellent points of improvement. You’d think he’d written a computer program about effective evaluation.

I’d be happy with any of these four evaluating my speech…hmmm….kind of makes you want to be a test speaker, doesn’t it?

Next Mike Rozen cracked us up with a stand-up routine where he reminded us of some of our childhood technology, like Pong and TV before those automated guides. This guy would put Seinfeld to shame. (Seriously, I think Mike is funnier.)

May South Potato came up to interview the evaluation contestants. Oh wait? May, that’s not your last name? That’s totally what Cindy said. May announced to the room “I am not a potato,” and let us know that actually her last name is Soo-Tveita. May was also the primary engine behind this contest night – organizing Richmond Toastmasters into supporting roles that both challenged participants and made for a great show (hard combo, but May is good).

Behind the scenes, Chief Judge Jack Chiang organized his team of judges: Norman Davie from Top Story Advanced Toastmasters, Gene Vickers (Lt. Governor of Marketing for the District), Veronica Armstrong of the Talking Watchdogs, Richard Nash of Richmond TM (and an active player during the contest organization), and Cori Ng of Richmond TM.

Thanks also to Lorna Boyle (assistant Sgt.-at-Arms, of Deltones), Rome Gallardo (music man), Patrick McRea (timer), Linda Li, Larry Law, and Andrew Scallion (Greeters), Anna Brooks and Sylvia Orellana (Reception), Rome Gallardo again and Jody Chan (ballot counters), Tony Cheung (photographer), Andrew Scallion again (videographer), Ben Tong & Eunice Cheng (foodmasters), Doris Wong, Vicki Wang, Richard Li (decorators/general helpers). Whew. If anyone’s been forgotten, please let me know and I’ll edit them in!

In closing, Cindy gave out goody bags to helpers and Gene Vickers made an interesting announcement: He’s interested in facilitating the birth of specialized clubs. (For details, check your email – if you’re a BC Toastmaster, you received it in your inbox yesterday.)

Naturally, the winners were announced – Richmond taking home the gold in both categories thanks to the talented Reg Boaler and Richard Belleza – and we went for drinks at a nearby pub.

Bring on the next level. Osoyoos, here we come.

***If anyone named here has a website, blog, or any other online profile they’d like their name to link to, please email me: robin@robinspano.com and I’ll set it up. The goal of this Richmond TM blog is to help members create their own web presence, so linking is what it’s all about.

On the 8^th of March, Richmond Toastmasters had two dazzling contests.

The first was the Evaluation Contest. Each evaluator had two minutes and thirty seconds to evaluate a guest speaker. We were lucky to have Lorna Boyle as our guest speaker. She talked about her late parents – a hard topic to speak about and she pulled the speech off with fine elegance. She told us how they met to their final days.

Five evaluators then took the podium. First was Reg Boaler and he gave a great evaluation. He talked with keen insight about how Lorna performed. Next up, Rome Gallardo focused on the poem that Lorna’s father had written to his wife, and pointed out the positives of the speech. Third, Sylvia Orellana acknowledged that if she had done this speech it would have been too emotional for her; she complimented Lorna on the great job she did. Richard was fourth and he focused on the positives and liked the flow of the speech. Fifth and finally, Mike Rozen focused on the humour that Lorna inserted into the speech. Each evaluator had the same comments on the negative: she did not move through the stage and started out with nerves but overcame them as she got into the speech.

After the break we had the International Contest. In this contest, each speaker had 5-7 minutes to entertain us with a topic of their choosing. We had five speakers take the podium.

First was Sylvia Orellana. Her speech was about traffic violations. She was entertaining, witty and funny. Second, Dmitrey Zakharov brought his magic to the podium. His speech was about success and what defines success. His main message was only you can define if you’re a success or a failure – a powerful message delivered with an intense story. Third, we were enchanted by the wonderful speech by May Soo-Tveita. May had a strong and powerful speech about ridicule for being too skinny. She delivered her message with strength: Who should define if you’re too skinny or too plump? Freddy Irani took the stage fourth and helped us to curb the drunken monkey with his speech The Best of the Best. This was an entertaining speech that involved the audience. Reg was the fifth and final speaker of the evening, with a powerful story about how bullying affected his life and one of his childhood friends. He delivered the message from the heart.

Now for the winners . . . I believe they all did a very good job and all are winners. But:

Evaluation Contest 1^st Place: Richard Belleza, 2^nd Place: Sylvia Orellana, 3^rd Place: Reg Boaler.

International Contest 1^st Place: Reg Boaler, 2^nd Place Dmitrey Zakharov, 3^rd Place: Freddy Irani.

Thanks to all who participated in this successful event. It was very entertaining. I cannot wait until next year.

Richmond Toastmasters would like to thank Andrew Scallion, the Chairman and Paul Luo, the Chief Judge for making sure the contest ran smoothly. We also want to thank the contestants for both contests for going outside their comfort zone – without them, there is no contest. Thank you also to the judges, counters, timer, sergeant at arms, food and room, jokemaster, photographer and calligrapher. We look forward to the Area Contest on March 29, where the top two contestants from each category move on to compete against the Deltones and Ambassadors clubs.

If you’re hosting an event, you might find yourself with some down time. Maybe it’s because of a technical glitch; maybe a scheduled speaker hasn’t shown up yet. It’s your job as host to keep the show going on. Here’s how Richmond Toastmasters‘ VP Membership, May Soo-Tveita, kept us entertained during a recent technical glitch.

Try this out:

1. While sitting down, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles.

2. While doing this, draw the number 6 in the air with your right hand.

Your foot will change direction.

Keep trying – see how long you can frustrate yourself!

On Tuesday, February 8, Richmond Toastmasters was given a cool opportunity: The Sauder School of Business (UBC’s Business School) asked if we would help coach their students and give them tips to improve their speeches for their upcoming public speaking competition.

We abandoned our usual format, and gave the floor to the students. It was a full house – every single chair was in use, and we had to make three tiers off to one side.

They presented four original, excellent speeches – 5 were on the roster, but one was a video that never quite hooked up right – and we sat back and evaluated them. Each student was assigned one Richmond Toastmaster as their oral evaluator, and the rest of the group gave written feedback.

For table topics, Andrew Scallion gave the students some challenging questions to test their impromptu skills.

They shone with flying colours. Their speeches were well crafted and varied. Vincent gave a compelling speech about why love makes the world go around – despite what they try to teach him in business school. Urooba, performed a genius satire about how to dress a man from head to toe. Our third speaker (who took his name tag off so I don’t remember it!) took us through a really fun play-by-play of his adolescent car theft antics (he stole his parents car before he had a license). And Kaveh delivered a stunningly polished performance explaining the power of the human touch.

Here’s hoping our feedback helped them shine in their competition.

Thanks to May Soo-Tveita and Mike Rozen for co-ordinating and leading the event, and to Tony Cheung for his event photography. On the UBC end, thanks to Crystal Liang for giving us this opportunity to help.

Here’s a cool first for Richmond Toastmasters’ blog – an audio recording of a speech.

Instead of writing his speech out in words, Freddy wrote down bullet points and practiced with his iPhone until he got it right. The audio clip above is his best practice run. The real speech was even better, because he engaged with the audience and had us laughing and hmm-ing throughout.

His intro got lopped off of the recording – he opened by saying that he’s made a promise to himself to be the best of the best in the new career he’s chosen.

His speech was inspired by ideas he learned from the Mike Ferry Organization, but his delivery was pure Irani awesomeness.

His bullet points were these four things, which he says put together makes a person the best of the best.

1. Enthusiasm

2. Confidence

3. Thinking Outside the Box

4. Punctuality

In his speech, he gives exercises to demonstrate how to achieve these states of mind, even when we’re not feeling them.

And the most fun part of all – he helps us shut up our drunken monkey.

One day my mother was out, and my dad was in charge of me.

I was maybe 2 1/2 years old. Someone had given me a little ‘tea set’ as a gift, and it was one of my favorite toys.

Daddy was in the living room engrossed in the evening news when I brought him a little cup of ‘tea,’ which was just water. After several cups of tea and lots of praise for such yummy tea, my mom came home.

My dad made her wait in the living room to watch me bring him a cup of tea, because it was ‘just the cutest thing!’  Mom waited, and sure enough, here I came down the hall with a cup of tea for Daddy. She watched him drink it up.

Then she said (as only a mother would know), “‘Did it ever occur to you that the only place she can reach to get water is the toilet?”

This is an example of the kind of good, (relatively) clean joke we tell each week in Toastmasters. The contributor – as is perhaps fitting – is the mother of one of our Richmond Toastmasters.

Each Richmond Toastmasters meeting has a Jokemaster – someone whose role is to give us some laughs – but they have to be clean ones. For many members, finding clean jokes can be a challenge. Sylvia, our club president this year, found one that meets both criteria in spades. Thanks Sylvia!!

In Peru, public transportation is very messy and there are millions of vans that work on the streets. We call them the killer vans because they are very dangerous: they stop anywhere; they turn right being on the very left lane and turn left being on the very right lane; they have speed races with other vans to gain a passenger; they run over the red lights, etc, etc, etc.

Once a priest died and he went to heaven. Saint Peter asked him what he did for a living when he was alive. The priest explained that he ended being the parish priest and that he sometimes had to offer three masses on a Sunday and that the parishioners loved him very much for all the good things he accomplished and the help he provided to the people in need.

Saint Peter congratulated the priest and asked him to go to purgatory.

While the priest was waiting in the purgatory line, a killer van driver passed away and came up to the doors of heaven.

Saint Peter followed the same routine, asking the driver what he did for a living when he was alive. The driver said he owned one of these vans and he worked very hard, sometimes carrying more passengers than permitted to take them to their destination on time; he worked sometimes more then 12 hours seven days a week and he was the president of the vans’ union, etc, etc, etc.

Saint Peter congratulated the driver and asked him to go directly to heaven.

The priest, who was watching the scene, still in line to enter purgatory, came back to Saint Peter and said:

“I was a good man, I’ve served God all my life, I’ve done lots of good work in my community and I go to purgatory and that man who has worked risking his passengers’ lives goes directly to heaven? What is going on here?”

Saint Peter replied:

“You know, I can understand your point but you need to understand mine: When you were preaching, your parishioners used to fall asleep. But when this man was driving, his passengers were always praying.”

November brought a series of public speaking challenges relating to my mystery novel, Dead Politician Society. I haven’t aced them all – but I’ve learned from them.

In this meeting with David Miller, the former Toronto mayor who inspired me to write a book that opened with a dead mayor of Toronto, I learned that a camera is SCARY the first time you’re on one. A year and a bit of Toastmasters training meant I didn’t freeze up completely – but insane nerves meant I didn’t have command of myself like I’d like to have had.

That same night my publisher, ECW Press, had a party where they invited me to give a reading. Luckily, my fear of cameras was so three hours ago. But this was another first – the first time I’ve spoken in public while drinking wine!

Then came the ultimate pressure. The very next day, CBC Radio decided the story of meeting the mayor would make a fun interview. I couldn’t turn it down, but I was petrified. This was going to be broadcast LIVE just before the 6 o’clock news hour, I didn’t know the questions ahead of time, and impromptu speaking is not my strength. So what did I do? The same thing Toastmasters has shown me. Breathe deeply, drink water, and be as focussed as you can.

The interview was great – I’ll post a link here once the transcripts are ready. (I have a pirated recording but I don’t think it would be nice of me to share it )

Being in public is scary for me no matter what. I’m an introvert who is always going to be happiest behind a computer screen. But by learning tricks of the trade, and practicing as often as possible, I can – to quote the Toastmasters magazine – learn to make my butterflies fly in formation.

by Lorna Boyle

Lorna delivered this moving speech at Deltones Toastmasters. She is a favourite guest at Richmond Toastmasters – both in real life, and here on this blog. Lorna has her own blog, you can find her on Twitter, or listen to her smooth-as-silk podcast.

I got a call from my brother, Mike last month.  It was a call I’d been waiting on for a long, long time. Mike called to tell me that our Dad had passed on.

I can’t say it was a shock.  We’d been expecting it and neither of us could believe Dad lasted as long as he did. He had never really taken good care of himself and had been in poor health for the last 20 years of his life. I still find it very difficult to reconcile with the fact that Mum went first.

Dad didn’t have any insurance, but we made sure we gave him a good send off. My brother Mike and his son Dan, said goodbye to Dad on October 29^th, the day before what would have been his 82^ndbirthday. Dad would have really enjoyed it. It wasn’t a religious service; he wasn’t into religion.  They said goodbye to the sounds of Matt Monroe and Nat King Cole and one of his favourites, Frank Sinatra, singing “Would You Like to Swing on a Star”.

I’ve always said I have no regrets… but perhaps that isn’t quite true. I do have one; my one big regret is that I was never able to get to know my Dad.  I mean really get to know him on a deep personal level. I often thought about it. I often yearned to have long meaningful conversations with this person who was my father, the man my Mum fell for, but it just never happened. We were never able to connect that way. It hurts to know the last time we spoke he could hardly even remember me and asked me if I was married, if I had kids, how much did I weigh and… “Are those all your own teeth?”

A few years back I told Mum how I felt and was shocked at her response.  She said, “Well, to be perfectly honest, Lorn, there really isn’t that much more to know.”  I found it profoundly sad.

My relationship with Dad dwindled to almost nothing in my adult years, especially after I came to Canada. It wasn’t as bad as my younger brother, Ed. He felt so disconnected from Dad that he changed his name when he was 18 to Summers, our Mum’s maiden name. But at least for Dad and I there were still the phone calls at Christmas, and Mum and I would always visit him for a few hours whenever I went back to England.

And there were the birthday cards we sent to each other. It always put into perspective for me when I tried to choose a card for Dad.  It was always very difficult.  If the card mentioned all the usual “Thanks so much for everything you’ve done for me, Dad” and “Thanks for your support” or “your wise advice “, they just wouldn’t make the cut. It would be phony and almost hypocritical to send it so he got one with a cute kitten or a dog on the front. I never knew why he wasn’t forthcoming with the kind of fatherly wisdom I saw in other families. Perhaps that figure is something you only see in the movies. I do know his own Dad didn’t stick around for very long so I guess he never had a good role model. Or possibly it was because we all got so much from Mum. She was so strong and maybe there was just nothing left for him to give.

I can’t say Dad and I had a troubled relationship… there were no major battles or anything.  Not once I’d left home anyway. I do recall one powerful exchange I had with him when I was about 14. Not long before Christmas, Mum had had enough of his antics so she took off for a while to stay with her sister. I can’t say I blamed her. I remember telling him then if he wasn’t careful he’d lose her forever. It turned out to be true.

I used to try to figure my father out. If a team of psychoanalysts had ever got hold of him they
would have had a field day! Dad had been an only child who had been completely mollycoddled by his mother. I even heard tales that she carried him up the stairs until he was five years old; she was so worried he’d fall. He was protected every step of the way. And then he went into the navy straight after school and told what to do for the next 25 years. “Civvy Street” was really hard for Dad and two years after he came out the Navy he and Mum finally split. After that he never got it together and never held a job for very long. And as for his next two wives… well, I don’t think I’ll ever understand those choices!

I spent the week after I heard feeling kind of numb. But then I found my thoughts slowly starting to change. I had written a blog to help me sort out my confused feelings and after I posted it the kind words and condolences started to come in from my friends and family.

It was my cousins who made the difference when they sent me their memories of Dad; memories of an entirely different person… the person I’d forgotten.  They all remember what a great character he was and how wonderful Mum and Dad were together when we were kids – always cuddling and joking and giggling. Dad was such a great giggler.

They remember the seaside summer vacations spent at our house in Portsmouth and spoke about the gargantuan meals my Dad made for everyone, those wonderful roast dinners.  Oh yes, and the enormous mess he always left behind. I can’t imagine Mum was ever too thrilled about that, but she did love his cooking.

My Dad taught me to cook; that’s something I’ll always be grateful for.  He never did anything by halves and his baking sessions were legendary.  I recall those baking days when all the kitchen surfaces were covered with mouthwatering goodies. The aroma of bread fresh from the oven would greet me on those mornings and oh God… the chocolate éclairs he used to make would just melt in your mouth; and all the wonderful pies, apple and cherry and his famous custard tarts. I’ve never been able to recreate the creaminess of his custard tarts.

One fantastic memory I have from my childhood was the Christmas menu he would pin up on the kitchen door every year.  He would list all the sumptuous meals we would be enjoying throughout the holiday season.  My brothers and I would gather round, our mouths watering, reading what delicious feast was coming up next.

My cousin Tony recalls an incredibly kind and generous man. And I suppose he was… His words made me think back an occasion when Dad came home without his coat one day.  He’d given it to a homeless man who he figured needed it far more than he did.  The fact that my father was probably “three sheets to the wind” at the time is beside the point. I believe it still came from the heart.  Of course the day he stumbled home with a stray dog on piece of string is another story…

I sang a couple of songs for him on his birthday last month. I raised a glass or two in his honour and tried to remember the good things.

My Dad was always a dreamer… and was forever wishing for the day when things would turn around, when his horse would finally come in… the day when he would be “Swinging on a Star”.

I love you dad…