CIS Toastmasters humorous contest winners, from left to right, Rob Spreadbury, Claude Chibaya and Cyril Chessex

Our club humorous contest was held on 15^th September and was by all means a great success! It was very well attended, not only by enthusiastic contestants and judges, but also by a number of members and visitors who were there to be entertained and to pick up a tip or two for the next contest in which they might participate.

We were fortunate enough to have the experience of Tony Lyndall who is a long standing member of Toastmasters and also a professional humorous speaker. Tony was the contest chairman for the evening.

All the contestants performed exceptionally well, with topics ranging from ‘The undercover bagel’  by Ramon Thomas to ‘Adventures of a life-time’ By Blake Fraser Matthews and ‘Life’s funny Moments’ by Gys McIntosh.

Congratulations to our exceptional winners –Cyril Chessex who shared his hilarious experiences of living with teenager and was awarded first place. Runners up included Claude Chibaya who made us laugh at the triumphs and tribulations of Courtship, in second place and Rob Spreadbury who demonstrated the use of non-verbal communication, in third place.

The evening was thoroughly enjoyed by all and there were learning’s that were taken home by not only the audience, but the contestants and judges.

Indeed, to be a successful humorous speaker is not merely about telling jokes, but about giving a full-bodied speech with a meaningful message, an opening, body and conclusion.

Humour is merely build in once the general and specific purpose has been established. One also has to be careful not to offend members of the audience and pay particular attention to body language, speech value, mannerisms and word selection.

Children and problems come as a package deal.
Each package deal may have a slightly different wrapping.
However, ALL parents – irrespective of the size of their wallets – have parental problems to solve.

Some people believe that super-rich parents have no or fewer problems.
Wrong! Wrong!
Super-rich parents simply have DIFFERENT parental problems.

For example, super-rich parents face one PARTICULARLY delicate issue.
It is managing their children’s expectations in respect of money and inheritance.
It is delicate because money is to people what water is to plants.
Too little of it leads to slow growth.
Too much of it leads to rot.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have done a good job at dealing with the issue of money and their children.
Let us look at HOW both billionaires handled the matter.

First Bill Gates.
Well, he chose to be explicit on the subject of inheritance at an early stage.
He openly announced that, upon his death, most of his wealth would be donated…..
…. and that his children would inherit USD 10 mio each.
USD 10 mio is an amount he considers large enough for anyone to start up a business…..
……but too small for his children to already now rest on their laurels
and wait for him to kick the bucket.

Now, what about: Warren Buffet?
Well, Buffet is a reluctant spender by nature.
In addition, Buffet has always been inflexible about requests for money from his children.
Consequently, the children grew up without expecting money from their father.
Back then…., they knew that their ONLY chance of getting serious money from their father was by way of a financial deal.

One story goes that Buffet made a deal with his already married daughter Susy.
He felt that Susy could lose a few kilos.
So, he proposed the following deal.
Against losing a certain amount of weight, Susy could shop for clothes for one month….. with NO limit on spending.
There was a catch, however.
The catch was that Susy would have to pay him back if she regained the weight within ONE year.

Susy agreed to the deal and went on diet.
When Susy got down to the agreed weight, her mother sent Suzy credit cards with a note saying “Have fun”.
At first Susy did not dare spend a dime.
She was frightened by the thought of asking her father to pay the bills.
However, Susy, being after all a woman, eventually worked herself up and started shopping.
After thirty days she had spent a total of USD 47’000.—, which is about R 350’000.–
Susy thought her father was going to die over the amount.
But, since a deal is a deal Buffet paid the full amount without saying a word.

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Children are not easy.
When it comes to money and finance, children are guaranteed problems…
EVEN for the super-rich as you heard.
So, to those of you who don’t have children YET,
I suggest you bear in mind the following words of Clarence Darrow:
“The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents, and the second half by our children.”

The other day I went to exclusive books to look for a book on speeches, I found a book called the top 100 speeches of the 20^th century. I took it home and read a few of the great speeches ranging from Martin Luther king’s I had a dream speech to President John F Kennedy’s Inaugural speech. I was surfing the Amazon.com website the other day and discovered that they had CDs of the very top speeches of the century.

When I got the CDs I listened to the speeches and discovered that the words do take a new meaning when the delivery of the speech is good. The Dr Martin Luther King’s I had a dream speech was amazing. The day before the Inauguration of President Barack Obama they were interviewing one of the guys who wrote the “I had a dream speech”, the guy was talking about how the actual I had a dream part of the speech was off the cuff.

The thing I realised is that people will always remember the delivery of the speech, so it is important to realise that powerful words need a powerful delivery and that we must always keep at the back of our minds. After listening to Winston Churchill’s “we have nothing to fear but fear itself” I came to the same conclusion.

In toastmasters we do have a platform where we can practice how to deliver speeches, so can you join me in a toast to Toastmasters international.

• Ramon Thomas (Webmaster) will be interviewed in Johannesburg on Kaya FM (Masechaba Moshoeshoe)
  
• At the same time  Martyn Battrick will be interviewed in Durban  on Gagasi FM (interviewer Mzo)
  

Radio frequencies are as follows:

KayaFM  95.9 FM www.kayafm.co.za

GagasiFM 99.5 FM www.gagasi995.co.za

The web address is for online streaming on the respective websites – so you even if your are in Cape Town you can listen on the web. Nice, isn’t it?

Here’s some more background:

Johnnie Walker Black Label and Kaya FM and Gagasi FM will be introducing listeners to a discovery of the world around them, information that will add value to their lives in business, personal finance, investment and leisure. We seek to bring leading experts each month to help listeners discover more about the issues around them through the sharing of information, advice and useful tips.

The series began in the first week October where each week, a topic of interest to our listeners will be delved into. The show is a 30 minute Q & A session where listeners will also be invited to call in. We will prepare a guideline of questions that will pertain to the topic being discussed and we will then send it through to our guest for perusal and additions. We will also put our guest in contact with our presenters for any further queries they may have prior to the show itself. We will then ask our guest to come to the studio for the interview or have them do it telephonically.

By Dave Hodges • DEMOCRAT BUSINESS EDITOR • December 27, 2008

Shirley Bull, director of Business & Community Outreach at the state’s Agency for Workforce Innovation, has a lunch appointment each Thursday at noon. It’s where she and other friends and business associates work on their communication skills.
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“I just can’t tell you what Toastmasters has done for me,” she says of the organizations she has belonged to for 17 years, serving as the chapter president at one point.

First and foremost, it is a confidence builder. “It can help you in your career to learn public speaking,” she says.

Sooner or later, that opportunity presents itself. Perhaps you are scheduled to give a report at a staff meeting, present a paper at a conference, or stand before potential clients and give a marketing presentation. You might need to address a homeowners association or your fellow parents at a PTA meeting.

Still, the prospect of speaking before an audience can be scary. It’s consistently ranked among the things people dread the most. The approach of Toastmasters International is to give individuals a chance to work on speaking skills in a non-threatening, instructive environment.

It’s about overcoming the fear of the podium. Toastmasters, in fact, jokingly reminds us all that no one has actually ever died from stage fright, even though some may feel they could. And chances are no one is going to notice your knees shaking or that sweaty upper lip you develop when you are addressing an audience.

What you will get is coaching and support on the essentials — speaking clearly, having good eye contact and posture, using gestures effectively, and how to give a talk that gets your point across and is memorable. And while you are speaking, as I did at Shirley Bull’s Capital City Chapter recently, you learn how to gauge the length of your remarks with the help of a member who times you. Even in two minutes you can say a lot more than you think.

Tallahassee is fortunate to have several Toastmasters chapters meeting on various days. If being a better speaker in your business or profession is a goal of yours, the clubs are ready to help.

source: Tallahassee Democrat.

You are officially invited to our club’s 35th birthday party! Please join us for snacks and cake at our next meeting on Tuesday, 26 August, where we’ll also be having our humorous competition. So bring your humour, giggles and party spirit to Old Eds next week – we look forward to celebrating and chuckling with you.

Hee hee!

Any questions? Call me, Eunice Faiga, from the CIS Toastmasters Committee on 083 458 6255

We did a noise-control design and sent the drawings back to the owner, who asked me to come for a site visit.

I got there. We discussed the drawings. Then he said, perhaps, I might go and discuss the matter with the town committee. So I said, fine, and drove with him to the town hall. He led me into a lobby and told me that the committee awaited behind the door on the left.

“Just knock,” he said, “and go in.” And I did.

I found myself in a room the size of a small ballroom. About 50 people sat along a huge table, with a chairperson on a raised dais. They stared at me. I realised that this was the ‘town committee’, which I had imagined to comprise, say, five people.

The chairperson explained that I was an engineer hired by the garage and that I would explain the noise-control measures to the 50-odd people assembled and answer questions. I noticed that my drawings had been stuck to the wall and that one of them was upside down.

I walked over to the upside-down drawing, cleared my throat and introduced myself. I turned to the upside-down drawing and said: “One way of getting rid of the problem may be to turn the garage upside down, but that won’t help much.” (I turned the drawing the right way up.)

I got a big laugh. Everybody relaxed. The garage extension was approved. The reason I am telling you all this is not because I want to show how smart I am, but how well I have been trained to speak in public, off the cuff, at a moment’s notice.

I learned this by going to Toastmasters’ meetings. This is an organisation that helps people to be able to speak with confidence in public. I happen to have gone to Toastmasters but there are other organisations which do the same sort of thing. There are two things one can do to make oneself a better engineer or businessperson, and one of them is to learn to be able to respond effectively to any call to address a group of people, either formally or informally. And it is so easy to do; there are Toastmaster groups everywhere – one should just find one that seems to have the sort of group of people that one might like and join up.

I’ll tell you another tale. I had to attend a site meeting, one of those explosive situations where the contractor has made a huge mess and was wildly overpaid for work which was not quite done. The client was refusing to pay any more until some progress was evident and, perhaps, not even then.

The contractor was not used to addressing groups and got the name of the client wrong, calling him Tony instead of Trevor. He laced many of his comments with deep sarcasm and in the end refused to do any more work until he was paid more money. Or he would get the lawyers in. So, since I have been trained to listen (yes, at Toastmasters), I could quite easily summarise what he had said and then ask that it be taken down in the minutes.

I then said, well, we had all heard what he had to say – we would discuss it among ourselves and we would let him know the instructions of our client. He lost it completely and swore at me and the client. And that was the end of him. How much better, I thought, if he had put his case in a reasoned way.

Now, nobody, but nobody at Toastmasters, knows I am writing this. But I do urge you to become better at your job – learn how to speak, learn how to listen.

by Terry Mackenzie-Hoy, originally published in Engineering News

One of our newest members won the prepared speaking session: Stone Chirwa. It turns out Stone is a magician by trade and performs regularly. You may contact him directly on 073 6499595 if you are in need of some solid entertainment and filled with a bag of tricks. I was the evaluator for his speech and it was beyond the usual first time speeches I’ve heard. Stone was in character for the most part. He used a brilliant piece of structure to build up tension linked to his title, My Masters Degree. Every section in his story was a new level of education from the school of the hard knocks, or the school of life. His elocution was clear, his articulation great and his pacing was incredible. He even came out from behind the podium to do a quick magic trick with some small pieces of rope. This was unexpected and bodes well for future speeches where props are required. His use of gestures was good and also his body language was for the most party in tune with the message he was trying to convey. As with most speeches in front of a new audience he made one glaring mistake: he rocked from side to side throughout his speech. This was the only sign of any nervousness in his entire delivery. And on a minor note he thanked the audience, which you will learn in Toastmasters is not necessary.

Tim Verity won the best impromptu speech. I can’t recall exactly what he talked about but I can assure it must have been both witty and poignant knowing Tim. Tim has been one of the best reasons to be part of CIS Toastmasters because he brings so much enthusiasm and humour to the club meetings. He is one of the long standing members and an invaluable resource for new members to tap into. His words of encouragement has been a great inspiration for me from the beginning.

To my great surprise I won the James Ballentine Award from my club. This is an annual award for the person who’s made a big impact on the club. Its been a complete surprise to me to see how well this website has been received since I took over the reigns late last year. According to Rob Douglas DTM, this website was runner-up to the winner to Cape Town Toastmasters. Over the last 18 months I believe I have introduced at least 6 or more people to Toastmasters. At least one of them, my friend Israel Noko, has signed-up as a member, although he has yet to make his first speech.