Toastmasters Club #620500, Beijing, China

Minutes to May21st Meeting – What Makes a Good Leader?

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” John Quincy Adams

Last night we learned a little about what it means to be a leader and how to practice becoming a leader.

Our first speaker, Hong, gave an inspiring speech showing us how her and her husband are leading a cause to help the Orphans in the Quake zone. She is doing more. And she is asking you to give if you can to this worthwhile cause.

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Sichuan 8628-84423064/84423065
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CLUB ANNOUNCEMENTS

• Club Elections will be held on June4 so if you are interested in being part of the leadership team for the next term, Jul1-Dec31 let me know.

If you want to read more of leadership discussion we had last night or if you wan to see the details of the meeting read on below.

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Some new faces at Global Communicators

As we’ve had a lot of new members lately, I thought I’d send out a quick photo to introduce them to the club. Also, so next time you are Toastmaster you don’t accidentally ask them to introduce themselves.

Back row – Jack, Jeff

Front row – Sissi, Mary, Jenny

They are quite an attractive group. If you can, please come early to our next meeting and get to know them and all of our members better. See you at 6:45pm to at our next meeting.

A warm welcome to all our new members.
Sincerely,
Matthew Fleming
President

Minutes to May 14th Meeting – Health

Last meeting was an active and healthy led by our Toastmaster Susan. Susan gave us some great tips on how to be healthier:

• Eat more fruits and vegetables
• Exercise at least 2x per week
• Sleep enough every day (about 8hours per person)
• Drink lots….of water (2L per day)
• Laugh and have fun at Toastmasters

The last one I added, but Susan made sure we did this. Also, our TT Master, Daisy, helped us have fun by choosing some tricky questions to give our impromptu speeches too: Jenny falling in love with a boy; Matt scraped his knee; Donna’s pressure of her job. As always the TT session was good fun.

Our GE team was lead by Forrest as GE and he had a strong team of: Timer – Peter; Ah Counter – Jeff; Wordsmith – Allen. Our Wordsmith Allen, gave us an inspiring word faith (n.) as our word of the day. As the earthquake in Wenchuan, Sichuan was on our minds, Allen’s word, his speech and his songs were quite moving.

CLUB ANNOUNCEMENTS:

1. We’ll be having our Club Elections on June 4th. If you are interested in taking on a role (President, VP Membership, VP Education, VP PR, Treasurer, Secretary, Sergeant-at-Arms) let me know before that meeting. Also if you have any questions about the roles, you can ask the current Officer doing that role.

To find out more about our positive thinking Quotemaster and the speeches, please read on.
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Minutes to May7th Meeting – Failure

THEME FAILURE Today’s meeting began with a story about a famous loser (and winner) in American history——President Lincoln. If you could not understand the defeated feeling from his story, you have a chance to join in the table topic section, experiencing those sad, depressive conditions. Now let’s have a look at those participants how to deal with them.

Jenny was supposed to be pregnant, but unfortunately, her husband, the only economic source for the family, escaped for ever. Jenny showed us her strong character. Her confidence, independence and fortitude left us deep impression.

Liu Bing’s good idea was refused to be accepted by any one. That means, he was a genius, by had no market. He was smart to explain his idea in details to us. The experienced member organized his story very quickly and expressed clearly. Good job!

Porsher was against by her boss. She reconsidered her situation, analyzed some reasons by herself and found some ways to change it. Her good gesture and kind eye contact won the audience’s heart.

Keith found he was isolated by his team member. The lonely feeling, the anxious mood might be a little familiar for most of us. Keith solved the problem by two steps. Firstly, win others’ hearts; secondly, win those minds. His excellent show won him the best table topic speaker award.

In prepared speech section, Daisy and Jason gave us wonderful speeches. Both of them used colorful pictures as tools. Concerning for story’s structure, Daisy’s was better; but concerning for the humorous expression and plentiful body languages, Jason was the winner. Any way, it was a wonderful part.

Failure is not terrible, “there is joy in self-forgetfulness.” Forget those sadness and shame. Let’s be faced with the failures directly, I am sure that finally, we will be more experienced and more thoughtful.

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Minutes to Apr30th Meeting – Humour

Last night Hong led us through a humorous, entertaining and educational meeting as our Toastmaster. Her theme was humour and as that is this month’s educational theme our VP of Education Liu Bing was quite happy. He was also our Wordsmith and charged us with using the word of the day: absurd. Members who didn’t use the word absurd had to pay an absurd fine of 1RMB. (Actually, I like the fine jar and don’t think it’s absurd, only I wanted to give an example sentence). Our GE for the night was our handsome Allen (absurd???), who did a fine job. Allen tried being serious, in his role, but in the end his humorous side broke through. Our Timer, Kitty, did a great job explaining the the cards using Joe’s minimum ( green card ) and maximum (red card) and halfway (yellow card) system. Well done all of the evaluation team.

Our Table Topics master, Francis, was all business in his TT session. Francis asked a question (i.e. “If you had $1 million what would you do?”) or painted a scenario (i.e “You are giving the opening ceremony speech at the Olympics, what will you say?” and then he selected who had to answer the question or give the presentation. Well done. His method resulted in 9 members people giving some humorous presentations. Also, our GE gave a great tip that if a TTM wanted to use this selecting method, he could give 3 seconds for volunteers and then he’d pick. Great session and great ideas.

The Quotemaster was Forrest who shared a quote from a famous translator, Man Huai Ji.
There are three periods in a persons life: being cheated; cheating others; cheating themselves.
People cheat themselves when they are not satisfied.

In the second half of our meeting we had our new member Jack give his icebreaker speech and Joe gave us a great Educational speech on using humour.

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