Donna Satchell took the helm as Toast Master January 4, 2010 and set the tone and quality of Speakers Roundtable for the New Year. With quiet confidence and a strong but gentle hand, she not only guided the meeting, but had us reflecting on the past year as well as focusing on the New Year before us. What was your greatest accomplishment this year? (Personal, business, and as a Toastmaster.)
First up was Mark Parham with his speech entitled “Getting Those ‘People Issue’ Conflicts Off Your Desk.” Mark’s goal was to provide specific tools for leaders to build better work environments. Leaders have a hard job creating a work environment where people work in harmony while achieving their company goals. Mark listed six qualities a leader should measure and reward. He focused on the first quality measurement which was Feedback. Feedback included receiving, giving and responding. Mark paused midway and checked with the audience for questions and responded to a couple, mainly regarding measurement and incentives. We were then introduced to Bob “The Jerk” and learned the pitfalls for a leader with a Bob in his department. (Non-Bobs can grow to be like Bob.) We look forward to Mark elaborating on the remaining five measurements and their impact on achieving company goals in his future club speeches. Well done, Mark.
What, in 2009, turned out differently than you had planned? We took a six minute break at a table all too loaded with sweets. No doubt we must have been dumping our pantries of all these goodies to facilitate our dieting resolutions.
What incident(s) made you laugh very hard this past year? Wouldn’t you know, next up was Merrilee Morris with her desultory, inane speech, “Old Medicare Me.” She took us on a joy ride through old age and the fact that physicians don’t like to care for old folks, don’t want to care for the elderly, aren’t trained to care for Old Crocks, and believe it or not, Gerontologists are pathetically under paid, even less than Proctologists. She elaborated on each point, even gave the audience folded strips of paper with common treatable but non-curable diseases of the elderly. She then handed out additional diseases to go with the ones they had since 30% of seniors have two or more of the five conditions. We now know about and understand retangularization of our population and the burgeoning senior population. Right? As one evaluator put it, “You lightened up the doom!”
Donna turned the meeting over to our General Evaluator, Cindy Cannon. Timer Rich Hart was devastated at not getting to exercise his full authority by flashing the red card. Grammarian Keith Schroeder found a few ah’s and um’s, but nothing serious once we warmed up. Cindy Cannon felt the meeting was well on target for an advanced club.
What will you do differently this year? Toastmaster Donna turned the meeting over to our President, Bill Kovach. Bill called on our six guests to stand and let us know what they thought of the meeting. Our Sgt at Arms, Keith, then escorted the visitors and membership applicant into the hall so the club could vote on the membership of Cindy Light. Cindy was welcomed back into the club.
We packed up and took our sweets back home to our cupboards and will start our diets on a later date. Thanks for the great Toast Mastering, Donna! Happy New Year to us all!
