Thorough preparation
The meeting was facilitated by Hironori as Toastmaster of the Day. This was his first time, at least in a very long time. He worked hard with Vice President Education Mai to secure everyone is ready for their role, put together the agenda, and prepare what to say in introducing prepared speech speakers and other members. On the meeting day, he had a lot of notes with him so that he knew exactly what to do and say. Well done, Hironori! Thanks to his thorough preparation, the meeting moved smoothly except for some mishaps in the induction ceremony for a new member and the Evaluation Session, where one of the evaluators went overtime.
Great suggestions
One of the prepared speech speaker, Natsuko, delivered a phenomenal speech about how we should perform one of our meeting roles, the Ah-Counter. The Ah-Counter is someone who pays attention to members unnecessary utterances such as ah, um, er, as well as overly used words and phrases. In short, they pay attention to verbal distractions.
Natsuko had a mixed feeling about the role when she took that role the last time. She felt somewhat guilty of finter-pointing members. THat prompted her to revisit the purpose of the role and came up with fabulous set of suggestions for all of us. As an Ah-Counter, she suggests that we:
- look for meaninglessness in counting the fillers taking into account the context each was used,
- look for overused words and phrases, which are often overlooked by many Ah-Counters,
- make constructive and supportive reports taking the same kind of care we take when serving as an evaluator,
- focus on the improvements made by the member in question, and
- ask someone else to Ah-Count our Ah-Counter report.
Thank you for your well-thought-out suggestions, Natsuko!!
Natsuko had a mixed feeling about the role when she took that role the last time. She felt somewhat guilty of finter-pointing members. THat prompted her to revisit the purpose of the role and came up with fabulous set of suggestions for all of us. As an Ah-Counter, she suggests that we:
- look for meaninglessness in counting the fillers taking into account the context each was used,
- look for overused words and phrases, which are often overlooked by many Ah-Counters,
- make constructive and supportive reports taking the same kind of care we take when serving as an evaluator,
- focus on the improvements made by the member in question, and
- ask someone else to Ah-Count our Ah-Counter report.
Thank you for your well-thought-out suggestions, Natsuko!!