Medley

Umesh
The rapport I built with my fellow Toastmasters helped me in self-monitoring and made sure that I was in the right direction. The energy I saw in tagious, and this started a my fellow Toastmasters was con ow of energy, and thus virtuous cycle of enthusiasm and experience before. I not sharing new ideas which I did which I didn't know still elf mys stumbled upon things about some things about me n lear to existed, and I was surprised of. It created a power in me to that I didn't know I was capable I roles and responsibilities which move forward and take up the ing help ing this movement. It is was unwilling to take before join ness which is essential to calm me build my condence and in the midst of stress and build my thought process even think on my feet. to n strains, and also fuel my brai ston Churchill which goes like Lastly I end with a quote by Win t we get, but we make a life by this: We make a living by wha what we give.

SAY YES TO SPEAKING

What can Toastmasters SMILE do for you ? Jithendra RE " I started my journey with Toastmasters with a baby step PE S Y LE ED Hear from the members..! almost two years now and I am enjoying been SM has it and M O FR E AT THE UPD
ef that it is the place to end up, Toastmasters shattered my beli ed the bandwagon of a long but it helped me believe that I join with no destination. I was journey, a never-ending voyage er experiences about myself new exposed to new learning, and r week. It has been an towards me and others, week afte me to hone and develop ing help exciting journey until now in sed, and which I haven't Come and experience yourself! the skills, which I already posses noticed, or cared to do so. It Shankar helped me bring about a shift in Freshly installed Club Officers! d pare com as self entI always used to wonder why I pres my keep coming to Smedleys every to my previous-self before Sunday morning. I joined joining the Toastmasters. The w kno to e cam I ess aren Smedleys at a time when I was -aw self me for ing ken awa an e quit often described by many people was as shy, nervous & quiet. Many that helped in identifying the people join Toastmasters to get inadequacy in me and work a extr an me e gav It it. over their stage fear. But in my ards tow the to n nitio de and ning case the stage was much larger, mea rs. it was the whole world! purpose i joined Toastmaste

every bit of it . Toastmasters as such is an incredible organization. Smedleys in particular, is a perfect platform which is helping budding speakers like me to scale greater heights in public speaking. The atmosphere in the club is lled with energy and enthusiasm . We all meet every Sunday morning to "SMILE " (Speak More In a Learning Environment ) .

ERS SOCIETY BANGALORE AK PE S Y E L ED SM M O FR E THE UPDAT

Medley

THE

October 2013

Hello There!
Oh! What an experience it has been since I took over as the president in july. It has been a jolly ride all through. It has really helped me grow as a better leader, speaker and most important as a listener too. It has opened new perspectives in me. I have been a member of this club for more than 5 years but have always run away from leadership roles. I had been o ered the president s role earlier but had refused every time but this time there was no respite and I took charge, and believe me it has been surprisingly a very ful lling experience so far . I have learnt so much and still learning in this big role. My speaking goal was simple : to stand on my feet without falling on my face . I never dreamt of becoming a club o cer or a speech contestant. I only hoped to get through a speech and move on but I saw great speakers and leaders emerge and transform into dynamic orators and persons who could in uence . I took the initiative and in very short time I could sense the change when just a few weeks back the general evaluator in his evaluation of the president exclaimed that I started to speak with lot of sense , this was a sort of shock to me , as if all these 5 years I was mouthing nonsense. ah!!!!!! I should have become the president much earlier to see this change, anyways better late than never, thank you all the members for choosing me. We carry lot of prejudice when we join toastmasters, all we think of is giving speeches but this is just one aspect of growth. If you want to see a holistic growth, along with the speeches we have to also take leadership roles ,remember a good leader is always a good speaker but it is not true vice versa , we learn so much o - stage than we learn on-stage . so get into the groove of leadership and experience the growth . I can see the change myself in matter of just a few months and I'm sure you all will. It gives me immense pleasure to be a part of Smedley Speakers Society . I have been associated with it for more than 5 years and it has brought a sea change In my personality and as we celebrate our 400th meeting I like to extend my deep gratitude to the club for contributing to the person I am . Thank you for all the support . Best wishes for continued success . Smedleys' Speakers Society rocks! Cheers, Vijay Jain
president

In Toastmasters there is a structure in place in the form of CC, ACB, ACS, ACG, and DTM like a syllabus in order to move ever, one benet which up the ladder of public speaking. How ed was - as I spoke is less talked about which I experienc and later more y tantl reluc bit more, in the beginning a own style of my lop deve enthusiastically, I began to king in front of spea y enjo to n speaking. Above all I bega me in improving ed help have may s people. So yes, Smedley all I have learned to my public speaking skills but above why I keep coming on know I Now have fun while speaking. a Sunday morning.

Club Officers

At Smedley's Helm
President Vice President - Education Vice President - Membership Treasurer Secretary Sergeant At Arms : Vijay Jain : AlamIshtiyaque : JithedraKittaShetty : Deepak Jain : Nazia Sherif : Jacob

Vice President - Public Relations : Joby Joseph

Smedley Speakers Society

Chartered by Toastmasters International Meets every Sunday at 10.30 AM at NIPM Hall, 2nd oor, Blue Cross Chambers Infantry Road Cross, Bangalore

How Toastmasters can change your life

Aseem Purohit
Change is the only constant in life' goes the famous saying. We all change and evolve during our lifetimes to become better at what we do and how we do it, in our personal and professional lives. Life's circumstances, situations and challenges mould us into who we eventually become. While many of these just happen in our lives, we deal with them in a reactive way and come out of them enriched. But there are times when we need to take a call and voluntarily choose to do certain activities to shape our lives for the better. Joining Toastmasters is one such signicant step. For most of our growing up years and early adult life, one of the crucial challenges we face is to speak in public. The mere thought of it sends shivers down our spine and our initial response is to avoid situations where we are required to speak in public. This helps in temporarily getting away from difculty of speaking in public but sooner or later we realize that if we have to live up to our true potential, we have to learn the ne art of speaking in public. Most people join Toastmasters to control their nervousness and learn to speak with condence while speaking in public. After one goes through the cycle of delivering multiple speeches and playing various roles at a Toastmaster meeting, they manage to achieve this primary objective. But soon they realize that it is only the tip of the iceberg and there are so many other benets one can get by being part of this wonderful organization over a long period of time. One such benet is the enhanced condence one feels not only while speaking in public but also in other spheres of life such as inter-personal relationships, one-to-one communication etc. The other is the improvement in English vocabulary, diction as well as grammar one experiences during the Toastmaster journey. And the biggest benet is it brings the best out in you as a leader. It gives an insight into the kind of leader you are, your strengths, and where you could possibly improve to become a better leader.
A Smedz reunion at the 2013 Toastmasters International Convention!

your job. Soft skills last a lifetime, so they never become outdated or obsolete. And, more often than not, soft skills are what distinguish the exceptional people climbing the ladder of SUCCESS.. from the mediocre people standing at the bottom. I am quite sure that soft skills are essential for success. To substantiate my point on this I look at all the top leading positions may be in organizations or the leader of the country say the position of the president. What hard skills are necessary for the CEO or THE PRESIDENT of the country? Virtually none. How is one trained to be the CEO or President? There are no classes conducted or exams written or even specied hard skills.

The skills necessary to become an effective CEO or a President are the same skills necessary to be an effective business person or an effective parent: Leadership Skills, Communication Skills, Listening Skills, Problem Solving Skills, Organizing Skills, Negotiation Skills, Time Management Skills and on and on. Yes, it goes without saying that a big part of furnishing your room for improvement is learning and mastering the jobspecic hard skills of your chosen profession. But, when all is said and done, it's the soft skills that will enable you to realize your dreams come true whatever they maybe. Mahaveer Jain is receiving his
ACB Certificate from Pramod Shankar

Many of these are lifetime skills that have a potential of impacting your life in more ways than one. One can apply them in different contexts and situations in life to handle them well and derive maximum benets. These skills as well as the experience of mentoring other Toastmasters along the way, qualitatively enhances one's personality, perspectives and makes him/her a better human being. Being a Toastmaster is a life changing experience. It gives you the power to inuence the world by communicating well, gives you a better grip of your life and helps you realize your true potential. As they say, 'if you get, what you can get out of Toastmasters, you will never get out of Toastmasters'.

What you do speaks so loud, that I cannot hear what you say.
Jayachandran Narayan
In communication, it's important that what we show conveys the same meaning as what we say. Otherwise, people wouldn't be able to focus on the content of our communication but instead get distracted by the form of our behaviour. Studies show that 89 % of our learning is through the eyes, 10% through the ears and the remaining through our other senses. We are all therefore very visual people and thus people usually follow what people see. Therefore, it's important that our verbal and non-verbal signals speak the same language and convey the same meaning. The rst class I delivered as a Communication Skills trainer was in front of 10 paying Japanese customers at Berlitz (Japan) Incorporated, 13 years ago. I had beads of sweat like bullets fall off my my forehead to the fall. I'm sure I was visibly nervous. All I had to do was teach them to speak basic English and though I was obviously better than them in the language, it was a nervewrecking experience. After all these years of practice, though I'm far from perfect, I've developed some condence to speak up. You may have heard this narrative about a man who comes across a famous musician walking down a street in New York and asks him Excuse me sir, how do I get to Carnegie Hall? The musician responded Keep practicing man, keep practicing! Likewise with Toastmasters and public speaking in general, it is practice that's going to make us impactful speakers. To quote Peter F. Drucker Spontaneity is an innite number of rehearsed possibilities And how fortunate we are to have a fun and friendly forum such as Toastmasters to enable us to do just that rehearse the possibilities an innite number of times to become spontaneous speakers, while not forgetting to keep our verbal and non-verbal messages in sync!

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Importance of Soft Skills

Dinesh M. Naik
M. A. Psychology Soft Skill Trainer When I was teaching in high school, my students would often complain about the reading assignments I used to give them. Typically, the complaints would go something like, Why do we have to read this stupid story? I am going to be an accountant or I would like to be an engineer. How will this meaningless story help me in my engineering or in accountancy?
New Club Officers

year the swallows y 6,000 miles from Buenos Aires, in Argentina to San Juan Capistrano, a small town in Southern California. Amazingly, most of the migration is over open ocean. For years nobody could gure out how these tiny birds made such a long trip. Swallows can't swim. They can't y 6,000 miles nonstopping. So how do they complete their migration? Researchers discovered that the swallows carry a twig, larger than their body size and heavier than their own body weight, in their beaks during migration. When the swallows get tired, they drop their twigs in water and oat on them sufciently for longer time. Then, they resume their ight with repeated breaks like these until they reach their destination. Like swallows, people are on a long, arduous migration too. Our migration is called LIFE. Soft skills are to people as twigs are to swallows - a life raft in an ocean of constant change. If all you have to fall back on is your hard skills, you're going to sink. If you made a living repairing digital pagers, for example, what good will your job-specic hard skills do to you when cell phones replace pagers? But if you have good soft skills, you can easily transit to a different career. Soft skills are portable from one career to another, from one situation to another, from one role to another, from one life passage to another. Soft skills help you at home, as well as on

Sushma Tamraparni

Why walk when you can run ?

It was a breezy summer afternoon and I was on a trekking expedition with my friends near Agumbe Ghat, Karnataka. After treating our eyes to the breathtaking sunset, we decided to halt in one of the homestay facilities nearby. As we walked towards the homestay, a small twig got stuck to my slip-ons. I cautiously bent down to remove it. My friends had already entered the homestay. I hurried behind them. I found myself on the horns of a dilemma unable to choose which door to enter. I decided to go with the one on my right. I walked through the silent hallway, my foot steps being the only noise I heard. the door and nd a way to tackle it once and for all. Reluctantly, I opened that creaking door. Lo and behold, the FEAR was no more. This was the day I learnt fear vanishes the moment we face it. The voices holding me back were merely in my mind. It is the fear of unknown that haunted me the most. As Edward Murphy once quoted If anything can go wrong, it will, I started preparing myself for the worst case scenario. As pessimistic it may sound, I rather became more optimistic than I was. I no longer had the fear of unknown as I had already equipped myself for the best possible and worst possible outcome. So fellow Toastmasters, let's take that leap of faith leaving behind our inhibitions! Because Why walk when you can run?

At that time, I didn't have a very good answer to that question. And it deserves a good and useful answer. Think about that - if you are an accountant or an engineer, it's obvious that the more accounting or engineering classes and seminars you attend, the better you'll be at your craft. Let's call these jobspecic skills as HARD SKILLS. It's pretty obvious that you want your accountancy or attorney or engineer to have mastered the hard skills of their craft. But why should an accountant or an engineer (or others for that matter) waste their time learning SOFT SKILLS (or Life Skills or People Skills)? Why should accountants read plays by Shakespeare? Why should engineers listen to audio tapes on attitude? Why should auto mechanics attend seminars on relationship building? Why should dentist watch videos about leadership? The best way to answer these questions is to tell you about the migration habit of a tiny bird called the swallow. Most likely you've heard of the famous swallows of Capistrano. Every

A few steps later I found another room. I began hearing voices saying Go back to where you started, You can't do it. I knew it was there. I knew it was the only obstacle stopping me from reaching my destination. It was FEAR. I gathered myself to open