We started with a dark grey morning Seattle Sunrisers, but we ended with blue skies and warm sunshine. Our meeting was led by our Secretary, Mari, with the theme of our meeting influence. She was accompanied by our Grammarian – Paula, Timer – Sarah, and Table Topics Master – Scott. The word of the day was affluence, a state of having a great deal of money or wealth. 

We had three speakers this morning – Steven, Young, and Dana. Our first speaker Steven spoke about the 5 C’s of Successful Leadership. Those five C’s are: Condescending, Criticizing, Capitalizing, Condemning, and Crying. Our second speaker, Young, shared his experience in the old saying “honesty is the best policy”. Young also shared with us how body language is an effective method of portraying a story. The last speaker of our session was Dana with her Icebreaker – My Journey Through Filmmaking. 

What we learned from our speakers today is, successful leadership is the opposite of the five C’s. For our leaders out there, remember effective leaders do not condescend, criticize, capitalize, condemn, or cry. Effective leaders do however provide honest feedback. Although we may be uncertain of the outcome, let’s remind ourselves we can’t predict the future and our honesty can bring a positive future.

Another successful meeting with many toastmasters taking on different roles. Special applause to Dana for sharing her love of filmmaking during her icebreaker. We wish you good luck in your creative journey filming Superkid. Great job to Weihu and Mari for stepping into their roles as the evaluator and Toastmaster. 

A quote by Scott Adams:

“You don’t have to be a person of influence to be influential. In fact, the most influential people in my life are probably not even aware of the things they’ve taught me. It was a kind reminder that influence doesn’t have to be world-shattering, as every day, unknowingly, we are influencers.”

As Toastmasters, we are all influencers striving to be better at public speaking. We gain confidence by sharing our stories and working with one another through our journey. Our toastmaster for the next meeting will be Hannah for the first time! Catch you bright and early. 

Zoom Schedule

Seattle Sunrisers gathered this morning to celebrate the club’s last meeting of 2020. (We made it!)

Moises hosted the meeting which was inspired by David JP Phillips who spent 7 years studying 5000 speakers, amateurs and professionals in order to detail every single skill a communicator from stage or in a presentation uses in order to deliver their message. Here are a few tips from JP : tilt your head to increase empathy, decrease your tempo to increase your focus and lower your voice to increase anticipation. Much more here.

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Steven and Lara served as timer/evaluator and grammarian/ evaluator respectively.

The word of the day was ” Articulate”

There were three great speeches with messages of struggles, growth and hope:

In his speech titled : Are we on the same wavelength? , Jovica shared the trials and tribulations of job interviews.
Bill speech ” My journey from fear to growth” was an inspiring origin story of reclaiming one’s silenced voice one step at a time, by making a conscious decision to move away from one’s comfort zone.

Vivi reassured the audience that it is ” Never too late to start” using her own story of searching for and finding her passion when she moved to the US. It is never too late to reinvent oneself.

Happy 2021 Seattle Sunrisers! We, at Seattle Sunrise, are seekers. And although we may not always find what we wanted to find, we always find something useful and surprising. I cannot wait to pursue our journey together next year!