Its a winner ! Great idea! The Double Delight Leadership Summit was a joint training event held in a meeting room at The Clock Warehouse in Derby home of East Midlands speakers . A picturesque pub on the canal side with a huge weeping willow at the front and barges moored beneath it. The ‘joint’ element of the event was the temporary reuniting of clubs from area 39 and 6. A rearranging of Toastmaster area boundaries meant East Midlands are now in a different area.
We started the weekend on the Friday evening with a talk by Freddie Daniells (former head of toastmasters international for Great Britain and Ireland) on preparing a speech for the international speech contest. Freddie’s talk was both illuminating and inspiring giving us numerous tips and insights on how to write, plan, collect inspiration and deliver a speech fit for competitions.
Some of my notes from the event included the advice there are 5 elements of a story (speech):
- Situation
- Main character
- A goal
- An obstacle
- A journey to success
Stories ideally should contain these 5 elements. Humour helps the message be heard and many other snippets that I personally need to work on. We carried on sharing ideas over a meal in the pub.
The Saturday training involved a jam packed day of talks around leadership and running toastmaster clubs. Topics such as Evaluation in the workplace by Freddie Daniells, Leadership by Angela Armstrong, the Autistic toastmaster by Sam Warner and the importance of mentoring by Tanya Barad to name a few.
These events are open to any members of toastmasters but as a club we had good representation with 5 committee members attending. Attendance at these events helps us to bring back new ideas to try in the club. We are working towards being a distinguished club which is a club programme indicating that we are a proactive club.
The day was indeed a double delight seeing familiar faces again picking up tips and ideas to use both in the club and the workplace. Clubs from both areas agreed it was a successful day.