Friendship Table Topics

The famous American professional boxer, Muhammad Ali, once said "friendship is not something you can learn in school, but if you have not learn the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learnt anything." Anyone can make a guess, who is Muhammad Ali's best Friend? It was Joe Frazier, a fellow boxer during his time.

Fellow toastmasters and guests, we have come to tonight’s table topics’ segment. I am your table topics master for tonight, and in line with tonight's theme of "friends", we are going explore friendship and especially our very own best friend in our lives. The table topics segment is open to members and especially guests for a chance of impromptu speech. This helps us to listen, analysis and think on our feet. Good training in a fun way.

Each speaker will be given a topic to speak for 2 mins. At the end of 1 min there will be the green card, 1.5 min the orange card and after 2 min the red card. At 2:30 mins there will be a bell to tell you the time is up.

I have here with me 10 special quotations about friendship tied to the ends of a friendship band. So, when you come up here, you will first share with us who your best friend is. Then you will pick one of these quotation and your topic would be "Sarah and I are best friends because ....". The time will start when you are ready to speak. So, who shall go first? Don't worry, I guarantee that none of the quotes are more than 10 words long. 

This is a table topics segment following the theme of "Friendship" for a toastmaster club's meeting. The outcome - not enough time to do even 4, and I was graded downwards for 'wasting' time on the introduction?!

Be A Star!

How many of us this morning, can honestly say that they have never told a lie?

I am glad that I see no hands raised. This shows that while we could be a liar at some point in time in our lives, we are absolutely honest at the moment.

My fellow toastmasters, ladies and gentlemen, from young we have been told not to lie because lying is bad. But our sinful nature unfortunately, prefers to lie, so that we can get away with things easily. As we grow older, our conscious and moral values tell us that we really should try to avoid telling lies, and so we did. I am sure we did, to a greater or lesser extent. However, does this then cause us to tell more truth? Nope, unfortunately, we still avoid telling the truth, for fear of constraints, confrontations and consequences.

This is especially so in a situation where we need to provide feedback to the people around us. We just find it hard to be honest in providing feedback, especially if it is negative. However, we need to understand that the spirit of providing feedback is not about pointing out the flaws. Yes, in the course of our feedback on someone or something, we may have to touch on things that could otherwise be done better, because we need to be honest and stating the facts. Instead of using feedback to criticize, we could turn it around to motivate that someone to improve instead.

So how can we effectively provide feedback that does not condemn but construct? By simply being a STAR J Use to STAR approach to help us – S/T stands for Situation or Task, A – Action and R – results. Essentially, this approach helps us to focus on the key points so that our feedback is effectively delivered. It also ensures that the background or context is explained clearly, states only the facts and demonstrated the impact or results, which set the stage for the action plans which both of you can proceed to jointly develop. This is what we called a specific and complete feedback.

In addition to being complete, our feedback should also be balanced…. With praises. We need to give credit where it is due and by accentuating the positive, we increase confidence and trust, and demonstrate our support & encouragement for better results.

Allow me to demonstrate these principles of giving feedback. My good friend Carolyn here has kindly agreed to help me with this role play. Carolyn is tasked with the project of our special Christmas event, a table topics workshop.We are now in the Exco meeting talking about the progress of this event.

Me: Carolyn, for our December Christmas Table Topics Workshop, we have 5 mini presentations that needed good speakers to deliver them. I see that you have taken the effort to contact various speakers for these presentations, and you have successfully secured them on that date. Well done, we have now successfully finalized the program. I am totally impressed with you speed and efficiency.

Carolyn: Thank You. I am happy we finalized the program as well.

Me: On the other aspect of the events, such as the venue, the food and the equipment that we need for this workshop, you have yet to secure them. As such, we are unable to start our publicity for this event because we have not finalized the venue. Carolyn, this is part of your responsibility as well. Could you share the challenges you faced and suggest some solution to this problem?

Carolyn: My apologies, I do not have enough time to look into these aspects yet, and it would be good if I can get someone to help me.

Me: No apologies needed Carolyn, we all know you have put in a lot of hours into this event already, and it is understandable that there would be things that are still not done and you needed help. Let’s list down some action plans with appropriate deadline in order to complete this task.. And why don’t we ask another Exco member to help you with this as well? Do you think it would work?

Carolyn: Thank you for being so understanding. We can certainly set out the action plans and with additional help, I am sure I can complete them in no time.

Me: That’s great! Let’s get on with it then

(Thank you Carolyn, for the role play)

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have demonstrated 2 scenarios of providing feedback using the STAR approach by explaining the situation/task, action and results. In addition, in the first scenario, it is a positive feedback coupled with praises and appropriate recognition. This builds trust and motivation… prepping the scene for the second, not so positive feedback. The key to the second scenario is to put the issue in a most positive and least threatening way, yet not losing any facts. On top of that, I also demonstrated understanding towards Carolyn’s difficulties and encouraged her to provide solutions, thus creating a win win situation for both of us.

So let’s all be a STAR today, and make someone a STAR by providing positive and motivating feedback. So the next time, we can all safely declare that we will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God!

Thank you, TME.

This is an advanced project - Appraise with Praise, that was delivered to a panel of evaluators at an advanced projects meeting. The main comment from 3 evaluators - the role play is too simplistic. It could have been made more realistic by having heated arguments. 

My own take on this - role play's too hard and time consuming to prepare as part of a speech, better to leave it in training workshops instead.