Embarrassment has a surprisingly short shelf life when everyone is laughing with you. Yesterday, I was Toastmaster at my club meeting, and the theme was “Game for a Laugh.” There were bad jokes, terrible puns and playful introductions, but some of the biggest laughs came from the things that went wrong. Yes, I stumbled over […]
A friend told me a story recently that made me feel incredibly proud. Irene cares for an elderly woman and last week, she explained to Mrs C that she would no longer attend at night because Mrs C’s children had varied the contract. Mrs C heard something entirely different. She heard that her children had […]
Have you ever found yourself in a conversation where things started to feel… tense? It happened to me recently when someone on my team said: “You didn’t send me the login, or I would have been able to do it.” I instinctively replied: “You didn’t ask me for it, or I would have given it. […]
I recently tested my Toastmasters contest speech at a club, eager to see how it landed. After delivering it, the feedback started coming in – some points I expected, others I hadn’t considered. At first, I caught myself instinctively wanting to defend my choices. “But that’s intentional,” I thought. “That’s my style.” Then I stopped. […]
Twenty years or so ago, I walked into a Toastmasters meeting for the first time. I did not know then that the organisation would become one of the most consistent threads in my professional life, through the years I showed up regularly, through the periods I drifted away, through the competitions, the club presidencies, across […]
