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SPEAKERS DIGEST CSF, Club No. 2009282 November-2012

1

After becoming a TM and participating in few CSF

meetings I felt how I have missed this great

organization that provides a platform and an ideal

friendly atmosphere to shape ones outlook towards

every aspect of life. Though there may be several

changes in a person’s mental make-up over the

period, the greatest of them all one can experience

is ‘courage and self- confidence’, to face the world.

When self-doubt rules the mind, to take simple

steps forward would be a greatest challenge, it is

the achievement of others that shows us the light

that it is possible and this is our world too to chase

our dreams and make our ideas turn into a reality.

CSF is such a place where ideas shape reality. And

we are all witness to this great phenomenon, week

after week seeing our fellow TMs break all barriers

to reach their pinnacle.

To achieve this state of mind and action there are

three essential things required: a) Sādhanā b)

Abhyāsa and c) Kriyā (borrowed these words from

Sanskrit). What do these words mean and how

does it impact a person’s life if practiced?

Simply said Sādhanā means in pursuit of a goal or

achieving something. How to achieve a goal and

what is the critical action that makes it possible?

The answer is: Abhyāsa and Kriyā!

Abhyāsa and Kriyā allow a person to shape a

person’s ideas and goals and turn them in to reality.

This brings us to understand what Abhyāsa and

Kriyā are!

Abhyāsa is repeated practice performed with

observation and reflection. We all know ‘practice

makes a man perfect’ but Abhyāsa stresses on

observation and reflection while practicing and this

shapes us towards reaching perfection.

Kriyā simply means action with perfect execution.

We all know how important execution is and without

that all actions may fall flat. As John Doerr (a

venture capitalist who supported and funded Google

when none of us knew what Google is) said ‘Ideas are easy, execution is everything and great teams win’.

Sādhanā, Abhyāsa and Kriyā are vital in our life and

as I can see, this has been well implemented in the

journey of CSF, where we have been witnessing the

growth in the last one year. After the idea has taken

shape for a new TM forum every member of the

successive management team in CSF has raised

the bar in the last one year and exemplified how

great teams should work. Finally the team’s

execution speaks it all and I am sure the day is not

very far that we will be heard at international level.

Like every TM in CSF, I am equally excited to know

and welcome another great CSF management team

to lead us to greater heights in the near future.

TM Ramesh K TM Ramesh Thandav

2

President’s Desk

As always, it gives me immense pleasure to

reach you all through this column. We join

Toastmasters to improve our communication

and leadership skills. But over a period of time

we realize toastmasters is more than that. The

recent visit to Kochi proves this more than

anything else. Our members brought laurels to

the club. It was for the first time a member

from CSF won the 1st runner up at the District

Level Evaluation Contest and it was done in

style by our very own founder president TM

Arna Chugani and she also received the Golden

Gavel award for our club for the year 2011-

2012. Our DTM Saro Velrajan received the best

Division Governor in District 82 award. Our

DTM Sastharam led his team and created

history at Reverberations 2012 and also

managed 187 registrations in less than 24

hours for Ovation 2013. We not only received

awards but also appreciation for energy and

enthusiasm shown by our members.

I strongly believe any member can achieve

anything if good exposure is given and that

responsibility lies in the hands of the leaders.

As we all know Chennai Speakers Forum

officers election is coming up, I request you all

to take part in the same and take the club to

the next level. By doing so, you are not only

taking the club to the next level but in the

process you will also take

yourself one step higher. By being part of the

executive committee one will get great

exposure. The Interesting part of toastmasters

is that the more you give, the more you get.

They say “The mediocre teacher tells, the good

teacher explains, the superior teacher

demonstrates, the great teacher inspires.” Here

in Toastmasters, you can

become the great teacher by taking up

leadership roles. So I request you all to tap the

leadership skills buried in you.

I thank all the members of the club for taking

the club to greater heights.

Look forward to a fantabulous farewell month.

Wishing you all Godspeed!

TM Pravin Mani

3

It was the year 2010; I was serving as the

President of Chennai Toastmasters Club. A

guest in his mid-20s approached me at the end

of the meeting and asked, “Sir! I’m completely

impressed by the meeting. Can I complete the

entire course in just 1 year? I’m very busy with

lot of other activities and I want to complete this

course soon”.

He is not an exception. Very recently, I was

approached by a young toastmaster who said

“Sir! I am doing my under graduation now and I

have lots of spare time. I want to complete my

DTM in the next two years”.

I have seen several toastmasters who want to

complete their speaking projects, soon. Public

Speaking and Leadership are skills that are

developed by practicing, participating and

performing. There are absolutely NO

SHORTCUTS. If there is one magic pill that you

can swallow before going to the bed and wake

up as a competent speaker the next day

morning, everybody will be a competent

speaker today.

So, how can you get the maximum out of the

toastmasters program? This article describes a

3R technique that you can use to become a

successful toastmaster. The fullest benefit of

toastmasters program can be achieved only

when you follow the 3Rs:

1. Regular Being regular is the most important trait of a

successful toastmaster. What happens to an

athlete, does not exercise regularly attend

practice sessions regularly? Mastering the art

of public speaking is very similar to sports – it

requires regular practice. What better platform

can you get to regularly practice your skills than

a toastmasters club?

Regularly attend club meetings

Regularly take a diverse set of roles in the club meeting

Regularly deliver speeches in your club and in other clubs

Regularly participate in contests and benchmark your performance

Regularly take leadership roles in your club and outside your clubs

SPEAKERS DIGEST

4

2. Research

Performing adequate research is important for

any assignment that you do – not just in

toastmasters. Charles E. Jones, a famous

author said "Five years from now you'll be the

same person you are today except for the

books you read and the people you meet”. It is

very true. As a toastmaster, we need to develop

habits of reading books, reading newspapers,

attending educational programs, attending

contests and continuously learning new things

by research. Research helps us to discover

new ways of doing things, it helps us to

constantly innovate and discover a BETTER

YOU!

3. Rehearse

Our District 82 Champions TM Alexandar Babu,

and TM Guruprasad delivered a 7 minutes

humorous speech to win the prestigious 1st and

3rd positions respectively in Reverberations

2012. Can you imagine how many times they

would’ve rehearsed before their most

memorable performance at the District? They

would’ve rehearsed at least a 50 times for

months together, before their final performance

at the district. If great champions have to

rehearse for at least 50 times before their

performance, how many times should we

rehearse before giving our speech at the club?

A successful toastmaster rehearses multiple

times before they perform in toastmasters.

A chicken that pops out from an egg is special,

not because of the 1 minute that it spent

breaking the shell, but because of the several

1000 minutes that it spent in hatching.

Fellow toastmasters, let us take the following

resolution to become a successful

communicator and a leader.

I’m a toastmaster…

I participate in meetings, but don’t precipitate

I’m always prepared, so I’m not afraid

I help others to perform, so that their skills

can reform

I give everyone a pat, that’s the best way to

get them to act

I’m a toastmaster …

I remain positive, even if my blood group is

negative

I treat everyone fair, they being a guest or a

DTM doesn’t matter

I’m ready to serve the club, because my heart

says so with every single lub-tub

I’ll follow the rules, as it helps the club to

reach its goals.

I’m a toastmaster!!!

By

DTM Saro Velrajan

5

whole year is over. Wishes fulfilled. Dreams shattered. Promises kept. Resolutions broken!

Yet another new year is here. New year. New beginnings...

Here are my Toastmaster resolutions for 2013.

1. To attend Toastmaster meetings regularly. (Well, this one's the absolute usual..er essential!!)

2. To take every prepared speech and role seriously and look-out for the learning it is supposed to

bring.

3. To give my fullest effort, to the preparation and performance every role and prepared speech.

4. To volunteer for table-topics sessions when needed.

5. To watch-out for fellow Toastmasters, and help them in their journey of self-development, with

useful and encouraging feedback.

6. To spread the Toastmaster spirit of personal-leadership, learning and sharing, beyond the

portals of Toastmaster meeting.

7. To always be on the look-out for opportunities for learning.

8. To improve personal relationships and professional competencies.

9. To make the way I live my life, and not just my spoken words, do the talking for the world to

hear.

10. To listen to and trust the gentle hopes that love, faith and life whisper.

11. Now this is one set of resolutions I hope not to break :-)

A toast to all the Toastmasters out there!

Wish you a Happy New Year!

ATM Pon G Nithya

SPEAKERS DIGEST

6

Few things taste as good as

freedom. Success is one of them.

Joining Toastmasters, regularly

attending meetings, actively

participating in contest, taking the

CC manual seriously and giving

speeches and practicing in front of

mirror till you are satisfied...wow

where these all take us..

This is the recipe for being a master

communicator.

Success is never a hit or miss!

There is a recipe for success. There is always

a recipe for success.

I am a result oriented person like everyone

and when I joined Toastmasters, I asked a

fellow 3-yr- toastmaster, how long does it take

to become good in communication skills and

the answer I got was 1 year. He said, “attend

the club regularly and in one year you will be a

good speaker. “

That was the best answer I could have

received. I had a concrete answer that I could

trust. He said that with such conviction that it

looked like he was giving a guarantee and I

completely bought it. My intuition said, yes..it

is true and i decided to give it a shot and stick

with it for one year and see .

I have the habit of evaluating my

progress. Initially it was “bad to

okay” and soon it became “okay”

and suddenly one day I could give a

“fair” to it.

I felt okay with the “okay” and “fair”

feels good and just thinking about

how “good” will feel makes me feel

too good.

Don’t wish to be a good speaker just

desire to be a good speaker..don’t

just desire to be a good speaker but

decide to be a good speaker. Once

you decide, follow this recipe and

success is a sure shot.

SPEAKERS DIGEST

Wi sh?

Desire?

7

How often have you heard the importance of

non-verbal cues in your speech? The most often

quoted research says that for any speech or

conversation or discussion, the meaning of the

message is carried more by the voice and the

body language than by the actual spoken words.

Your words 7%

Your tone of voice 38%

Your body language 55%.

For anyone who has been part of any

communication group, this may not be news.

That your body language and vocal variety is

much more important than the content of your

speech is a widely accepted and repeated

mantra. But the numbers are fascinating, almost

unbelievable; I wondered why words carried

only 7% while we spend more than 70 % of the

time writing those words for the speech. Is that

even possible?

How can someone explain such disparity?

Though I agree that I’m much more impressed

by Obama’s enthusiastic animated speech than

Manmohan Singh’s dull recitation, I had difficulty

in agreeing to the sheer insignificance assigned

to words in a speech.

The content may not be the king when it comes

to a speech, but it is no worse than the soldier

who faces the enemies up front with courage.

What was this research that gave such accurate

numbers? How did they measure this? Thanks

to the internet, my research was not as

cumbersome as the research under question.

Who did this research? Albert Mehrabian came up with this research in the

late ‘60s, but there are few important points to

note before confirming the direct implication of

his research to a speech.

THE STUDIES

Mehrabian and his colleagues were seeking to

understand the relative impact of facial

expressions and spoken words.

Study 1

In Mehrabian and Wiener, (1967), subjects

listened to nine recorded words,

Three conveying liking (honey, dear and

thanks)

Three conveying neutrality (maybe, really

and oh)

Three conveying disliking (don’t, brute and

terrible).

Non Verbal Cues are not Important

A new thought on effective communication…. by Nijil Chandran

SPEAKERS DIGEST

8

The words were spoken with different tonalities

and subjects were asked to guess the emotions

behind the words as spoken. The experiment

finding was that tone carried more meaning than

the individual words themselves.

Study 2

In Mehrabian and Ferris (1967), subjects were

asked to listen to a recording of a female saying

the single word 'maybe' in three tones of voice

to convey liking, neutrality and disliking.

The subjects were then shown photos of female

faces with the same three emotions and were

asked to guess the emotions in the recorded

voices, the photos and both in combination.

The photos got more accurate responses than

the voice, by a ratio of 3:2.

They cautiously note:

These findings regarding the relative

contribution of the tonal component of a verbal

message can be safely extended only to

communication situations in which no additional

information about the communicator-addressee

relationship is available.

Let us analyze his experiments with a

speech in mind?

1) Mehrabian arrived at the ratio 7:38:55 through

two independent experiments.

2) Mehrabian used only words, not a speech,

not even a complete sentence for conducting

this experiment.

Can combing results of two complex

experiments on human behavior be sufficient to

arrive at such a conclusion? Mehrabian’s

disclaimers are proof enough to confirm that we

cannot draw an accurate parallel from his

research to any meaningful discussion between

two human beings. If that is not enough, the

research was done only using words not

complete meaningful sentences.

Of course, there is no denying the importance of

voice and body language in any communication

situation. They are as important as the words.

But for a complete speech, a ratio of 33:33:34

makes much more sense than Mehrabian’s

7:38:55. Words cannot stand alone all the time,

Mehrabian's research in itself is a perfect

testimony to this fact. His research was probably

tweaked by innovative individuals to attain their

own goals. The more people accepted the

misinterpretation of his theory, the more people

joined the bandwagon of 7:38:55. With time, his

theory developed a credibility that will be very

hard to break.

All this reminds of a Siddhuism, “Statistics are

like miniskirts, they reveal more than what they

hide.”After all Obama owes as much as to his

catch phrase “Yes we can” to all the emotions

he showed while making that historic speech.

The title may be slightly misleading, but I know

you wouldn't read if not for such controversial

title. It is not too far away from the central idea

of this article; although we can ill afford to

neglect non-verbal cues, they are not as

important as you thought them to be.

SPEAKERS DIGEST

9

TOASTMASTER’S RESOLUTION –

MY TAKE ON IT

TM Karthikeyan Balasubramanian

We’ve come to that phase of the year where good moments alone are remembered and unpleasant

incidents are erased off from our memories considering them as bad dreams. Its time to take up

promises, be it NEW or OLD, after all we need to keep up our promises and live up to it.

At this juncture, I would like to pull in an incident that happened couple of years ago between two

toastmasters. The topic was about RESOLUTION FOR THE NEW YEAR 2009. It was on that

Sunday evening after Chennai ToastMaster Club’s last meeting for the year 2008, myself and

another toastmaster cum good

friend of mine were chatting for

long time. Our conversation

extended upto 9 pm and we

discussed about many issues

before finally touching on the

topic of New Year Resolution.

Both of us took the same

promise and that is, to attend all

meetings of Chennai TM Club in

the year 2009.

Did we keep up our promise, eventually?

NO. Both of us failed to live up to our promise, however, I did some justice though. My friend had to

leave Chennai for pursuing his masters abroad. While, Year 2009 happened to be the best year in

my calendar as I bagged the Best Speaker Ribbon for 7 times (3 of which coming from TM clubs in

Bahrain), Best Evaluator Ribbon for 15 times (8 of which coming from TM clubs in Bahrain) and

striking my maiden Best Table Topic Speaker Ribbon from Manama TM Club (the first and oldest

club in the Pearl Island).

SPEAKERS DIGEST

10

On the whole, I had attended 85 Toastmaster Meetings and 1 District Conference Meet in Bahrain.

12 out of 85 meetings were attended in Bahrain TM Clubs.

Attended 44 out of 48 meetings of the Chennai TM Club.

Attended 27 meetings of TM Clubs situated in different parts of Chennai and,

Participated in 2 Demo TM Meetings during the year.

It was a magnificent year for me, as I had ribbons pouring in.

However, I am still finding it really tough to revive the same spirit in me as I took a long break in the

year 2010 from TM activities.

Coming back to the topic though, I’ve my stand clear on whether to or not to take resolution this

year. Without giving any work to my mind, my clear reply is NO as I’ve decided to walk in the path of

another good friend of mine since; I am inspired of his MANTRA and desiring to adopt the same. It’s

a tough challenge though, however, on Day 1, 2013 the adopted MANTRA will be put into action.

WHAT IS THAT MANTRA?

WHY I CALL IT A TOUGH CHALLENGE?

HOW THE MANTRA INSPIRED ME?

Answers to all these will be voiced out in Jan 2013 Newsletter Issue.

I take this opportunity to wish all my friends from the Toastmasters family a very Happy,

Prosperous, Joyous and a Successful New Year 2013.

SPEAKERS DIGEST

11

TM Ramesh Thandav Life will be banal if it is without happenings; the

charm of life is change. Incidentally, most of us

dread the very word change and find comfort in

our own shell. Life gives numerous occasions to

everyone to embrace change and question the

statuesque. One such occasion is New Year

and New Year’s Resolution.

Let us try to understand what Resolution means

and trace its historical significance. Resolution is

derived from the word ‘resolve’ means breaking

into parts, reducing things into simpler forms,

and holding it firmly. A simple fact is if we want

to achieve something, a) we should believe in it

b) hold it firmly and practice it.

Historically speaking, resolutions during

important occasions and events are quite

prevalent from ancient civilizations especially

from Babylonians, Romans and Medieval

period.

Many a time resolutions are not necessarily a

life changing effort. It might come from a simple

reasoning and change the way things are and

this change may be something to do with a

person’s life or something that impacts the well

being of the society.

A study by Richard Wiseman shows that 88% of

the people who make New Year resolutions fail

even though 52% of them were confident that

they will succeed. It is said, men achieved 22%

more when they get into goal setting. This

basically helps to form small measurable goals

like indulge in sweets once a week rather than

stop eating sweets, lose weight by one pound a

week rather than lose weight. Women appear to

increase their success rate by 10% when they

share their goals with their friends.

Why is this astounding failure percentage

reported? Lets us examine what causes this.

Most important of all is one should believe that

resolutions are for us to make our life better. It

creates a basic conviction to pursue it against all

odds. The best way to begin is to believe that ‘I

hold the power than any other outside influence’,

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Always bear in

mind that your own resolution to succeed is

more important than any one thing.”

Did you know that before being elected the 16th

President of the United States of America, he

lost 8 elections? How many of us would lose 8

elections and keep going? Many of us would

quit at the first sign of adversity. But Lincoln had

a “resolution” to succeed.

I found four proven ways to succeed in

achieving resolutions: a) Keep it simple b) Keep

it realistic c) Don’t let the set back discourage d)

Make it accountable.

SPEAKERS DIGEST

12

Keeping it simple: To say I want to exercise this

year is bit vague and not specific, instead to say

it simply that I am going to exercise 30 minutes

three days in a week. By making it simple will

help us clearly see and follow what we are

accomplishing and make course correction if

necessary.

Keep it realistic: A goal that is realistic will be a

good partner in our endeavour. Setting

unattainable goals will lead us to failure. A

realistic goal can be a good motivator.

Don’t let the set back discourage: The idea is to

progress on the goal we want to achieve. In the

event of failing on some occasion we should

avoid being hard on oneself. Consider it as a

slight set back and try to come back on track.

Let’s not get discouraged.

Make it accountable: It is a good idea to have

partners in goals. Husband and wife can jointly

have some goals or find a friend with whom one

can have goals together. This will bring in some

sense of accountability. End of it all it brings in

lot of fun and also a sense of fulfillment in one’s

life.

SPEAKERS DIGEST

13

Deepavali Celebrations at CSF

SPEAKERS DIGEST

President

VP-Education

VP-Membership

VP-Public Relations

Secretary

Treasurer

Sergeant at Arms

: Pravin Mani

: Vivekanandan B

: Nijil Chandran

: Kiran Sarma

: Ram Kumar

: Ramesh Karunakaran

: Padma Prabha V

Meets every Sunday

10am to 12pm

Ruby Hall, Presidency Club,

Egmore, Chennai, India

www.chennaispeakersforum.com

Chennai Speakers Forum Editorial Team

Ramesh Thandav

K Ramesh

Office Bearers

Please write your feedback to our VP-PR: kiransarma88@gmail.com