Season’s Greetings

Wishing you a safe and happy holiday season.

Peter West

The advanced evaluation

I gave a pretty good speech (It was on selling a product and I used my photography courses that I teach at Henry’s Cameras as the example. Go see my photo blog at Peter West Photo and online images at my SmugMug site.) at the Mighty Oaks Advanced Toastmaster Club.

At an advanced club the Toastmasters all offer comments on the speech and evaluation.

For my speech I had one of our most experienced Toastmasters who gave me a pretty good evaluation. If anything it might have been a bit too soft on me.

Can’t say the same thing about the other evaluations I got. And, trust me, I am smiling as I type this.

The others found my speech somewhat confusing (The point that I was selling photography lessons completely eluded one or two.) and others thought it should have been more like a speech they would have given. More of this, less of that.

One evaluator said my conversational style didn’t lend itself to the speech.

So when it came to my time to comment on the evaluations I received I said I wasn’t in agreement. I found most of the evaluations didn’t focus on what I did but on what they would have done. Nice. But I’m not them.

I accused them of reacting to my speech (in other words coming from their own story of what I said) as opposed to responding (as in coming from what I actually said).

This comment really got my wife’s shorts in a knot (She’s the better Toastmaster in the family.) and thought I was resisting the process.

I thought about this a lot in the last 12 hours. Was I resisting?

Could be. I’m not known to be universally correct. But if we take the position that what happened last night was perfect in itself and needs no attempt to modify or change anything….then I’m content with the evaluations. I don’t agree with them all but isn’t that the way the world turns?

What we give

 

This speech was given at First Oakville Toastmasters by Marion West, my wife, on the occasion of my 60th birthday. The speech came as a surprise birthday present to me. Rarely has any man been as blessed by the love of such a woman.

- Peter West, the morning of Dec. 5, 2008

 

James A. Froude said it best – “You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one”

This quote speaks to the man I am toasting this evening who wasted no time hammering and forging his character.

He was born this very day to Leo Wernanin and Ethel Moore.

From his overbearing father, who surely meant well because he did love his son, he learned to vigorously challenge and question authority. This lesson would serve as a double-edge sword throughout his entire life.

From his mother, he learned the love of reading and as a boy was reading well passed his tender years. He became an insatiable reader and from the thousand of pages he consumed he unlocked the key to his learning.

Leo and Ethel had big career plans for their only child – doctor, lawyer, engineer. He was certainly bright enough.

But these professions while honourable meant regularly attending and finishing the traditional educational model. This was not to be his path. The boy who marched to the beat of his own drum found himself out of school at 16 on the suggestion of his high school principal. He was thrilled. His parents were mortified.

He eventually did return to the educational institute on his own terms and completed a 3 year public relations course in 2. It was his love of reading and writing that propelled him to land a job as a newspaper reporter and photographer – a career path for which he was self-taught.

From there he moved to public relations back to writing and on to editing becoming the editor of a national trade magazine. His career was not fluid. There were respites between some of those professions created by him because bosses he challenged simply felt it easier to send him on his way. He has always lived by Socrates’ adage that the unexamined life is not worth living and after some very deep soul searching, he put down the sword and learned to align with authority while still maintaining his character.

But it is not how he made a living for which he should be proud but rather the spirit of his giving. Many people don’t know that he spends countless hours giving of his time. The unemployed, the broken-hearted and even the arrested seek out his counsel. He listens attentively being ever so careful to separate the person from the behaviour. He has an innate ability to help those he coaches to just notice the chatter in their head that may have lead to their choices. Gently and sometime not, he helps them to move forward based on what is happening in the moment and on to the solutions they arrive at themselves.

It is today on this his sixtieth birthday, I say to him – be elated with your life and take heed the words of Sir Winston Churchill – We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.

Would you please rise, charge your glasses and toast my husband, Peter Lee West.

Constitutional Crisis – Nonsense – Democracy

People (including our current prime minister) think the current challenge to the Liberal government is undemocratic shows either how little some politicians know about how democratic government actually works or else believe that telling the big lie still works.

What is happening to our government in Canada is both democratic and exciting.

The government of the day has failed to carry out the wishes of the majority of sitting members and they are about to pay for their inability to lead.

For Toastmasters (especially those in First Oakville) this is a great lesson in how to lead and how democratic process works at the national and club level. It’s all the same thing. It’s about learning how to play nice with each other in the sandbox. These are lessons that some (not me unfortunately) learned in kindergarten.

 

Here’s a list of my blog sites. Please visit them all:

• http://peterwest.wordpress.com (Public Relations)
• http://www.peterwestphoto.com (Photography)
• www.peterwest.ca (Coaching)
• http://thetoastmaster.wordpress.com (Toastmasters
• http://canadaphototours.wordpress.com (Photo Tours)
• http://thehappenblog.wordpress.com (The HAPPEN Blog)

Your first 10 speeches

I found a fabulous resource for new Toastmasters at Ratana Ong’s blog. Here you will find the objectives for all 10 basic speeches and videos from Toastmasters doing each speech.

Have fun.