One of my colleagues at work emailed me Bill Gates’ Harvard commencement speech. I thought it was a great speech with an important message for all of us:”I’ve been waiting more than 30 years to say this: “Dad, I always told you I’d come back and get my degree.” I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I’ll be changing my job next year … and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume.

I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. For my part, I’m just happy that the Crimson has called me “Harvard’s most successful dropout.” I guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special class … I did the best of everyone who failed”…………………..>> click here for the full text of the speech

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Here is a fascinating article from Forbes.

Secrets Of The Self-Made 2007

Their secrets, that is. We played 20 questions with 21 self-made members of the Forbes 400. Result: an exclusive, introspective and often playful peek into their best days, worst qualities, guiltiest pleasures and hardest lessons (among other things). You can search the list two ways: Read each titan’s responses to all 20 questions, or peruse the entire group’s answers to each of the 10 most thought-provoking ones.

Click here to see the slideshow

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The secret billionaire giveaway

Wed Sep 19, 9:02 AM

By Paul Gallagher

LONDON (Reuters) - He wears a $15 watch, flies economy class and does not own a house or car. For years few guessed that Chuck Feeney was one of the world’s biggest philanthropists, secretly giving away his billionaire fortune.

Born in New Jersey during the Depression to a blue-collar Irish-American family, Feeney co-founded Duty Free Shoppers (DFS), the world’s largest duty-free retail chain. He liked making money but not having it, and gave it away for years in strict secrecy.

Journalist Conor O’Clery’s new book “The Billionaire Who Wasn’t: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune” (Public Affairs $26.95), reveals that Feeney may be destined to go down in history as one of the greatest American philanthropists.

More>> Yahoo/Reuters

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Here’s an interesting article from Forbes.com:

Podium Tactics From 28 Public-Speaking Pros
Few people are natural raconteurs. The rest of us should follow these tips.

By Forbes.com staff

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The Chambers 20th Century Dictionary describes ‘motive’ as:

“…a consideration or emotion that excites to action .”

There are three types of motivation:
Coercive Motivation, Inhibitive Motivation and Constructive Motivation.

Coercive Motivation:  The use of either physical, psychological or moral force to control people’s actions.

The key phrase in coercive motivation is “I have to, or else……” - “I had to do this or else I would cause a commotion”.  Wherever there are “have to’s “ in your organization, or in any aspect of your life, our sub-conscious switches our energies to avoid it.  We do this by pushing back. This is also what strict discipline causes – push back.

Inhibitive Motivation:  A reduction in performance from the presence of other information that gets in the way.

The key phrase in inhibitive motivation is “I can’t or else……”. It is motivation through fear, which causes inflexibility.  Instead of push-back, people rigidly refuse to deviate from their set patterns.

Constructive Motivation:  A positive free-flowing drive based on benefits.

Constructive motivation is all about freedom – freedom of choice.  Human beings operate from free will.  We need to encourage people to shift from “I have to”, to “I choose to…”, “I want to………”, “I love to…………” and it’s my idea…….”.

How to motivate:

-    Ask questions that are directive and narrative that draw out strengths and desires to establish the “I choose to……..”, “I want to……”, “I love to. …” mentality.

-    Work from a place of award rather than punishment.

-    Create ambivalence – ambivalence takes the form of a conflict between two courses of action, each of which has perceived benefits and costs attached to it.  Many clients have never had the opportunity of expressing their confusion over issues.  When ambivalence is brought into the conversation, you feel heard.

Enjoy motivating – be powerful.

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Toastmasters uses mentoring to help newer members to gain insight into the Toastmasters programme and also help seasoned members to keep up with the great progress they make in their communication and leadership endeavors.

The workshop last Thursday was conducted by Vice President of Education - Utpal Banerjee. This was a very successful workshop in that it allowed everyone attending to provide their input into what they expected from their mentors as well as well as how they expected to participate as a protege. This workshop set the stage for more workshops to come.

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I had the good fortune to attend the Division D Officer Training and Workshops. Taking away the precious time from a beautiful Saturday morning with my family is always a difficult choice but today’s workshop was definitely worth the time. It was wonderfully organized and smoothly run. Congratulations to Kevin and his totally dedicated team for a fabulously run event. Axel worked tirelessly as usual and Marie and Ruth covered the registration desks without a hitch or the usual lineups you experience at these events.

I attended two workshops - the first one was conducted by Rashpal. Her workshop was about Motivating Action Within Your Team. Rashpal runs her own coaching and consulting company PMPY: Powerful Mind Powerful You - a coaching and consulting company that provides educational programs aimed at accelerating professional and personal development skills in the service of organizational growth.

Rashpal captivated the audience with her poise and constantly kept the audience thinking and participating. Click here for the content of Rashpal’s handout.

The other workshop was conducted by Sahil Dhingra and Kevin Ong. They kept the audience at a peak of energy and participation. Both workshops were excellent and made me proud to be a part of Markham Sweet Talkers.

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How does participating in a club contest help you to improve your public speaking skills? Completing the regular speech manuals do help to transform you from being an unsure, hesitant and insecure speaker into a confident mature and a very good speaker. So – do you stop challenging yourself when you become a CTM, ATM, AC, or a “good” speaker?
What do you gain from participating in a club contest?

A) Confidence B) Challenge C) Overcoming Obstacles C) Winning D) All of the above.

The answer is (D) all of the above.

You may be a good speaker but participating in a speech contest will help to transform you from being just a good speaker to becoming a great speaker.

CONFIDENCE

Just submitting your name is the first step in gaining the confidence to participate in a contest. I remember the first year I joined Markham Sweet Talkers. I was intimidated but very admiring of the participants in the club contest.

CHALLENGE

A year down the road I took the challenge myself and submitted my name for the humorous speech contest. Just the intent of participation got my adrenalin flowing and something amazing happened – as I prepared harder and harder for the contest my nervousness turned into excitement!

OVERCOMING OBSTACLES

In participating in the contest I had overcome the first obstacle in becoming a good speaker. I had gained enough trust in myself to go out there and do my very best. I even surprised myself - not only did I do my best - I had gone way beyond my own expectations - the judges had decided that I should represent the club in the Area Contest!

WINNING

When you participate in a contest – do you always win? Yes – each and every time. Representing our club was a new challenge for me - all over again. I was to perform in front of a slightly larger audience with other speakers who were winners of their respective club contests. Participating in the Area Contest was pulse throbbing with suspense and anticipation. As I stood in front of a packed audience my nervousness was contained in excitement. By the end of the evening I had delivered my personal best in any vernacular situation I had ever been in. It was not enough to win a place in the top three but it set standards for me far beyond any standards I would have set for myself had I not allowed myself the chance to participate. In my mind I was a winner!

The next time we have a club contest you don’t need to challenge anyone but yourself to overcome any hesitation or obstacles in your way to becoming a winner. Take the opportunity to transform yourself from being a good speaker to becoming a great speaker

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Todays meeting was especially enjoyable. It was my first meeting as President of the club and I had the privilege and honor to present Immediate Past President - Cheryl Ballard with her much deserved Advanced Communicator Bronze (ACB) award.

On a day when the theme of our meeting was appropriately - Success - we were extremely proud to acclaim that one of our esteemed members and Sgt. at Arms - Tessa Benn-Ireland was appointed by Attorney General Michael Bryant as Justice of the Peace.

Justice of the Peace Tessa Benn-Ireland was most recently head of the Children’s Department at the Milliken Mills Community Branch of the Markham Public Libraries. She served as a trustee with the York Region District School Board for nine years. She was a governor of Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology. She has been a member of the board of directors of the United Way of York Region and was on the board of the Markham Historical Museum. Justice of the Peace Benn-Ireland was also president of the Markham African Caribbean Association. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Toronto. Associate Chief Justice/Coordinator of Justices of the Peace Donald A. Ebbs has assigned Justice of the Peace Benn-Ireland to Newmarket in the Central East region.

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