My 3rd Speech!

My 3rd speech was entitled, “6 Thinking Hats, by Edward de Bono”.

I started by explaining why de Bono came up with the 6 Thinking Hats (6TH). People today are very used to looking at things or situations from their own points of view only. By applying the 6TH, we can start looking at things from different perspectives and hence have clearer pictures of events and situations.

The 6TH are:

1. White (A Blank Page): To record facts;

2. Black (A Judicial Robe): Criticisms;

3. Yellow (The Sun): Positive comments;

4. Red (Fire): Emotional language, feelings, etc;

5. Green (A Plant): Creative ideas;

6. Blue (The Sky): Looking at the Big picture.

I proceeded to give an example of a scene: of a teacher trying to teach while some students are actually trying to talk to her at the same time. How the 6TH can be applied to look at this situation can be:

1. White (Facts): Noisy class

2. Black (Criticism): Time is wasted, no learning done

3. Yellow (Positive): Everyone has a chance to speak / share their thoughts

4. Red (Feelings): The teacher feels frustrated

5. Green (Creativity): Teacher may want to incorporate 2 way lessons into her future classes

6. Blue (Big Picture): Students understand that their learning will be more effective if people take turns to talk.

I then continued to share how the 6TH can be used by the audience in a Problem Solving meeting in the office….

Overall response was: It was a good summary and many felt that it was a simple and quick process to learn which may in time be beneficial to them…..

My 2nd Speech!

Two weeks after my first speech, I decided to go for my second. The objective was to organise my speech into an Introduction, Body and Conclusion, and to have proper illustrations for the Body and to have proper transitions between the various parts.

Entitled, “Why KYC is important to the bank?”

I started by explaining what Know Your Customer (KYC) is. Basically, it is the exercise of Knowing Your Customer, by obtaining sufficient information about the customer in order to enable the Bank to form a profile of the customer. Information required include:

Name, IC number, Address, Occupation, Date of Birth, Nationality, etc. Then, proper documentation is taken to verify the authencity of the information.

I also mentioned that many people think that KYC is just to fulfil a regulatory requirement, and that only the compliance function should be involved. Yes and No, I said. It is that…. and more. The following are 3 reasons why KYC is important to the Bank.

1. It sells more products. When you know your customer, you can actually cross sell more products that the customer might need. Say you have a youngster wanting to open a current account. By obtaining the information, you find out that he is also a student, and may be short on some finances. You can actually propose to sell a study loan to him. Without that information, you would have lost out a sales opportunity.

2. It prevents you from potential lawsuits. Say an elderly lady customer walks in and wants to purchase a Unit Trust (UT) product with all her savings. You may be tempted to sell the product. Say the customer does not have the right risk profile for UT  you may have unknowingly sold the product to her. If she lost her savings, she may one day turn back to sue you for not explaining the risks to her.

3. It prevents the Bank from facilitating fraudulent transactions. Say a noodle seller customer of your bank comes into send a Telegraphic Transfer (TT) of RM5 million to Brazil. If you did not have his usual transaction patterns recorded in your system, you may allow the transaction through, even though the transaction does not meet the profile of the customer, and may be considered highly suspicious.

In conclusion, with the above 3 examples, you can see why KYC is important to all functions of the bank, and not exclusively a compliance function.

That’s all, thank you…. till we meet again…. 

My 1st Speech!

My 1st ToastMaster speech from the Communications manual was the Ice Breaker, where I was supposed to tell the club about myself. I entitled it, “From Silence to Sound”.

It was a 4-6 minute speech and it went with the following structure:

Intro:

I was a quiet boy, an introvert and seldom mixed with people till I went to 2ndary school.

Body:

Secondary school: Interact Club President, so had many opportunities to speak in public… giving speeches and explaining what the club was about, etc

College: Christian Fellowship Preseident, also gave me opportunities to interact with people and built many meaning ful relationships, making friends, etc

1st Job at an audit firm: Had to deal with accountants, finance directors, etc, so had chances to build self confidence

2nd Job at a Foreign Bank: Had opportunities to conduct training and awareness briefings, etc….

Current Job in a larger Foreign Bank: Have ample chances and opportunities to train and teach, and also to share best practices to many many people….

and also have the opportunity to join the current ToastMasters club that I am in now…

Conclusion:

My journey from a quiet, unassuming person to one who loves to talk!

Note: The actual speech was more animated that the structure, but you get the idea (grin!) 

I joined Toastmasters International!

I was so happy to hear that there was a toastmasters club in the office I am working for!

I immediately joined their meetings. It was fun!

There are role players for every meeting:

1. Toastmaster of the Evening: Host for the meeting;

2. Ah Counter: Someone whom counts all speech crutches made during the meeting;

3. Timekeeper: One whom ensures that the meeting runs according to the time set;

4. Table Topics Master: One whom gives out topics for imprompto speeches of 2 minutes each;

5. Grammarian: One whom introduces the Word of the Day, and whom looks out for wrong usage of words, sentence structures, etc;

6. General Evaluator: One whom evaluates how the whole meeting wnet;

7. Speech Evaluators: Those whom evaluate those that gave prepared speeches;

8. Table topics evaluator: One whom evaluates all the table topics speakers;

9. Assignment Speakers: Those whom will present speeches from Toastmaster (TM) Manuals;

10. Table topic speakers: Those whom will share impormpto speeches given by the Table Topics Master;

Ummm… I may have missed one or two roles, but you get the point.

The meeting is very orderly, and during my first meeting, I just sat and listened. I could not wait to participate…. but that’s another story for another day.

The meeting ended with a short “makan” session, sponsored by the office (so nice).

Till the next post… happy speaking!

Greetings to my Brand New blog!

Is it this simple to start a new blog?

It has been so long since I last wrote on a blog…. my old one seems to have died down…. lost the will to write, maybe?

Anyway, upon encouragement to start writing again….. I decided to try again, this time with the aim to be able to share one of my passions to the online world……talking! Or speaking… to be precise!

This will be all for my maiden post… as I try to learn to add stuff like pictures, etc into the page….. till then…. take care and welcome….. to the SPEAKERS’ CORNER….. where we can all speak…. in writing, of course!