Level 1 Evaluation and feedback, again

This is my 7th time I do the Level 1 and it is the first when I really was a bit annoyed. I gave a great speech, a personal story that gripped and held the audience, online, and then I was told "it was wonderful, took us in, held us all along, but... I should have better pronunciation."

Does really someone can think that at age 85 I can change my pronunciation?

In any of the four languages I speak, I have decided a while ago, to learn from now on things I enjoy, and not to worry about language. Grammar, syntax, exceptions. Of course, nor my pronunciation. I tried to speak better English, when I arrived to London ten years ago, and did learn some of the exceptions, when one has to say "ai" instead of "I like it", and similar strange things. In fact, I got disgusted of French and English grammar, when I learned a rule, then I was told, "there is a rule and there are then the exceptions".

Finally, there were three words which made my evaluator wonder for a while, but he could not tell me what. And at the same meeting, a guest Toastmaster from India, Ah-counter, told that I had 22 small pauses and two long pauses. So? That is a cultural thing, I learned, in India clubs, pauses are not welcomed as "power pause" but counted as Ahs or Hms.

So I told Wednesday my evaluator, to look for pronunciation and pauses that can disturb. After the speech, which she loved, about how I used my body language and what I learned, different for the first time from what I told last time (also it was also about body), she told me "no problem at all" to understand my pronunciation and she loved my power pauses. And all the audience learned and my humour too.

So one evaluation - perhaps even today at a meeting soon, and I finished the second project of Level 1 again. The first time, I did not really liked. Well, I still love the project and find it very useful. It just shows that after many years I still have to learn to take better some feedback.

Team Collaboration will be all about body. And how we react to it, well why not how one part of us influences the other? We got our firsts Committee Meetings, and it went well in all three clubs where I am in one. I admired the first two, and conducted the third. A team is forming!

Could use the Agenda from meeting 2, the one in London that worked so well to my own meeting. All the committee members where present! That already it seemed like a gift to me. I hope the path I begun will help me even more to create a cohesive great team!