On 18th August 2019, I was at
Chong Pang Toastmasters Club as Project Evaluator, my 34th club
visit on the 49th day of the Toastmaster year. Yuvraj Aher served as Toastmaster of the
Day. John Sih, DTM, served as
Language Evaluator. Matthew Tze served
as Timer. Li Shan Shan, DTM,
served as Table Topics Master.
A President Who Practises What She
Preaches
President Chang Soek Khim spoke on
embracing change, embracing variety, and building a community that is both
accepting and vibrant. The excellent
turnout and the club’s obvious vibrancy on the night were themselves the
evidence of her argument. A president
who has to argue for vibrancy in the abstract, rather than pointing at the room
around her, has usually already lost that argument. Chang did not need to.
Artificial Intelligence and a
Well-Researched Speech
Shirley Tham, DTM, spoke on the
onset of artificial intelligence and the fourth industrial revolution it is
driving, detailing the economic changes expected in coming years, the jobs
workers will need to transition toward, and the occupations heading toward
obsolescence. The World Economic Forum’s
Future of Jobs Report 2025, published after this speech but validating its
underlying thesis in full, found 92 million jobs will be displaced globally by
2030, alongside 170 million new roles created, a net gain of 78 million
positions, though that net figure conceals painful transition costs for anyone
whose role sits in the displaced 92 million rather than the newly created 170
million. The report found 39% of
existing skill sets will become outdated within this same window, and 41% of
employers plan to reduce headcount where AI can automate the work. A speech delivered in 2019 anticipating this
scale of labour disruption was not speculation.
It was reading the trend line, years before the World Economic Forum put
a formal number on it.
From Money to Love, in Consecutive
Speeches
Yi Wen spoke on relationships, noting that
her previous speech had addressed money, and this one would address love
instead. She went into detail on
emotional intimacy and why it matters to a relationship’s survival. The Gottman Institute’s decades of
longitudinal research on couples consistently found that emotional attunement,
the willingness to notice and respond to a partner’s bids for connection,
predicts relationship stability more reliably than compatibility on any single
practical issue. A speaker willing to
address both money and love as sequential, equally serious topics, rather than
treating one as substance and the other as sentiment, has understood something
most relationship advice conveniently skips: a couple’s finances and a couple’s
emotional intimacy are rarely separable problems in practice.
Two Speakers, One Project, Two
Different Answers
Both Loo Guan Yee and Tony Tan delivered
the same assigned project, addressing their own leadership styles, their
understanding of the distinctive styles available, and how they see their own
approach evolving. What emerged from the
pairing was instructive: both concluded they apply distinctive styles for
separate occasions, rather than defending a single fixed approach as
universally correct. Two speakers
reaching the identical, situationally flexible conclusion independently is
stronger evidence for that conclusion than either speech alone could have
provided.
The Evaluators and Results
Tony Lim, DTM, Sia Hua Lim, DTM,
Willie Loh, DTM, and I served as Project Evaluators. Best Speaker went jointly to Shirley Tham, DTM,
and Yi Wen. Best Evaluator went to Sia
Hua Lim, DTM. A meeting spanning
artificial intelligence’s disruption of the global labour market and the
mechanics of emotional intimacy in a relationship covered more intellectual
ground than most Sunday evenings manage, and did so without either topic
feeling out of place beside the other.
Terence Nunis, DTM | Division Advisor, District 80 Division M | Club Advisor, AIA Toastmasters | Past President & Founder, Awesome Toastmasters
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