Unemployed? Toastmasters can help!

28 04 2011

When an opportunity for employment presents itself, you’ve got to be ready. Making a good first impression, whether in a job interview or at a chance meeting, is all-important. If this is an area in which you already feel confident, good for you. However, for most of us, this is an area in which there is always room for improvement.

Attending Toastmaster’s meetings will help you to become comfortable in interview-like situations. Specifically it will help you:

  • Prepare properly for Interviews.
  • Structure your thoughts clearly and easily.
  • Allow you to articulate the benefits you can offer to a potential employer.
  • Handle difficult and unexpected questions calmly.
  • Evaluate your efforts allowing you to improve your presentation.
Perhaps the most valuable benefit of attending Toastmaster’s meetings for the potential interviewee is Practice! The best way to prepare for Interview situations is to place yourself in similar situations. Allow your brain to become used to dealing with the pressure of having to speak, even on topics with which you may not be that familiar. With Practice it gets easier, and your confidence will grow.
If you would like to hear more, come along to our next meeting on Thursday 5th May at 8PM in the Castle Hotel, Macroom. See how the meeting goes. There will be plenty time to chat with other members and learn from their experiences.

Cool Blog Sociale - 10 July 2008 - I Heart Job Offers Resume T-shirt by BlackBirdTees A

Further information on Toastmasters and how it might help you is available here.





What can Toastmasters do for your business..? (Audio).

18 05 2010

Just a quick post to draw your attention to last Saturday’s episode of The Business on RTE Radio 1 which featured Darren Le Croix – A world champion at public speaking. In just under 24 minutes, Darren provided the best insight into what Toastmasters can do for you and for your business that I have come across. Leaving Toastmasters aside, the segment is very interesting and often funny.

Darren provides tips on speaking to two Irish business owners and finishes with a comparison of speeches by David Cameron and Brian Cowen – You may be surprised by Darren’s comments.

To listen to the mp3 of the show, click here.

Got your interest? Why not come along to Macroom’s next Toastmaster meeting on May 27th, 8pm,  at the Macroom E centre.





Club Officer Manuals 2009/2010 available online.

2 09 2009

If like us, your club is about to swing into action for another year, this link may be very handy to you. Well organised clubs will no doubt  have hard copy versions of the Officers Manuals already in their hands, but for the less well organised, there is no need to panic.

All the officer manuals are available online in PDF format here.

rtfm_dots
Photo owned by newrafael (cc)

The roles covered are:

  • President.
  • VP Education.
  • VP Membership.
  • VP Public Relations.
  • Secretary.
  • Treasurer.
  • Sergeant at arms.

Click through the link for your own particular role and near the bottom of each page you will see a “When you are XXXXXXX” link which will bring you to the 2009/2010 version of the officer manuals. In the case of the VP Education, the manual appears to be much smaller than it used to be. Hope the same is true for all the roles.





Vice President Education – Handy Tips #2

19 08 2009

This post is the second in a series on the VPE role. Click here for the first post. This post is aimed at people who are filling the role of Vice president of Education for their Toastmasters Club.

The next big task for the VPE is making sure that everyone is pursuing an educational track and is enthusiastic about doing it.

This requires a bit of pre-planning. Say your club wants to achieve a Distinguished Club award at the end of the year, and I think you should – This may involve 4 of your members finishing their Competent Communicator programs, 2 finishing the Competent Leader program and and up to 2 Advanced Communicator awards.

If you intend to get these awards by year end, get agreement from people at the start of the year as to what awards they will achieve individually. And this requires planning. Say you want someone to achieve a CC award and they start the year with 2 projects done. By getting them to agree to complete the CC award, you are asking them to give a speech at every second meeting. That’s a bit much, one for them, because it limits the other roles they can enjoy at the club, and secondly for the rest of the club, because despite the best intentions in the world, its completely normal to get sick of listening to the same speakers over and over!

So you need to plan it out very carefully.

Ant’s Big Tip for a stress free VPE here is: you need to allow some scope for failure.

If one of your charges misses the last two meetings of the year with the Flu and is only one speech short of their award, you may well demote your club from a President’s Distinguished Club to a Select Distinguished Club.

Awards
Photo owned by Cushing Memorial Library and Archives, Texas A&M (cc)

Not the end of the world, but it does mean that others who put a lot of work into getting their awards may be disappointed that the club didn’t benefit fully from their efforts.

So if you have the members available, why not over aim, and have 5 or 6 people on the brink of CC awards with 2 months to go.

A quick aside here: Not every club pays much attention to the Distinguished Club Program – It can be a pain in the A. But it does give you a structure within which to work as a VPE. It gives you goals, and can be an excellent motivator for the club as a whole, as well as individuals.

However, and this applies to Clubs and Individuals also, Pursuing awards for the sake of awards is a pointless process. Don’t let or make members flake through the ten speeches so that the club looks good. When you do that, you are missing the whole point of why Toastmasters exists in the first place.

Ant’s Big Tip for a stress free VPE here is: Do aim for a DCP award, but don’t go mad!!!

This post has been authored by Ant Galvin, former VPE of macroom Toastmasters, 2008/2009. The material in this post was orginally used during the Club training meeting in Clonakilty, Cork, July 10th 2009.





Vice President Education – Handy Tips #1

31 07 2009

If you are a new Vice President Education (VPE) for your club and have done any reading at all, you will know that the main duties of the VPE are:

  • Putting together the program for each meeting.
  • Keeping pressure on members to pursue all the available educational programs.
  • Orienting and including new members in the club, assigning mentors where possible.
  • Attend club meetings and area meetings.
  • Preparing a successor.

You will find all the information you need on these roles in the VPE Manual. There is no need for me to repeat the information. Instead, I hope to give you the benefit of my own experience in the role with a few handy tips.

In this post, my first two tips are on Programs.

There are two parts to this task.The first is

Getting people to commit to roles.

The manual suggests assigning roles at least three weeks in advance, and re-affirming that commitment a week in advance. However it is my experience that often times people are unavailable at only 2 or 3 days notice. So my approach has been that at the end of every meeting, I ask for input to the following meeting, and then a few days before the meeting, I ring to confirm that the person is available.

Usually the phone calls will go on over a few nights, as it is rare that you will get through to everyone on the one night and if you have any drop-outs, you may need to re-ring others in order to fill the gaps.

Of course, the size of your club has an impact here, the bigger the club, the easier it should be to get people to contribute.

Ant’s Big Tip for a stress free VPE here is:

Try and have a few subs on standby for the program! Someone who wouldn’t mind repeating a speech they have given before, or someone who can stand in for an evaluation at the last minute.

The second part of the program creation, is

Creation of the program itself.

Don’t be a slave to tradition. Shake it up at every meeting. Always try something new. Split the topics sections into a couple of phases between speeches, change the order of the program, be open to the inclusion of new items. For example in our own club, we allow a 5 minute Toastmaster’s time at the beginning of the meeting, where the Toastmaster for the night has a chance to play a little game – just to get the ball rolling. We have found it improves the quality of the meetings by relaxing everyone very fast.

Ant’s Big Tip for a stress free VPE here is:

Do something new at every meeting.

In my next post on the VPE Role, I will be addressing the need to promote the Educational programs within Toastmasters with your members.

This post has been authored by Ant Galvin, former VPE of macroom Toastmasters, 2008/2009. The material in this post was orginally used during the Club training meeting in Clonakilty, Cork, July 10th 2009.








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