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你,也可以成為領袖 |
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You,
Too, Can Be a Leader 作者:Beatrice Joyner |
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Filling club meeting roles will help you
reach your goals |
Many people join Toastmasters because they have seen how the
organization helps people become better speakers. What is often hidden
from view is how Toastmasters develops leaders.
Training tomorrow’s leaders is important to the survival of any
organization, but few people recognize their leadership potential until
it is thrust upon them. Toastmasters’ philosophy endorses the concept
that the best way to learn leadership is to learn at your own pace. By
serving in various club roles, club members learn to become leaders. I’m
one of those people who, at first, didn’t see the leadership benefits
the organization offered. It took me some time. I did not join
Toastmasters to be a leader – I joined to become a better speaker. I
didn’t consider my meeting roles to be a means to improve my leadership
skills; it just seemed a way to help out my club. I thought little of
getting credit for meeting roles in my Competent Leadership (CL)
manual. My focus in my first year of Toastmasters was on completing the
Competent Communication manual.
It wasn’t until I talked to
the “eternal role assigner,” our club’s vice president education, that I
changed my opinion about completing the CL manual. She and I had joined
Toastmasters at the same time, but when she said she only had a few more
assignments left to get her CL award, she grabbed my attention. I had no
idea how easy it was to complete the 10 projects required for that award
until we reviewed the roles she needed to fulfill. My friend could
easily see her leadership progression in her manual.
In
fact, the CL manual has an easy-to-follow guide – the Project Completion
Record – to help you chart the projects you need to finish. This grid
lists the projects and accompanying meeting roles needed to complete
them, such as speaker, speech evaluator, timer and grammarian. For
example, Project One is “Listening,” and the four roles related to the
project are: Ah-Counter, speech evaluator, grammarian and Table Topics
speaker. You only need to perform three of the four roles.
Building Camaraderie with Club Members I
offer words of caution to help you avoid my mistakes: You are
responsible to know what project you are working on and see it as part
of the larger whole. For example, you don’t have to serve in all
different meeting roles for every single project; as the CL manual
explains, you can repeat some meeting roles in different projects.
(However, you can only meet one project requirement each time you serve
in that role.) Let’s say you enjoy being a speech evaluator. Look at the
Project Completion Record and you’ll see that you have the option of
serving in that role in Projects 1, 2, 3 and 8. The point is: Make sure
you read the Project Completion Record carefully.
Here is something else I learned: Toastmasters International continually
improves and updates the education manuals. I began working in the CL
manual just two years ago. At that time you had to go back and forth
between the grid and the projects to know how many roles you needed to
complete for each project; now all the information is listed on the
Project Completion Record.
Remember what I said about not joining Toastmasters to be a leader?
Well, Toastmasters has a way of making you one. Project Nine is
“Mentoring,” and the roles required to complete this project are “Mentor
for a New Member,” “Mentor for an Existing Member” and serving as an
“HPL (High Performance Leadership) Guidance Committee Member.” Keep in
mind that you only have to choose one of those roles to complete the
project.
Someone joined our club and quickly asked me to be her mentor. Me? A
mentor? No, I’m a communicator; a mentor is a leader! But someone
who didn’t even know me was recognizing me as a leader. I agreed and she
filled out the evaluation sheet. I completed Project Nine while helping
someone become a better Toastmaster.
Look at the grid and you will see roles that may unfamiliar. “Speaker”
is there, but so is “Help Organize a Club Speech Contest” under Project
Six. “Timer” is a critical role, but so is “Befriend a Guest” under
Project Seven.
Study the Project Completion Record at your leisure; it gives you more
than a list of roles – it helps you to understand the various things
Toastmasters International can give you. You may be nervous as a
speaker, but by the time you get to the role of “Help Organize a Club
Special Event” (Project Six), you will have gained skills along the way
to make it easier. You may find that when you complete this manual, you
will be a stronger person in all the roles you fill in your personal
life as well.
You may have joined
Toastmasters like I did to become a better speaker, but watch out –
Toastmasters will also make you a leader! Beatrice Joyner, CC, CL, is a member of First Toastmasters club in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Contact her at beajoyner@aol.com. 作者:Beatrice Joyner, CC, CL,是美國賓夕法尼亞州費城第一演講會會員,她的電子信箱: beajoyner@aol.com 譯者:康碧耘 Christina, ScienTech Toastmasters Club |