Posts filed under 'Toastmasters'

Leadership focus: do or delegate?

Phil Gerbyshak pitched in with a super comment on Make things better: aphorism or action item? :

… it may be something that you’d really rather not do, or something that really doesn’t make things better…at least not in the moment. I think the key is to focus on the big picture and see how this fits overall in your life. If you can find a way to fit it in there, it’s often worth doing.

The other thing that I find that often helps is finding someone else you can energize, because it’s more her/his strength than yours… .

I think Phil’s comment is right on the money: “do X” can be reframed as “delegate the doing of X to the most appropriate person.”

For example, after each meeting of the City of London Toastmasters Club , I used to help our Sergeant-at-Arms rearrange the chairs, take down the club banner and generally reset the room. It’s a mundane, but vital thing, because if we leave the room untidy, we might well lose our venue. But this year, I am President of the club. Is it right that I roll up my sleeves and move chairs? Or should I be talking to our guests and signing up new members?

I took the view that my role now is to represent the club with professionalism and show our guests the warmest possible welcome, not snub them because I am busy with heavy lifting. But what an uncomfortable transition. Those chairs need shifting, after all.

In the end, I reframed: instead of shifting the chairs myself, I remind our members to assist the Sergeant at Arms, leaving the VPs and me to talk with our guests and sign up those who wish to join.

Sometimes, leadership focus is as simple as turning “do” into “delegate.”

1 comment August 19th, 2005

Innuendo: a how to guide

OK, don’t blame me; this is all Brendan Connelly ’s fault. When it comes to a good innuendo, I really cannot help myself. Let me explain:

Three years ago, I had great success in my first Toastmasters Humorous Speech Contest with a Speech entitled “Innuendo a how to guide.” A friend asked afterwards if the competition was very stiff and I had to tell her that it was hard for all the speakers. I stood up in suit and tie and used a very business-like format (tell ‘em what you are going to tell ‘em, tell ‘em, tell ‘em what you told ‘em) to explain that lowest form of humour. The speech began:

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Innuendo: a How to Guide. We’ll be covering all the basic techniques today: How to make your own innuendo. How to spot innuendos made by others. And, of course, how to draw attention correctly to the innuendos that you make or spot. Finally, we’ll look at career options. But first the history

I cited examples from Milton and Shakespeare and, of course, Frankie Howard in “Up Pompei.” I taught the audience how to make Conscious First Person Innuendo, or CFPI for short, and we even covered the dangers of unconscious innuendo:

It is possible of course to make an Unconscious First Person Innuendo… but, if you find it slipping out by accident on a regular basis, do see a doctor about that.

And those career options I mentioned:

By now, you’re having so much fun, you’re thinking “But how can I make a career out of innuendo?” The only answer is advertising. The big knobs in advertising use innuendo all the time. My current favourite is the poster on the Underground featuring four ladies and a tub of margarine with the slogan:

“Only one of these women is getting enough.”

Brendan just brought it all flooding back with this naughty little post: Penetrating insight . Unconscious Visual Innuendo at its finest. I salute you, sir.

I will admit, I was given pause for thought as I wrote this. What if readers are offended by this post, or indeed Brendan’s original? Then I remembered my advice to my audience three years ago:

Always remember the words of Humphrey Lyttleton from Radio 4:

“if people see something rude in it, very few of them complain, because that would be confessing that they saw something rude in it.”

So there you have it. If you’re wondering why you are laughing so hard, it’s because you have a filthy mind.

2 comments August 11th, 2005

Bloggers as speakers

Over at Blog Business World, at business association meetings, conferences and so on:

Bloggers have a powerful inner knowledge of the workings of blogs. That is only logical. What we bloggers often tend to forget is not everyone knows as much about blogs and blogging as we do.

As bloggers, we can help out the rest of society. In particular, we can make our knowledge available as speakers to business and professional groups and organizations. Along with business blog presentations, we can also talk about the blog benefit for non-profit organizations, as well as professional and journalism groups.

We simply have to make ourselves available as speakers.

Great advice. Now all we have to do is to master the noble art of public speaking. At this point, I can do little better than point you to Tom Peter’s “Rules for Gettin’ Good at Speechifying” on page 142 of :

  2. See No. 1 above

Add comment May 23rd, 2005

Categorise and conquer

To prevent paralysis by analysis, I started this blog with just one category: “General.” Now, two weeks and eight posts in, I think it’s a good time to put some categories in place. The four top line categories are:

  1. Communicate better
  2. Doing business
  3. New perspectives
  4. Personal

I have chunked each main category into four or five sub categories. There are a few “empty” sub-categories right now. Creating categories ahead of content is considered to be bad practise by some web usability experts , but I pray your indulgence . There are lots of things to write about and I want to make sure that I cover them all, rather than spend all my time blogging about blogging . Also, it’s great motivation to keep writing, when I know there are slots to fill. In the meantime, this post also serves as a placeholder for any empty category.

Communicate better is the place where I will post about listening, speaking, writing, blogging and design.

Doing business is for marketing and sales talk, and workflow, and anything else related to what my friend Mark Lloyd calls “the business of doing business.”

New perspectives is really a catch all category, for when my thinking shifts on any given issue. I meet a lot of inspiring people and read a lot of stuff which doesn’t fit readily into any other category, so I plan to post about all that here, and possibly restructure this section in the future, depending on how well it works.

Personal : self explanatory. I know some people don’t like off-topic posts, but I find lots of fun stuff in , so I plan to speak about hobbies and family stuff here. Long term, I plan to set up multiple RSS feeds so that those who want nothing to do with cooking, cycling or City of London Toastmasters Club can subscribe to a “business only” feed, while the rest of you can get both.

Next - the About page.

Add comment April 18th, 2005