Article#39: Captain Giridhar
“The seas may be rough. But I am the captain! No matter how difficult, I will always Prevail” said Jack Sparrow, the fictional character from the pirates of the Caribbean film. Coincidentally, it’s the same thing that was running in my mind when I became the president of the club. It’s a huge responsibility in a volunteer organization like Toastmasters which is the only place where leaders lead the team with the passion and commitment of the members.
This Article is about my experience as the President of a Toastmasters Club.
It was 1 year since I became part of the club. I was interested in taking one of the leadership roles like earlier. But to my surprise, most of the club members wanted me to be the President. Although I was unconfidently confident, I thought that I should do it and gain the experience.
Moving on from the background story, it was the day when the elections happened and I was announced as the president of the club. I was happy for a while, but also a bit worried because I never know how I was going to lead a team. I started taking long calls with the Immediate Past President to understand the roles and responsibilities. From the day I joined this voluntary organization, starting from my mentor to the district director, I could hear only one thing, the priority should be personal life, professional life and then Toastmasters. I thought this role was nowhere an exception. But the beauty of this role was it helped me to connect with the club so quickly and slowly it enabled me to treat it as just another profession, thereby leading itself as my second priority. All the jobs that I did as a president like taking care of the club’s membership, designing the meetings, following up with the team for weekly posters and MOMs, encouraging the team on their educational awards, Motivating the EC with rewards and appreciation note, etc. were always in parallel to that of what I did in my professional life. In short, both of them went hand in hand. On the whole, the most memorable thing about this role was it helped me to regain my self-confidence and offered me some challenges that channelized my thoughts from unnecessary things to positive, constructive, impactful and useful learnings with which the role became my top priority.
Some of the learnings that I got from the role,
Coordination: The most important thing in getting a job done is coordination. When we as a team move forward towards a common goal, there should be a strong coordination among us. We can achieve this with regular team meetings, in my role the monthly EC meetings helped me a lot with respect to establishing coordination among the club EC
Motivation: Recognising the team with a small appreciation in writing or a small award for any of their achievements or initiatives will bring a lot of change in the way one performs. This is something that I saw practically in this role.
Lead with involvement: A leader is not the one who just assigns a job to you, but is the one who helps you in finishing the job with his involvement. Even though you are the President of the club, you should involve in any activity along with the members and then lead them in reaching the common goal.
Commitment: Once you give the commitment as a leader in any voluntary organization like Toastmasters, you should stick to it. More importantly, when you are committed to a role like President, you are the captain and you should never give up or escape from your responsibility.
Feedback:There should always be a constructive feedback to and from the team that helps an organization to grow and move forward in a positive direction
With all these learnings, my 6-months tenure as a President came to an end. I designed the succession plan and handed over to the successor who is interested to drive the club because I believe only the passion and interest towards anything can brighten it further.
To conclude, Leadership in Toastmasters is an amazing experience. It helps you to learn and grow as an individual. It brings you a new set of confidence when you overcome the challenges. So, what are you waiting for? Apply for a leadership role today and be the future leader.
This Article is about my experience as the President of a Toastmasters Club.
It was 1 year since I became part of the club. I was interested in taking one of the leadership roles like earlier. But to my surprise, most of the club members wanted me to be the President. Although I was unconfidently confident, I thought that I should do it and gain the experience.
Moving on from the background story, it was the day when the elections happened and I was announced as the president of the club. I was happy for a while, but also a bit worried because I never know how I was going to lead a team. I started taking long calls with the Immediate Past President to understand the roles and responsibilities. From the day I joined this voluntary organization, starting from my mentor to the district director, I could hear only one thing, the priority should be personal life, professional life and then Toastmasters. I thought this role was nowhere an exception. But the beauty of this role was it helped me to connect with the club so quickly and slowly it enabled me to treat it as just another profession, thereby leading itself as my second priority. All the jobs that I did as a president like taking care of the club’s membership, designing the meetings, following up with the team for weekly posters and MOMs, encouraging the team on their educational awards, Motivating the EC with rewards and appreciation note, etc. were always in parallel to that of what I did in my professional life. In short, both of them went hand in hand. On the whole, the most memorable thing about this role was it helped me to regain my self-confidence and offered me some challenges that channelized my thoughts from unnecessary things to positive, constructive, impactful and useful learnings with which the role became my top priority.
Some of the learnings that I got from the role,
Coordination: The most important thing in getting a job done is coordination. When we as a team move forward towards a common goal, there should be a strong coordination among us. We can achieve this with regular team meetings, in my role the monthly EC meetings helped me a lot with respect to establishing coordination among the club EC
Motivation: Recognising the team with a small appreciation in writing or a small award for any of their achievements or initiatives will bring a lot of change in the way one performs. This is something that I saw practically in this role.
Lead with involvement: A leader is not the one who just assigns a job to you, but is the one who helps you in finishing the job with his involvement. Even though you are the President of the club, you should involve in any activity along with the members and then lead them in reaching the common goal.
Commitment: Once you give the commitment as a leader in any voluntary organization like Toastmasters, you should stick to it. More importantly, when you are committed to a role like President, you are the captain and you should never give up or escape from your responsibility.
Feedback:There should always be a constructive feedback to and from the team that helps an organization to grow and move forward in a positive direction
With all these learnings, my 6-months tenure as a President came to an end. I designed the succession plan and handed over to the successor who is interested to drive the club because I believe only the passion and interest towards anything can brighten it further.
To conclude, Leadership in Toastmasters is an amazing experience. It helps you to learn and grow as an individual. It brings you a new set of confidence when you overcome the challenges. So, what are you waiting for? Apply for a leadership role today and be the future leader.
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