Opening Doors – enabling, empowering and delegating in your team. Part 2 of 3

Continued from part 1…..Soon after that I wanted more. I became a deputy for one of the Club Committee roles so I could learn the ropes before taking on the role officially. A few months later I was invited to apply for the full role and was voted in. I was now accountable for 23 people’s happiness! Then I was hooked; receiving excellent and useable feedback and evaluation with examples of what worked well, and what could be improved upon; so I could assess how I was getting on in the role. This meant I could make small adjustments to become the best I could be. I thrived and the club thrived.

When was the last time you gave or received great usable feedback with specific examples?

In the Toastmasters training programme I noticed there were many opportunities there for me to lead on projects outside our club meetings. At the time I was planning on applying for the position of Project Manager at work (a promotion) so it seemed ideal. I was excited to get stuck in and thought that doing something that gave back to my Community would be the most rewarding non-work related project.

I started my first Youth Leadership Program with a set of 15 students in an Academy near where I lived. I led a small team of Toastmasters to deliver the material and that meant delegating whole sections to them and watching without correcting them or interfering!

Over ten weeks we guided the students towards the delivery of a showcase event where they all delivered speeches of more than four minutes each on a variety of subjects chosen by the students themselves. It was very well received by their parents and the school principal and I was asked back to duplicate our results with a new cohort. 5 years later I am about to deliver my seventh program….

Whilst all this was going on I was also delivering full training days using the Better Speaker Series and Leadership Excellence Series manuals to members and non-members alike, and I used my High Performance Leadership Project to help me build and coordinate the team I used to deliver the training days. It walked me through from Vision, Mission etc right through to lessons learned after delivery, using delegation so that I didn’t do all the work myself.

Simultaneously I did get the promotion at work and I found the skills I picked up in Toastmasters were essential to my new role of communicating clearly at all levels with many different teams, colleagues, suppliers, stakeholders and customers. It taught me how to give effective feedback and how to delegate. I learned how to listen and lead.

Do you know any leaders who are good at listening?

Read on to part 3…

Sam Warner 07973 490150              Email: sam@get-your-message-across.com

Sam’s website: www.get-your-message-across.com  

www.toastmasters.org     www.shropshirespeakers.org.uk       www.ludlowspeakers.org.uk