Talk to the Human™

Although I waited a week or so before ordering the new CL for myself, I now have a nice, new copy. On first look, I don’t mind telling you I like it. That being said, I wouldn’t recommend throwing away that current CL manual you are working on.

Side Note: For those of you with the existing manual (I’m working on one myself), I do recommend downloading the New Project Completion Record. It works for the old or new manual and makes it far easier to track the progress than the one in the old manual.

If you are wondering what the hubbub is, read on for a short synopsis of the changes:

1. The Project Completion Record moved to the front of the manual (maybe because it’s important!)

2. Pre-project evaluations are at on a 3-point scale and included in each project

3. The evaluation questions have changed. Now each role has a few questions (typically 3-5) that are rated on a 3-point scale. 3=outstanding, 2=Average, 1=Needs Work. After the scored questions, there are one or two open-ended “how did they do?” types of questions. 

4. The appendix includes additional on-line resources, including links to Manuals, Flyers and Toastmasters Magazine articles. There were some links even new to me (and you know I do my research!)

5. Ummm…they took out the mission of the club. That was odd…

One thing that didn’t change – There had been some feedback that TI should include some “beyond the club” projects to help encourage involvement outside the club (i.e. Area Contests, Conference Presenter, etc.)

I was a bit surprised that one or two of these weren’t added as optional tasks on existing projects. However, not having these doesn’t hurt the manual. There are still plenty of options for improving your skills and supporting your club. In fact, I believe that if every member of every club would open one of these books and work on it, three things would happen:

- Members would learn more about running meetings and activities in their real lives.
- Quality of club meetings would improve, as would member performance (speeches, contests, etc.).
- The number of clubs under 20 members would drop to almost zero.   

Verdict: If you are not currently working on a CL manual, you should be. Either the Current or New manual. If you’ve been holding off waiting for them to “fix” the manual, then you are in luck. It’s teed up to work better than before. Now’s the time…

I love hearing great ideas.

But more than that, I need to hear great ideas backed up with an action plan, a person to lead the charge and a team ready to support it. Bring me that, and I’ll say “Let’s Go!”

Just think…how powerful can three words be to a friend that hasn’t attended a recent Toastmasters Meeting? When they are the right three words, like “We miss you”, they can make all the difference in the world. There are three critical times that these heartfelt words can help define the success of your club and its members:

Toastmaster of the week – When you are filling those roles the week before your meeting, you will normally find yourself talking to someone who may have missed a meeting or two. Taking that opportunity to say “We miss you…I hope you can attend and serve as General Evaluator” (for example) can help to remind them that they are valued members of the club, and that you noticed their absence.

Vice President of Membership – Any member that misses three or four meetings in a row should get a call (not e-mail) from their VP of Membership. By saying “We miss you” combined with a reminder that we look forward to helping them achieve their goals can help remind them of why they joined in the first place and hopefully get them coming again.

Club President – Members have a plethora of reasons for why they leave the club. But remember, those reasons can (and do) change after they leave the club. That kid’s soccer practice that conflicted with the meeting could have changed days, people with college class conflicts graduate, and other life events change.

Every club president should look at the non-renewals from the last dues period (i.e October non-renewals in May) and send a note to each member that didn’t renew. Find out if their reason for leaving still outweighs the reasons to come back. Saying ” We miss you” could be the catalyst to get a friend back on track. And if the conflict is still there, don’t be afraid to offer alternatives. There could be an open club that meets a block away the next night.

If you ask, you’ll hear that many people join Toastmasters strictly for self-improvement reasons. Don’t underestimate the personal connection you have made to your fellow members, and the connection they have made to you and your club. Remind them that you are glad to see them, and when you don’t see them remember to say “We miss you”

P.S. This post is also on my District 22 Marketing Blog, along with other tips for Toastmasters Leaders.

How do you normally move forward in your personal (or professional) development goals?

Here is a thought: Pick an hour to block out one evening a week. Call it your “get a new skill hour.” You may be asking, “What is the point?” Simple: to take some time to look into something you hadn’t tried before, read something new, or try out a new “fad” you have been avoiding for a long time.

For example, those of you without LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) accounts, spend an hour setting up your on-line professional contact/networking page on LinkedIn. You don’t have to put very much personal information out there, just your name, job title, and some info about your current job. Then search for some coworkers or business friends and link up with them. Take a look at their pages and see what you can do with yours. You won’t have the perfect site in just an hour, but you will be there. When you do need it (layoffs, just looking for work or opportunities, etc.) you’ll already have a head start.

Other ideas?
- Pick up a “Italian in 10 minutes a day” book and do an hour a week (any language)
- Pick up a business/writing/leadership book and read an hour a week
- Pick another networking site you’ve never used (Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Squidoo, etc.) and spend an hour learning it
- Pick something related to your job, like MS Office 2007, and spend an hour learning some tips and shortcuts (check www.customguide.com for some free Quick Reference Cards)
- Spend that hour teaching something to another person

As we move through February, you’ve probably dumped that whole resolution thing anyway, and with the Heroes season finale behind us you should have a free hour to spare. Give it a shot for the next few weeks and see where it takes you!

Sometimes, you need to look at that goal, plan, or new years resolution and renew your commitment. In the spirit of not missing any opportunity, here is a look at some posts that can help you focus on your future in the month where most folks lose that momentum.

Are you finding ways to succeed, or are you stuck looking for no? After reading Alan Weiss’ website, I had an immediate “ah-ha” moment when I read about how some people saw good news as simply a prelude to coming bad news. They see every turn representing potential trouble, every new person as a threat, and each new request as a burden. Read the post to get some ideas on how to work with the nay-sayers.

Remember the 37-second rule: Based on the way the human brain is wired, you only have 37 seconds to capture an idea before it’s lost…possibly forever. Don’t lose those opportunities! Read the post for some tips to capture those ideas.

Stay on course. This time of year it can be easy to get distracted. The holidays are over and the resolve to keep that resolution is replaced by the resolve to slip back into old habits. Give yourself a check-up. Read the post to learn how to identify the signs and keep moving toward your goals.

Finally, don’t forget to relax once in a while. It’s okay to take a break and recharge the batteries.

Don’t let the new year slip by without achieving some of your goals. Hopefully you’ll find some useful tips in these posts, and you’ll find the resolve to keep moving forward each and every day…

2009 was a year of ups and downs for many people. How do you plan to improve things in 2010?

If you have some SMART goals for 2010, then you’re on the right track. If you don’t, you shouldn’t try to rush out a “New Year’s Resolution” just to say you do. Take your time and make those goals ones that you can quantify, achieve, and see progress in over time.

Have a great new year, and I’ll see you with a new post on the 1st day of 2010!

Have you ever had a boss tell you they couldn’t (sounded like code for wouldn’t) help you out with a problem?

Just a few years ago, one of my jobs included training first time supervisors on evaluation methods. This training fell into two categories: performance feedback and annual evaluations.

During the training, my focus was on helping supervisors get the best performance out of their people. This was not an original idea on my part. I had learned a lot from a couple of other key people, one of whom taught me the phrase “It sucks to be you.”

You may be wondering why this is important. So did I, initially.

The problem stemmed from how these training sessions would generate very me-focused Q&A sessions. When I say me-focused, I mean from the audience member’s perspective. Keep in mind, my goal was to teach a “you-focused” mentality to new supervisors, to help them work better with their people.

There would always be the question of “How can you say I should help my people achieve a high rating, when my last boss gave me a bad rating without any concern for my future?” or “how can I fix my bad rating from 4 years ago?”

I would try to empathize with them, describing the appeal process from a factual point of view. After one of these sessions that my Chief was sitting in on, we scheduled a discussion later to help me improve my presentations. When we spoke, I asked him how he handled those types of questions. “Rob”, he said, “sometimes it just sucks to be you.”

If you had been sitting in that extra chair, sipping a Pepsi like we were, you would have seen the whole “Jessica Simpson on Jeopardy” look on my face when he told me that.

“You want me to say that?”

“Sometimes, Rob, you have to say that.”

The trick , he went on to tell me, was to stay empathetic about it. Don’t just point and laugh manically. Let them know you care. Note: as the boss you should care. If you don’t, that’s you...not them. Anyway, sometimes life just isn’t fair, and you (they) have to move forward.

He went on to say, “You can’t fix everyone’s problems for them, Rob. Acting like you agree with their plight and saying you’ll try to help them does two things. One, it raises false hope and two, it costs you some of their respect.”

“Chief, if I’m trying to help them, why would I lose their respect?”

“Because you won’t be able to come through.”

Has that ever happened to you? A boss said “I’ll talk to my boss and take care of it”, and then not come through. “Sorry, I tried”. Would you rather hear that, or just tell me it sucks to be me today?

The fact is that sometimes there are problems that simply have no solution, except to move forward and conquer the next challenge. We can’t always go back and right those perceived wrongs in the world. It can be a hard lesson to learn as a boss (I know it was for me), but sometimes the most you can do is help your people move on.

The next time you take a problem to your boss, and they say they can’t fix that one, or if you are a boss that needs to say that yourself, remember that it can be a more powerful answer just to admit that this one is in the books, and just for today, it sucks to be you.

Do you know why we “wait” for the fist day of the new year to declare a resolution? There are quite a few theories out there, some of which are better than others. The important question is, how can we be successful in our resolutions?

You’ve no doubt heard a plethora of statistics that tell you that you shouldn’t bother with a resolution, since they don’t work anyway. Stories about full parking lots at the local gym in January followed by front-row availability in February are commonplace, and clearly have a ring of truth. Seriously though, if there was a secret way to avoid being a February dropout, would you want to know it?

Before we discuss that, let’s examine the reasoning behind the failure of New Year’s resolutions. You probly think it took 57,000 PhD’s over a million hours of painstaking research, not to mention your tax dollars, to come up with a working theory that could be tested in a double-blind 4-out-of-5 dentists surveyed statistical ballyhoo to be presented to President Obama in time for the next state of the Union Address, right? I bet some of that is right.

Actually, in a not-so-random sampling of humans that I know, I’ve uncovered the truth. The shocking fact is that there is no secret code, no genetic disposition, no other-guys-fault crap behind it. It’s all under our control, and the reason so many of us fail at a new year’s resolution is simple: It’s Artificial.

Yup, that’s it. Any resolution or whatever you want to call it made based on an artificial criteria, such as New Years, is naturally artificial itself. And by the way, it’s not just New Years that qualifies as artificial. See if any of these sound familiar:

“I’ll quit smoking as soon as I finish this carton”
“I’ll start eating healthier after my birthday”
“I”ll start working out when the gym has it’s next deal”
“I’ll go back to college after the kids move out”
“I’ll join Toastmasters after I finish my class”
“I’ll retire when I have enough in the bank”

The truth is, the only way to stay with a resolution is to mean it from the start. More importantly, if you mean it, you’ll start today, not wait for the 1st of never to make that move.

The advantage is this: If you start now, you can get a jump on all of the temporary heros you’ll meet in early January. Even better, you won’t be the noob (gamer talk for new person) in the room trying to figure out the difference between 10 and 15 lbs dumbbells.

If you’ve been thinking about that next one thing you want to work on, stop thinking and do it!

When I found myself out of work back in February, I wasn’t sure what the right course of action was, other than my obvious “look for a job” plan. With some useful advice, I tried a number of things daily to stay focused and work on getting back in the job market:

1. Wake up on time
2. No daytime TV
3. Read the local paper (particularly the business section)
4. Take any interview that came my way
5. Have a to-do list

What I tried to do with the to-do list was unique to me. This specific idea was to start a new list each morning with no more than 10 tasks on it. At the end of the day, anything not done was crossed off as “move to tomorrow” and the list was complete, then thrown away. The next morning, a new list is created.

While I was at the professional speaker’s Champ Camp this summer in Connecticut, Ed Tate mentioned his tactic of starting each morning with 3 ”MITs” – which he refered to his must dos. MIT stands for Most Important Tasks. These were tasks that were the first items for him to take care of each day. Not a standard maybe-I’ll-do-this-list, but a committment to himself to complete these tasks each day.

If you’re thinking this sounds like something Stephen Covey would say (i.e. Habit 3 – Put First Things First), you’d be right. This leadership tactic does mirror some of his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Great book, by the way. It’s worth 10-times the price.

For me, I haven’t put Ed’s specific advice into practice like I thought I would. I do consider posting to my blog as one of my MITs, but I’ve always managed to work on it late in the evening.  Since I under-slept this morning, I like the idea of posting first thing to help activate my brain.

One of Ed’s MITs he mentioned was to “reach outside of my 4 walls and ask for business”. I think I like that as one of mine as well, and starting today I’m going to include it in my MITs. Now I have two, so I need to determine what my third one will be. Since my brain is still powering up, I’m going to use today to think that one through.

During my 4-month job hunt, I found the steps I mentioned above to be both useful for staying on track and, frankly, critical to my sanity. But creating that to-do list really made a difference in how I focused my time, and gave me a sense of accomplishment for “getting things done” instead of just passing the time with generic job-hunting tasks.

It doesn’t really matter what format your list takes, whether it’s your top 3, top 10, or some other format. Taking the time to plan out a few important tasks each moring can help energize your thoughts and set you up for a successful day. More importantly, you can look back on the day and feel like you did what you needed to do, not just “stuff”.

If one of your “to-do” items is “Read Rob’s blog”, that’s okay too…

Note: This is my post for 9 October 2009.

I’m not going to say “close the sale” is the best phrase to be used, but I think it is a very appropriate mentality to have when talking with a guest about membership in your Toastmasters club. There is an important distinction in what we do as Toastmasters opposed to other salespeople. For a used car dealer, closing the sale means getting that car sold or she doesn’t feed her family. In fact, you don’t have to convince a used car dealer that the sale needs to be closed. However, in our organization, there is a misconception that our product sells itself.

Fact: no product on Earth truly sells itself.

More importantly, many visitors want to feel like they’re wanted (assuming that they’re human). As a visitor, I would actually be insulted if someone didn’t offer me an application and tell me that they wanted me as a member of their club. Okay…maybe not insulted, but I think that telling a guest that “they’re welcome back anytime” does not have the power of “we’d like to invite you to join tonight.”

The difference is based on how we respond to “no” or “I’m not sure”. If a shady used car dealer hears “no”, they start in their list of “today only” deals and other dubious tactics. As a Toastmaster, if you hear “no”, you should (and probably do) thank them for coming and let them know we’ll be here if they change their mind. If they’re not sure, then you invite them to come to the next meeting as your guest, and that they’re free to take their time and decide.

In Toastmasters, closing the sale isn’t scamming the loser. It’s asking a guest to be a long-term part of your club’s future. It’s about mutual success, growth and giving another human the opportunity to “Unleash Your Possibilities!” that someone gave you when they “closed the sale”.