The Importance of Delivering Your TM
Speeches
by Gege Sugue
This was originally posted in our printed newsletter program for the February 27 meeting--the 3rd in a series tackling Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Mentor: Hey! You said you’d deliver
your next speech in the next meeting. That’s about two weeks from today. Send
me your speech as soon as possible so I could give you my input.”
Protégé: I’m afraid I have to
postpone that speech.
Mentor: But you’ve been postponing
this for 2 years.
Protégé: I know. It’s just that we
have this huge project. And my boss wants me to do overtime work every night.
Mentor: Oh, how about meeting after
next?
Protégé: I can’t. A balikbayan friend
is coming, and that will be the only day available for our barkada to meet. You
know how it is.
It’s a
familiar conversation. I’ve heard it from others. I’ve been part of it, both as
the mentor aka nagger and the one being nagged. I have even heard it in my own
head with my own conscience bugging me to finally work on my next speech. And I
can feel for both the mentor and the protégé.
We’re just
so busy these days. But who isn’t? Who isn’t trying to juggle work, family,
school, relationships, hobbies, health activities, and social life? And how are
we supposed to add on top of that twice-a-month meetings plus the time it takes
to prepare, rehearse, and deliver speeches?
It’s tough.
And it is most likely that among the above priorities, Stephen Covey calls them
the big rocks, our family and our source of livelihood are the big rocks that
come first. Toastmasters--less important, less urgent. I get that.
Stephen
Covey’s Time Management book, First Things First, highlights Habit #3. He suggests
a 2x2 matrix to categorize our tasks according to urgency and importance. Where
each task falls into the quadrants tells you what to do about them.
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| Image from http://www.julienrio.com/marketing/english/eisenhower-box-save-time-prioritizing-tasks |
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| Image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Things_First_(book) |
Where
does your Toastmasters life come in? Only you can answer that. Your own life
purpose and values would clue you in on the answer. I am guessing that for a
lot of us who decided to invest money for the membership dues, we have made
that conscious choice to develop our leadership and communication skills
through Toastmasters. I am guessing that for us who made that conscious choice,
we did so because we think it’s important. As such, we have to prioritize it.
We have to bump other activities as less important. We have to plan for it. We
have to set aside time to make our investments in time and money worthwhile.
Toastmasters
are some of the busiest people I know—successfully managing businesses,
careers, family. And I admire how they
do so while also finding the time to play active roles in the Toastmasters
organization, while advancing in their norms.
I
admire my own protégé Penny Bongato—talk about busy. She’s constantly working,
traveling, fulfilling her role as wife and mother. She is admired in her field
and in her advocacies, and she is already an accomplished speaker. It would be
so easy for her to just give up and say she’s too busy. But she doesn’t.
Self-development and the goal of being an inspiring speaker drive her to plan,
prepare, and deliver her speeches, no matter how challenging it may be. She
targets a specific date for her next speech project, and then she sends her
speeches way in advance so that her mentors could comment and make suggestions.
Then she sets aside time for rehearsing her speech. She is proactive, aware of
the end in mind, and she puts first things first. I am sure it is not easy. But
she follows what Stephen Covey said: “The key is not to prioritize what’s on
your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”
Is
Toastmasters important to you? Can it help you be the person you want to be?
Can it help you succeed in your goals? Then make it one of the first things.
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