Tag Archives: Toastmasters International

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How to develop as a business leader

Written by Pamela Odukoya, Toastmasters International

In the early stages of my working life the main leadership style I encountered was autocratic. Leaders look decision quickly with little or no consultation and I didn’t feel able to share my ideas.

I came to realise that leadership styles vary significantly and through a period of reflection, research and self-analysis, I gained a greater appreciation of my own diverse skills, experience and values. More importantly, I gained a new understanding of the different leadership styles and self-analysis helped me to discover my preferences.

My leadership career now spans seventeen years. This includes leading a team of career advisers in both private and public sectors, and volunteers in a public speaking organisation. I regard leadership as an opportunity to collaborate and motivate a group of people to achieve a common goal. I’ve adopted the transformational leadership style as my dominant leadership style because it gives the opportunity to inspire and develop others whilst building productive relationships and using a great deal of creativity.

Regardless of a leader’s style, every leader should be able to set goals, use resources efficiently and effectively, motivate the team to achieve the shared vision and be innovative. Integrity is a key hallmark of a leader, and this involves owning your mistakes, being transparent, fair and consistent

If you are an aspiring leader, then here are a few tips to help you progress.

Learn it

Both formal and informal learning can help aspiring leader to develop.  I would recommend these online resources as starting points.

  • The Chartered Management institute: managers.org.uk
  • Future Learn: futurelearn.com
  • Consider reading ‘What Got You here, Won’t get You There’ by Marshall Goldsmith. It provides some insight into the leadership behaviours that you might need to adopt.

It is also important to make the most of any CPD (continuous professional development) opportunities you are offered.

Try it

To get some experience of leadership at senior level, I suggest applying for a trustee role in a charitable organisation. As a trustee, you will be part of a board with legal responsibility for the management and administration of the charitable organisation. Some resources to help you explore the role of a trustee are:

Or you can try to take on a leadership role in a volunteering organisation or professional association.

The skills you have gained in your personal and professional life can add value to a charitable or volunteering organisation and this can contribute towards your growth and development in leadership.

Invest time to understand your team

Leaders inspire people to work towards and achieve goals. Developing productive working relations is an absolute must for leaders. Time invested in understanding the personalities, values and aspirations of team members by listening and engaging with them is well spent.

I still remember the light bulb moment when I invested time to understand a team member who was underperforming. Through a series of informal meetings, I learnt about the team member’s personal barriers. As a result, I worked with them to identify support needs and made the necessary workload adjustments. These adjustments helped the team member to reengage with work and optimise performance. They gained confidence, studied for further qualifications and achieved a leadership position. Without this time investment, this person might not have been able to reach full potential.

Recognise and show appreciation for individual and team effort

Some of the ways I’ve showed recognition to my team include simply saying “Thank You”, making announcements at team meetings and of course the power of a luscious cake on a Friday afternoon. You can also consider tangible forms of recognition such as certificates or awards.

Of course, some people prefer private rather than public recognition. I apply the Platinum Rule, which basically says, “Do unto others as they would want to be done to them.” I follow this rule by tailoring how I treat people to respect their preferences.

When showing recognition, it is important that you are fair and consistent otherwise it can be deemed as a form of discrimination, and this can affect the team’s morale.

It’s also important to think about how you recognise your team at external meetings. Do you focus on the metrics alone? Do you single out the top performers? How about a team member who never gets a mention despite working incredibly hard to support the team? Always aim to build an atmosphere of inclusion and belonging.

These tips have helped me develop as a leader. I hope they will do the same for you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pamela Odukoya is a member of Toastmasters International, a not-for-profit organisation that has provided communication and leadership skills since 1924 through a worldwide network of clubs. There are more than 400 clubs and 10,000 members in the UK and Ireland. Members follow a structured educational programme to gain skills and confidence in public and impromptu speaking, chairing meetings and time management. To find your nearest club, visit www.toastmasters.org

Business Advice, News

How to raise the bar and make your business talks highly engaging

By Marcus Grodentz, Toastmasters International

When you speak in public you know that the members of your business audience are busy people. To keep their attention you will need to be engaging right from the start. Being an average speaker won’t cut it. You need to raise the bar.

Let me share some tips I have gained from experience, to help you take your business speaking to a higher level.

Be clear on your speaking goal

It is an old adage but nevertheless true. What sort of talk are you giving? What do you want it to achieve?

Choose the right moment to start

If you are giving a talk whether in person or online don’t jump straight in. Wait. Wait until your audience is settled. Wait until they are all looking at you and then and only then start talking.

Select your words with care

The language you use is important. You have the whole lexicon of the English language to help illustrate and describe your story. For example, there is a world of difference between ‘taking an opportunity’ and ‘grasping an opportunity.’

Research your audience

This is important because to some extent that dictates the type of language you use. Many speakers use technical terms or acronyms unfamiliar to their listeners. That means that you lose them. They are too busy figuring out the technical stuff to keep listening to what you have to say.

Focus on construction

Any TV or film drama you watch starts with a cliff-hanger of some sort. It can last several minutes. Only then do the titles roll. Start your talk with something dramatic. Grab attention. Get your audience engaged. Then take your audience on a journey that arrives somewhere. You need to make sure that your ending has some relationship to where you started. Complete the circle. Leave your audience feeling complete.

Use your voice with flexibility

Vocal variety is another key element. How many talkers go through their entire story at the same pitch. It becomes monotonous, even tedious. Varying the pace of your story and the pitch of your voice is another weapon in your arsenal of techniques.

If you have something dramatic to say you might want to speed up and perhaps raise your tone. If you have something sensitive, you can slow down and lower your tone. And, if you have some important information to share then take a pause.

Allow your audience time to absorb and digest it. Pausing is also a great way to cut down on the number of times you say Um and Ah.

Use appropriate visual props

One of my pet hates is the use of PowerPoint as it is almost always unnecessary. Speakers use it as a prop to hide behind. Death by PowerPoint is the hallmark of a poor speaker in my opinion.

Visual props are good but only if they are an integral part of your talk. If you are a speaker then you want your audience looking and concentrating on you. That is the whole point of being a speaker.

Stand if you can

Incorporating body language into your talk raises it to another dimension. If we were meeting in person, we would never dream of giving a talk sitting down. With covid and lockdown restrictions we now meet often on Zoom. Because we are on Zoom it is apparently OK to give talks sitting down. I am from the school which says if you are a speaker you stand. It actually isn’t that difficult to rearrange your desk and camera angles to enable you to do that. It just takes a little effort. Sitting down with your face filling the screen robs you of the ability to use your body and to take advantage of your screen stage. What you do get is the occasional disembodied hand.

If you are unable to stand for any reason, then you can move your chair further back from the camera so that the audience can see more of you and that again enables you to take advantage of using body language to engage with your audience.

Practicing these skills will elevate your business speaking to new heights, making the experience more engaging and useful for your audience and more productive for you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marcus Grodentz is a member of Toastmasters International, a not-for-profit organisation that has provided communication and leadership skills since 1924 through a worldwide network of clubs. There are more than 400 clubs and 10,000 members in the UK and Ireland. Members follow a structured educational programme to gain skills and confidence in public and impromptu speaking, chairing meetings and time management. To find your nearest club, visit www.toastmasters.org

News

How to moderate a business panel discussion successfully

By Jon Lam, Toastmasters International

Have you considered becoming a moderator (chair) of panel discussions at conferences or other business events? The success of a panel discussion relies on how it is moderated.  As well as providing a valuable service stepping into this role is also a good way to raise your profile.

Let’s look at ways to ensure that you can moderate a panel discussion with ease.

Hone your ability to improvise

Unexpected things will happen ranging from technical glitches to over-dominating panellists. This means it’s best to prepare for a situation where you may have to improvise. In a panel discussion I once moderated, technical glitches caused a speaker to lose connection. I had to improvise to keep up the momentum of the discussion.

One way to prepare for the unplanned is to enhance your impromptu speaking skills. Practising in a group is the best method to start with. You can do this with friends or by seeking out public speaking groups such as a Toastmasters International club where you can practise talking about any topic without preparation.

Prepare

Make sure that your panellists are aligned on the flow of the discussion. This can involve confirming the allotted time for the whole discussion and sharing your questions in advance so that panellists have ample time to prepare their answers.

Common occurrences in panel discussions are awkward silences or where a panellist goes completely off-topic.

One method to offset these risks is to assign each question to the specific panellist who can add the most value. This panellist will be your main speaker to answer the question, and then you can check if the other panellists want to contribute. This preparation can help avoid situations where panellists are caught off guard with a question they cannot answer or having them go off on a tangent in an attempt to answer.

Keep pushing the discussion forward

It is important for the moderator to make the event feel like a discussion. If you see that one panellist is dominating, it is crucial that you speak up. To do this you must listen to the discussion rather than focusing on your performance as a moderator. By doing this, you’ll be able to ask relevant follow-up questions to the panellists that have spoken less, thus also pushing the discussion forward.

For those situations where you are faced with a dominating speaker, a good technique is to preface a question as a ‘lightning round’ or request a ‘one sentence’ answer if time is limited.

Help the Q&A to flow

After your panellists finish speaking, you may have questions from audience. Instead of having your audience shout out their questions, find a way (there are various apps etc. that can help here) to have questions sent to you throughout the whole panel discussion. This way you’ll have a wider selection of questions to pick from and can filter out any inappropriate questions. You’ll then be able to ask relevant and popular questions that will add value to the audience and provide them with a more insightful experience.

A nightmare for all moderators is a situation where there are no questions at all from an unengaged audience. One method to mitigate this is to prepare your own set of questions. This way, you’ll be able to avoid the awkward silence as you wait for questions to come in. Furthermore, you can continue the momentum of the session with questions that your audience may find valuable but may not have thought of.

A call-to-action 

What is the best way to finish a panel? One good technique is to summarise briefly the key points that were covered and conclude with a call to action. A ‘call to action’ is an invitation to the audience to take a desired action. This can be for the audience to reach out to the panellists if they have any further questions, or to visit a website for more resources on the topic. This can help you prolong the engagement you have with the audience and give them a clear sense of what they can do with the insight gained from the discussion.

The role of panel moderator is a valuable one – well worth the practice and preparation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jon Lam is a member of Toastmasters International, a not-for-profit organisation that has provided communication and leadership skills since 1924 through a worldwide network of clubs. There are more than 400 clubs and 10,000 members in the UK and Ireland. Members follow a structured educational programme to gain skills and confidence in public and impromptu speaking, chairing meetings and time management. To find your nearest club, visit www.toastmasters.org