You’re probably one of those Toastmasters who need a jolt.
You attend meetings regularly, you serve as an officer when called upon to do so, you pretty much do everything outlined in the Toastmasters Promise. Well and good. (I mean, congratulations, you’re part of the elite circle of the Real Promise Keepers!)
But now you want to be president of that small society or, as mentioned, you need a kind of electricity that’ll make your Toastmasters journey even more exciting.
Be a mentor.
Below are some reasons why becoming a mentor is worth your time and effort:
1. You’ll fall in love with Toastmasters all over again. Mentoring a new member rekindles that childlike wonder you had when you were still discovering the organization, the educational program, the meeting roles, and so on. Amid all the busyness and (heavens forbid) disillusionment brewing in your head, going back to basics may help you see once again the joy of being a Toastmaster.
2. Mentoring helps you practice empathy. Putting yourself in your mentee’s shoes, you partly feel those healthy jitters again which you once had, prepping for your first speech. (Actually you may still have those jitters, but all the better for your mentee — now you can share your secrets to reaching this far in your journey! Peer encouragement, maybe?)
3. Mentoring is a leader’s duty. Every good leader knows that new members need guides and models as they venture into unknown territories — in our case, the Toastmasters frontier. While leaders don’t necessarily claim they know the “perfect” way of doing something, they sure understand they’ve learned something and are interested in passing on that knowledge.
4. Mentoring earns you credit. That’s Project #9 in the Competent Leadership (CL) manual (and don’t forget to get yourself an evaluator). And if you pursue a higher type of mentoring — mentoring new clubs, that is — you can gain credit for your Advanced Leader Silver (ALS) norm.
5. Mentoring gives you an opportunity to learn from your mentee, as well. The oft-cited maxim among teachers that they “also learn from their students” applies very well in the mentoring set-up, too.
So are you ready to take on the challenge of being a mentor? Here’s a manual from the Successful Club Series to give you more tips (some ideas in this article coincided with those in the manual).
Good luck, Yoda!
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