Page 8 - voices-2021-07

COVER STORY

the lead in blazing this trail to a new way of doing stress of being the CGD proved otherwise.
Toastmasters. As your District Director, I will With some help from our District Director

work with our Trio to continue to build new clubs and Region Advisor, I learned some techniques
and support all clubs in achieving excellence by for managing an increased workload and some
pursuing the following objectives. I will tools for working more efficiently. The most
• Recognize that online meetings are here important skill was to focus on doing one thing

to stay. Encourage clubs to explore how at a time, so I don’t get overwhelmed. This
they can incorporate online meeting requires some analysis of my tasks to rank them
technology into their in-person meetings by priority, then working through my tasks one
and become hybrid clubs if they so choose. at a time in priority order. We hear so much

• Work with our District 7 leaders to identify talk about multitasking, but no one can really
best practices for hybrid meetings and perform multiple tasks at the same time and
communicate them to our clubs. do them all well. Just find the one thing that
• Work with our District 7 marketing needs to be done first and do it. That’s the key.

experts to identify how we can market As the Nike slogan says, JUST DO IT! And as
Toastmasters and build new community our Region Advisor, a longtime Yoda fan, would
clubs and corporate Toastmasters often remind me: “Do or do not. There is no
programs in a post-COVID world. try.” As you perform one task at a time, one task

turns into two, which then turns into four. After
Please share at least two lessons you have a day of doing just one thing at a time, you may
learned over the past two years that make be surprised that, at the end of the day, you’ve
you a better leader than when you started completed five or six of your most important

the Trio journey tasks and gotten much farther than if you had
sat overwhelmed and done nothing.
Adjusting to Life in the Trio My first month as your District Director I
Before I started my year as your Club

Growth Director, I had a bit of an idea
what I was getting into, but I learned after
I started my work just how little I knew.
The constant work of building new clubs

and supporting low-member clubs proved
to be much more than I could handle at
the time, and I often felt overwhelmed.
One of the problems I identified was that

my time management skills were not
mature enough to handle the additional
workload. I thought I had developed some
decent time management skills, but the

8 ONE COMMUNITY