The Person Upholding My Mind

Pathways: Dynamic Leadership

Level 2-3: Introduction to Toastmasters Mentoring

Why do you join Toastmaster? Maybe you have heard of this question for many times. But here’s another question: Why do you stay in the club? Maybe you want to make friends, or learn new speak skills, for me, I may have a kind different answer.

I still remember the first time when I joined the meeting. I had totally no idea about what you guys were doing. Suddenly someone asked me: Ryan, please introduce yourself. I had to say, this is the first time in my life I delivered a self introduction in English. Even though that’s a online meeting, I was just too nerverous to speak, countless Ahs just slid out of my mouth. But what amazed me is that no one laughed at me. This is the moment I decided to join. After I joined the club, Jun Ge contacted me soon and said: Hey Ryan, you can choose a person in club as your mentor.

Emm… But what is mentor? I asked. Well, it’s just an experienced club member, who can help you if you need help. Oh, I knew it, just like a new staff in company, someone would help him in work. But then another question came to my mind, who should I choose? At that moment, I totally didn’t understand what is toastmaster, table topic master or evalutor. Suddenly, a word arose in my mind: President, Emm… yes, as a president, she must be the most experienced person in club. And her name is… Well, I forgot it, I browsed the agenda, then, Sherry became my mentor. Even though we haven’t talked with each other, it seems I have already gained a lot confidence because I believe someone good will help me.

My first role play is Ah-counter, when I was worrying how to do that, Sherry contacted me and gave me some links about Ah-counter, it’s just too good to be true, then I started to exploring those documents and prepared my role. After the meeting, she contacted me again and sent me 4 sections of wechat voice to congratulate my performance, it’s so encourage and sincere, which made it the moment I’d like to stay.

Well you can see, today’s topic is mentor. In toastmasters, we all have mentors. Someone regard mentors as a coach, actually, it’s not exactly the same. Compared to teaching stuff hand by hand, I think there is a much magical capability of a mentor, and that’s the title of my speech: Upholding your mind. Think about it, when we are in trouble, if someone just gives us a task list, like step1, step2, step3… Well, that’s good. But if someone helps us analyze the problem, leads our mind and let us figure out the solution by ourselves, that woud be fantantic. And if there’s any encourage after we finish the task, like “good job Ryan”, I would call it the “perfect” experience.

If friendly environment is the key point of attracting new member in toastmaster, then mentor must be an important key of keeping old guys. Maybe after the meeting, you can contact with your mentor for your problem as he will always be the guy who can upholds your mind.