What is mentoring?
“The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.”
Steven Spielberg
When I joined Toastmasters, mentoring it was a very important part. It’s a process that helps you grow as a leader and it helps you improve or develop a lot of skills like: coaching conversations, critical and analytical thinking, assertiveness, feedback delivery, active listening and motivating. Regardless of experience or the role you play in the mentoring relationship you get to practice on a fast track. For me it was a full dive! And I learned so, so much.
But first, what is mentoring? In Toastmasters the description sounds like this: A mentor offers encouragement and guidance to a fellow member of Toastmasters while he or she works to accomplish goals. A mentor has the opportunity to share experience, wisdom, and knowledge while a protégé gains a foundation for building skills and meeting goals. Mentoring can be a rewarding experience for both the mentor and the protégé.
From my experience in all these years of Toastmasters mentoring is a way of getting to know yourself better. You understand how you communicate. You learn how you like to receive feedback and practice several ways to deliver it, finding your style. You discover if coaching is something that could be of interest for you or not. You work on time management and goal settings. You practice SMART objectives and how can that improve your public speaking abilities. You become a better leader, speaker and person.
If you are a protégé you will have a friend in your discovery journey that will help you develop your potential and reach your objectives. If you are a mentor you will have a partner that will help you sediment and understand better the information since you need to share it. No matter how much experience you have or how old you are, you can always use a mentor.
Now how to choose a mentor? Once you decided you want to become a Toastmasters member ask the Vice President of Education to give you a list of the people that are mentoring. Take a meeting or two when you just enjoy the speeches and assess which one of them has the skills you want to improve or choose the one you feel you have chemistry with. Now, if you found him or her go to the next step.
Like in any new relation you should start with your expectations. Both of you should present them. Are they doable or not? Are you two compatible? The second step are a set of rules you both agree to respect: no delays, straight forward feedback, online or offline meetings, how often and for how long. Just find your way together!
Here comes the difficult part: setting up goals, determine a timeline in order to reach those goals and the amount of work you’re willing to do. This should be done as soon as possible in order to start mentoring! The mentor and the protégé - both should set their goals. A mentor might want to improve active listening or maybe coaching styles, while the protégé is looking to improve eye contact and stage movements. Whatever goals you have and the reasons you joined Toastmasters make sure you keep them in sight all the time and take steps towards them.
Remember that each role of a meeting is a change to improve your public speaking and leadership. If your reason of joining TMI is about going to the next level speech delivery than each role you take on is a way to practice that. Bonus! You get to improve the way your delivery methods, organize and adjust information in order to reach your audience. If you are in a club to work on your leadership skills than you get the chance to practice them all meeting. How? Well - being a grammarian trains the active listening and feedback delivery in an assertive way. Being a Timer helps your coordination and time management - since you will learn how much it really means 5 minutes. Being a speech evaluator offers you training for: critical and analytical thinking, feedback delivery, motivation skills, speech organisation and delivery, and last but not least public speaking.
Before each role you take ask your mentor to watch out for things you want to improve. If you’re a speaker, you will get two evaluations: one from your meeting evaluator and one from your mentor. How cool is that? Also, after a role ask for feedback asap (as soon as possible) in order to understand what can be done so you can develop your skills further. And remember your goals - does each role and speech take you closer to them?
Did you reach your goals? Perfect! Set new ones, bolder this time! :) You can go on with the same mentor or find another one! Or try on your own - whatever makes you happy. And become a mentor for a new member of your club. Work in a different way your skills.
Mentoring is ongoing in Toastmasters and you can at one point even if you have a lot of experience to ask somebody to become your mentor. You can have a younger and less experienced mentor if that person has some skills you want to learn - reach out! Or you can have an old member of the club help you out in overcoming a barrier or a blockage.
Toastmasters is about helping each other grow and by helping others we grow ourselves. So don’t be afraid to ask a toastie to become you companion for a part of the journey! You will learn something, both of you, for sure!
Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash
