How’s the New Year Going for Everyone?

I hope everyone has set some exciting and challenging goals for 2013. By the very nature of the fact that you are a Toastmaster you are someone that is striving to improve yourself. I know that you don’t need to be reminded of the fact that Toastmasters is a place for improving your speaking skills and so much more. At Toastmasters we learn how to evaluate each other, how to support each other, how to lead, and also how to follow. It’s a place where nothing happens because of a single person but instead it’s the group that truly creates changes in each and everyone of us. I’m a big believer in setting goals and using a plan to achieve those goals. Some of them may be grandiose and others are very simple but having a goal is like having a destination to move towards. If you don’t know where you’re going you won’t end up arriving anywhere.

Toastmaster Piper spoke to us about this very idea in January. We all know about the Competent Communicator manual and the 10 different speech categories that it lists for us to do. On the other hand, many of us have not paid a lot of attention to the Competent Leadership manual. If you take a look at the list of requirements, you may have already met many of them and are much closer than you think to receiving  the CL designation. This is exactly what happened me. I took a look and I was able to check off five of the 10 projects in the Competent Leadership manual as completed plus I was part of the way to completing most of the other projects. I’ll admit that being on the executive, writing our newsletter, and maintaining our website helped check off a number of items but it was participating in club meetings via various roles that really makes the differences. 90% of winning is just showing up (and speaking up when you’re a Toastmaster).

If you missed the January 24th meeting, the club voted to have a Sons & Daughters meeting in the next few months. We’ll get more details out to you once we have them :-).

I would like to officially announce two new members V. Fung & L. Maina. Both are returning members of Foothills Toastmasters so WELCOME BACK! For those us who are relatively new members of FTM, V. Fung was also our club president in the past.

March

Please tell Toastmaster Evenson-Wilczynska (VP Education) your availability for March as soon as possible.

Foothills Toastmasters’  spring speech contest is coming soon and the executive have already started planning it. It is tentatively set for the last week of February. It is the prelude to the International Speech and Evaluation contest. Stay tuned here for details soon.

Stay tuned for more information about our Sons & Daughters meeting coming soon.