Challenges is the other name of life. They are the only constant in your life. Overcoming them is what makes a man out of a boy, a leader out of a manager. Like many, I too have been in many a challenging positions and have worked my was out of them, learning and growing along the way. I would like to share some of those experiences with you all.
In the early months of 2018, I was looking to grow my interpersonal skills for the betterment of my professional networking skills. I therefore decided to join the Lucknow Toastmasters Club. Such an initiative in the town of Lucknow was a new and exciting prospective for me. On joining the club, I realized that even though the organizers of the club were highly learned and competent individuals in their respective fields, they were unable to generate any traction about the club and its learning in the city.
After joining the club and attending the sessions for 2-3 months, I realized that it is a golden pot of learning for young individuals like myself who want to grow their interpersonal skills which, according to some reports, is the most important skill a professional can possess.
Therefore, I decided to join the clubs executive committee and work on the promotions of the club, I also wanted to streamline the process of the session so that the new guests can engage in all the learning aspects that are provided.
I started my promotional campaign for the club by targeting social media specifically as it is the most used and highly contagious platform for spreading the word. I planned on making short videos of the existing members, who tell the success stories about themselves explaining how toastmasters helped them in their lives. With a diverse membership I was able to get such testimonials from people of various fields from students to lawyers etc. The videos were then uploaded to the Toastmasters Club official social media handles.
I also started to work on an effective way to engage the guests to the sessions. I planned on having the guests introduce themselves at the beginning and give us their expectations from the club and the session, at the end of the session they were called up to the stage again in order to give us the feedback. I also planned on letting the guests vote for the sessions prize distribution so that they feel welcomed and included in the session.
These changes helped the club immensely in terms of guest attendance and our existing members along with the changes included to accommodate the guests helped the club in converting massive number of people as members. Subsequently our club became the fastest non-institutional club in the country to inculcate 50 members.