Leadership Lessons being a TLI Chair in Toastmasters

“A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be”

I have undertaken few club leadership roles such as the Club treasurer, VP-Education, President, and as an Area Director, at each level, I had different leadership lessons, which has helped me evolve as a leader. Last year July, I was entrusted with the responsibility of being the TLI (Toastmasters Leadership Institute) Chair. The Toastmasters Leadership Institute helps Toastmasters across the district to come together to network, share ideas, and be inspired. We share the best practices and experiences of senior Toastmasters with newly-elected club officers on how to best serve their clubs and grow as a leader. A lot of work had been done by the predecessors in setting up the TLI and reaching out to many members through the events. So, the bar was set for us to reach out to and raise it further.

As I look back now, at the whole term, there have been many memorable moments to cherish, and significant milestones which we were able to accomplish, maybe I will reserve it for sharing on another day. Let me delve in to my leadership lessons in the last one year.

    1. Leadership Success Triad – Vision, Autonomy, Flexibility

I came to appreciate this concept of leadership triad as being fundamental for leadership success in my role as TLI Chair. There are three aspects which one needs to have in place for smooth functioning and making a strong impact.

First and foremost, the question to be asked is “What is my vision as a leader for my team/company/employees? It is said:

“Leadership is about Vision and Responsibility, not Power”

Having a vision makes it easier to focus on when the going gets tough or it gets too much to handle. What is that we are trying to accomplish and what impact are we wanting to make, these questions will help us work towards achieving the vision without giving up.

The second dimension is the leader’s ability to give autonomy to your team and trust them to do the work. Most often, some leaders tend to micro-manage and end up taking all decisions for their team since they are the leader. They expect to rule their team with iron-fist and control them, expect them to abide by their decisions (or, orders!!). But that is a huge failing as a leader since it never gives the opportunity to the team members to showcase their talent. There is a fine balance to be maintained here, you have to give autonomy yet put in a process to check in frequently so to ensure good quality output.

The third success dimension is the flexibility to accept others idea/views. Sometimes, because of our past success, we may be tempted to believe that we know it all or ‘my way or the highway attitude’. Yet, as a leader, it is critical to keep this attitude at bay, because many failings happen because of the inability of the leader to adapt his views and accept others view.

In my TLI role, I had the opportunity to see all the triad elements in action (fortunately in a positive way).

The District Trio [TM Sarma Mahalingam (District Director), TM Pravin Mani (PQD), TM Satish Menon (CGD)] had the common vision of enabling members experience and we had the same focus for all the TLI events to give the best member experience, this ensured all our activities was aligned towards achieving the common vision.

As TLI comes under PQD (Program Quality Director), I had a trustworthy and passionate Toastmaster Pravin Mani who placed the trust on me and let me handle the TLI events as I deemed fit. He didn’t micro-manage or thrust his control on me except asking for updates and suggesting changes when required.

In terms of flexibility, many times during event planning, be it the event program agenda, role players finalization, we had differing opinions on the approach. Yet, at no point, we allowed our personal ego’s to come in, and we always were open to each other views and kept our common vision to dictate the final outcomes. I realized that being open to his views and event team views on some matters proved to right, since it was better than my view.

   2. TEAM in action: 

    Together Everyone Achieves More, and rightly so. Though, it’s become a cliché still it’s a satisfying experience to see it in action. The reality is, one can't truly succeed without having a good set of colleagues, who are equally passionate to work towards the common vision. We had a TLI Training calendar finalized at the beginning of the term (July-June) and budget allocated as per our plan. It was a good experience in project management and planning, since each TLI event was like a project/mini-conference by itself. And doing one event every month in the first term was equivalent to a full time job, if not for the support I had from my TLI team.

Each of my TLI event chairs and TLI SPOCs played a critical role in the success of each event. A big thanks to the following members:

TM Bhagath (Chennai Kilpauk YMCA TMC), TM Vinoth (HCL Pinnacle TMC)

TM Raja (L&T ECC TMC), TM Vijay (WABAG TMC),

TM Arun Kumar (Chennai Speakers Forum), TM Swathi Devi (DXC Chennai Chapter TMC)

TM Muthukumar (Infosys TMC, Chennai), TM Kavitha (CGI Chennai TMC),

TM Bharath (CGI Chennai TMC), TM Manisha (Wipro Chennai TMC),

TM Subramanian (BACI Chennai Silver Tongue TMC), TM Amartya (Terra VIT), TM Ranjith (Citi Odyssey TMC), 

DTM Malar (Virudhunagar TMC), TM Sasi Varier (L1 AD - Trichy TMC), TM Surya (TOASTMASTERS INTERNATIONAL-NIT TRICHY),TM Shantanu (K6 AD – Brisa VIT), TM Akhil (K5 AD – Nuvens VIT) and TM Gayathry (DCP Chair).  

Many role players had supported the event team for the success, Iam unable to put them here since I didn’t want it to become a vote of thanks article, yet their contribution and support for critical for the success of the various TLI events across Tamil Nadu.  

3.    Innovate to Succeed:

It is important for any entity to continuously explore the aspect of innovation as a means for continuous excellence. When we started the year, we consciously made the decision to innovate in few aspects to enable the member experience. So, we started with online zoom training (first of its kind then) yet it has come commonplace now in quarantine time. The online zoom was especially conducted for Division L members for ‘Train the Trainers” session. We followed it up with doing a live demo meeting for the “Conducting Effective meeting” TLI event. It got 190+ attendees and was immensely enjoyed by all the attendees. Next, we wanted to make the ‘New member Orientation’ session memorable for the new members who join Toastmasters. So, we launched the ‘Inter-Area Fun’ Contest where each area was grouped into teams and they played fun games and quiz based on Toastmasters, to compete and win prizes. Though attendance was less, it was enjoyed by everyone who attended it and the event pics say it all.

Usually, JTP and Emergence is considered a standard format, so to make it different and engaging for audience, we introduced ‘Judges discussion Panel’, where experienced judges panel discussed on their experiences as a judge and what to do and what not to do as a judge. Again, this was received well by members, who could relate to practical application of judging instead of a boring presentation to run by. Finally, ‘Emergence’ event where contest winners share their technique to prepare for contest, we innovated by clubbing a leadership session by TM Sridhar Renganathan. We had mixed feelings about it since we weren’t sure how the reception will be, because it was an afternoon session, whether people would be patient enough. However, it ended up as one of the best received TLI event with over 240+ registrations and many stayed back till 7:30pm to network and discuss.

So, be it business or your daily work, explore ways to innovate, and it will be a sure shot way to make your mark as a leader.

     4. Acknowledging others Support:

As the TLI team for this year, we were successful in making our presence felt, create memorable members experience and learning, which was acknowledged by many. It is easy to get into a mindset thinking that this success was only because of our efforts. While, we did put humongous efforts for all TLI events, a significant part of the event success was because of the support provided by others, especially TM seniors, talented individuals who agreed to be the faculty for the sessions and were generous with their time. One can't succeed on their own and often you need to take others along, for which you need to be humble and be open to reach out to others for help.

In our own lives and enterprises, if you have been successful, it might be a good idea to think and reflect about who all have contributed towards your success. It might be your family members, parents, friends, office seniors and others mentors, whoever it may be so, reach out to them and convey your thanks to them for their support. Sometimes, we tend to take certain support for granted, yet however small their contribution has been, they did have a role to play in your success.

I take the opportunity in this article to acknowledge all the speakers for the TLI events this year (mentioned in the chronological order of the TLI events):

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DTM Karthick Mohandoss (CAT-EDCI Club), DTM Sampath Sowrirajan (TN Mentor Chair)

TM Deenadayalan (HCL Speech Weavers), TM Gayathry (DCP Chair), DTM Sunil Jose (Asst Chief Judge), DTM Lalitha Giridhar (Chennai Toastmasters Club),

DTM Saro Velrajan(Chennai Speakers Forum), DTM Jayan (Meraki), DTM Vijayalakshmi (Meraki), DTM Sundararaman (Meraki), DTM Rahul Shankar (Tamizhootru Chennai Solvendhargal Mandram), TM Aravind Vikram (Ericsson TMC), DTM Pattabi (Madras TMC), TM Srijana (Ford Mustang TMC), TM Aadil (Chennai TMC), DTM Reena (Chennai Wordsmiths TMC), DTM Sampath Sowrirajan (TN Mentor Chair)

DTM Reena (Chennai Wordsmiths TMC),TM Subramanian (BACI Chennai Silver Tongue TMC), DTM Ravanan (Madurai TMC),DTM Sampath Sowrirajan (TN Mentor Chair)

DTM Sampath Sowrirajan (TN Mentor Chair), TM Raghavan Sridhar (AD-D2), DTM Sunil Jose (Asst Chief Judge), TM Pravin Mani (PQD), TM Adithya (Agua VIT)

DTM Subhadip Banik (Infosys TMC, Chennai), TM Selvarajan (Chennai Communicators Club), TM Sridhar Ranganathan (Chennai Wordsmiths TMC)

DTM Sunil Jose (Asst Chief Judge), DTM Jayan (Meraki), DTM Vijayalakshmi (Meraki), DTM Sundararaman (Meraki), DTM Parthasarathy (DXC Chennai Chapter TMC)

TM Shantanu (AD-K5), TM Nirav Katyal (Fogo VIT)

TM Hemamalini (L&T ECC TMC), TM Selvarajan (Chennai Communicators Club)

TM Mohanakrishnan (Symantec TMC), DTM Ravanan (Madurai TMC), TM Priyanka (Genesys TMC)

DTM Lalitha Giridhar (Chennai Toastmasters Club), DTM Rajeev Nambiar (Chennai Wordsmiths TMC)

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Hope my above insights are useful to you in your own leadership journey. I sign off quoting the words of John Donahoe who said, 

'Leadership is a journey, not a destination. It is a marathon, not a sprint. 

It is a process, not an outcome.'

For those unaware of Toastmasters International, it is a nonprofit organization that operates clubs worldwide for the purpose of promoting communication, public speaking and leadership. I have been fortunate to be part of this wonderful community since 2012 and over the various years, have had experienced mentors and leaders from whom I have learnt and applied a lot in my Toastmasters journey. If you are keen to develop your communication or leadership skills, you can search for any Toastmaster clubs nearby your location, and attend one of its meeting as a guest.