Have you looked at Pathways? Have you given your icebreaker speech yet?
Good evening Madam Toastmaster, Mr President, Fellow Toastmasters and very welcome guests.
As at a certain events, you may want to open a betting pool on how many times I say either of the words ‘Plan’ or ‘Pathways’. I will give you the number at the end of the speech
This evenings speech is the first of two speeches that I need to make in order to help me complete my High Performance Leadership project. The purpose of which is to apply my leadership and planning knowledge to develop a project plan, organise a guidance committee and implement my plan. Many thanks to Karen O’Donnell, Colm Roe, and John Dunleavy for becoming that Committee. In the second speech, which I hope to make in April, I will share my experience developing and completing my plan.
With this speech, I am meant to introduce my plan and vision for this project. In the second speech, which I hope to make in April, I will share my experience developing and completing my plan. In short my plan is to get everyone enrolled in and using Pathways and to understand Base Camp. It’s easy to use, I promise!
This project has been running for the last year or so, and I have identified a number of project goals which include helping everybody to get enrolled on the Toastmasters educational program Pathways, this is the program that we follow in order to work our way through the projects that will help to improve our Public Speaking and Leadership Skills. As well as encouraging those members to choose a Path out of the 11 available, and helping members to start on their Paths culminating in them giving their first introductory speech, the Icebreaker. I also want to assist everyone in understanding Base Camp and how it works.
It is important that people know how to access their projects and mark them complete in Pathways when they have finished them. This is because completed projects help the Club earn points that can lead to use winning a Presidents Distinguished Award, which includes a lovely little ribbon that we can pin to our banner when we get back to meeting in person.
If I had thought about it earlier, I would have realised that the level 5 projects can take a while, so I should have made this speech a long time ago. I would suggest that people start looking at the level 4 and 5 projects in advance of when you get to them, as some of them can take some planning and time.
As somebody once said, “A goal without a plan is just a wish”.
I have used as many reliable resources as I could to gather the most accurate information in order to share it with members. These include the Toastmasters International website, various training sessions including Officer training and other optional training offered by Toastmasters. On top of that, I joined a group of Pathways people on Facebook and I have read extensively about the subject and try to keep up with the Pathways updates.
I choose this topic as I felt that it might be use to both myself and the Club, to paraphrase JFK, “Ask not what your Club can do for you, but what YOU can do for your Club!”
Another part of my plan is that members will become familiar and comfortable enough with the Pathways programme so that that those who become mentors will be able to help their mentees with Pathways. My deadline for this part of the plan is for it to be completed at the start of April, after that I will make the second speech for this project.
As part of the effort to explain Pathways to everyone and to try and get them enrolled onto Pathways, I wrote the Welcome to Dublin 18 Toastmasters document, which amongst other things gives a quick summary of how to get started on both Easyspeak and Pathways. It explains how the Projects work, what an Icebreaker is and how to earn achievements on Pathways. Grainne and I also produced the Pathways QuickStart guide.
Together with these, I will be adding some VERY short videos to our YouTube channel tomorrow. The documents and the videos are in the process of being uploaded to the Club website dublinspeakers.ie, as well as the other social media channels, so they should easily found.
In conjunction with these documents, I have endeavoured to help individual members with their Paths over Zoom.
I’m very pleased to see that at this point we have most members enrolled on Pathways and that out of those members, the vast majority have started on their paths. Well done everyone!
For those of you who may have been counting, I said ‘Plan’ 10 times and ‘Pathways’ 16 times!
I genuinely can’t wait to learn about and hear all the wonderful speeches that the members of this club have stored away in their brains, so if you have any questions about Pathways, or need assistance getting started with it please get in contact with me and I will help as best I can.
Thank you Madam Toastmaster, Mr President, Fellow Toastmasters and very welcome guests.
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