A company hired a writer to boost its online visibility, but no one there had ever worked with a writer before. On the writer’s first day, his manager pointed to a work station and said, in effect, “Go to it.”
Without instructions or deadlines, the writer was free to add articles to the company’s website. He chose all his own topics and photos and made his own decisions on story length, tone, headlines and subjects to interview.
The result? In a year, the website’s readership went from zero to half a million. In the next six months, the website rose to the number one position in its field as the result of an online search on the web.
Later, a law firm made him an offer to double his salary. He took the job, but soon came to realize the new firm’s methods allowed much less creative freedom. Whenever the writer penned an article, one of the law partners would pull up a chair next to his and go over the copy, line by line, dictating things like paragraph length and photo selection. After two days at the firm, the writer quit and asked for his old job back.
What forces brought the first website to the top of its industry? And what forces drove the writer away from the law firm with its fat paycheck? If money doesn’t float everyone’s boat, then what is it that motivates people to do their best?
“Ginger Taddeo glows as she tells me about her son, an aspiring jazz musician. The young man wanted badly to be a standout entertainer, but he was turned down by several music schools—including his dream choice, the prestigious New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City.
He applied there a second time but still wasn’t accepted. “We were so discouraged,” says Taddeo, a recent member of the Crossroads Toastmasters club in Strongsville, Ohio.
Then her son made a radical decision: He committed to practicing 10 hours a day for 40 straight days. After this intense period, he auditioned for the New School a third time—and was accepted. “I couldn’t believe the difference!,” boasts his mom. “He was phenomenal.”
Setting goals, and working hard to achieve them, is something many Toastmasters can relate to, especially as we start the new year. Many of us have goals for 2016—to earn a Competent Communicator award, perhaps, or run for a different club officer position. When it comes to meeting goals, few members are better examples than Fran Okeson, DTM, from Staten Island, New York. You probably know members who have earned their Distinguished Toastmaster award. You may even know someone who has done it twice. Well, Okeson is working on her 19th DTM award.
In fact, she has made it a goal to complete 20. Despite physical setbacks and obstacles, including a car accident and a stroke, she bubbles with enthusiasm. “My body may be broken, but my brain’s not!” says Okeson, a member since 1988. “I’m an officer in six clubs. Every Sunday night, I plan out all my roles and speeches for the week. I’m determined to get to 20.
”I’m sure she will.”
Goal-Setting Fuels Success
Setting goals works. It drives behavior and boosts performance. Successful corporations like Nike and Intel set goals. At a personal level, your goals can create an exhilarating script for your life. J.C. Penney Jr., the American businessman and entrepreneur who founded the JCPenney stores in 1902, said, “Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I’ll give you a man who will make history. Give me a man with no goals and I’ll give you a stock clerk.”
In her research on goal-setting, Gail Matthews, a psychology professor at Dominican University in California, found that people who write down their goals, create action plans and track their progress accomplish significantly more goals than people who just think of them. She says there are three elements to productive goal-setting: accountability, commitment and writing down goals.
The Toastmasters program embraces all three of these elements, so why not use your club involvement to harness the value of setting goals? Why not use it to become a “Goal Master”?
SMART Goals
You may be familiar with the phrase “Good goals are SMART.” Here’s what this acronym stands for (and there are many variations as well):
S= Specific: Define your goals clearly. Don’t be vague. M= Measurable: Develop a tangible measure of progress. You cannot measure “kindness.” You can measure “I will compliment every sales clerk I meet this week.” A= Attainable: Your goals must be manageable. They must align with your skills and resources. It’s too ambitious to write a book in a month if you haven’t researched for it. R= Relevant: Is your goal relevant to your life’s principles or some bigger picture? The best goals…”
The current issue is available for viewing only by Toastmasters members.If you are a member, CLICK HERE to login. You must enter your user name and password to view this month’s issue. (If you’ve never accessed it this way, your user name is the same as your member number, which is easily found on your Toastmasters magazine label.) If you would like to join and get access to the rest of this article and so much more, contact our Vice President of Membership, Regina Edwards.
Watch the below to see a clip from The Dave Ramsey Show, where Dave explains how to set realistic and measurable goals in 5 steps:
Structure your humor around
three elements: surprise,
tension and relationships
By John Kinde, DTM, AS
“Most humor is unplanned. It just happens. Spontaneous events with friends, clients and co-workers create the surprises and uncomfortable situations that call for humor as a coping tool.
Fifteen years of experience in comedy improv (teaching over 1,000 workshops) has taught me that humor surrounds us. In creating a scene, improv players arrive at the laughter not by going for the gag but by letting a natural scene unfold. Life is funny enough.
When you structure a humor bit for a speech, don’t signal that a joke is coming.
And so it is with creating humor for a Toastmasters speech. Tune in to what’s happening around you. Be open to seeing the funny relationships, natural connections and stumbles that fall into your daily activities. Get in the habit of mining the humor in your personal stories. The humor is there. You just need to train yourself to see it, save it and say it.
Regardless of where your humor skills are now, you can improve them. Three elements will help you understand and structure your original and customized humor: surprise, tension and relationships.
These principles are illustrated by the classic slip on the banana peel. The slapstick spill produces surprise because we don’t expect someone to fall. It creates tension because somebody could get hurt. And it twists relationships. Seeing a distinguished person, perhaps wearing a suit, sprawled on the sidewalk is a relationship that is not normal. Surprise, tension, relationships… we laugh!
We are startled by the person’s fall and feel tension, which is then released with laughter after we see that he is OK. It’s not a joke in the classic sense, but the same principles apply to the creation and delivery of many jokes. Tension, relief of tension, laughter.
Keep ’Em Guessing
When you structure a humor bit for a speech, don’t signal that a joke is coming. We want the audience to be surprised. A line like “A funny thing happened to me on the way over here” announces to your listeners that a joke is coming. That lessens the element of surprise.
To enhance the surprise, place the punch line at the end of the joke. And within the punch line, say the punch word last. The punch word is the trigger that releases the surprise. By putting the punch at the end, we give the surprise more impact.
An example of that is the famous joke by the late comedian Henny Youngman: “Take my wife… please!” The first part of that phrase, “Take my wife,” signals this kind of meaning: “For example, my wife.” But the last word—“please”—suddenly changes the meaning to: “My wife—you can have her!” The punch word gives the joke its humorous twist.
If your humor falls flat, just pretend as if you weren’t trying to be funny. Since the audience didn’t realize you were making a joke, you don’t need to apologize for the misfire or explain it. Turn your surprise into your secret.
Tap into Tension
Laughter is a pressure relief valve that results in the involuntary release of tension. Uncomfortable situations, fear and pain are all tension builders that cry out for humor. Likewise, humor is often a coping tool in highly stressful work—in hospitals, combat situations and law enforcement, for example.
You want to provide your audience with an opportunity to release tension. To heighten your humor, place a…”
The current issue is available for viewing only by Toastmasters members.If you are a member, CLICK HERE to login. You must enter your user name and password to view this month’s issue. (If you’ve never accessed it this way, your user name is the same as your member number, which is easily found on your Toastmasters magazine label.)
Click on the video below to watch Judy Carter, author of The Comedy Bible, give a talk titled, “You can’t spell message without a m-e-s-s,” given at TEDxBayArea:
JIA Toastmasters Club 