Elaine, Carol and Jessie

Do you remember the moment that you made up your mind to join a toastmasters club? Do you remember what and who drives you to make up that mind?

You can keep your own answer, and I’m gonna share mine.

I moved from BJ to SZ at the beginning of 2016, happened to know there is a club called sunshine, whose premise was right beside my office building. However, for my first 2 years in SZ I only went there like once or twice a year, because I had business travel every month inpeak season, and had to prepared for CPA exams in off season. At that time,paying 1200 for half a year while only able to show up for regular meetings for several times was not a wise investment for an accountant like me. 

2 years later I finally passed my CPA tests and thought maybe it was the time! I talked to Candy of Sunshine toastmasters club,she sent me to meet Elaine, VPM at that time. Elaine and I talked until midnight on wechat, we feel like old friends. She offered to be my mentor, that was the first time I know about the mentor thing. I still remember the moment when TME announced Elaine to be my mentor, she gave me a warm big hug. We talked after that meeting in the subway station for long, she said to me:” You said you are afraid of public speaking and can’t stop being nervous on the stage, but not everyone can see that, you did quite well. I see something in you, and you are beautiful.” Her heartful and encouraging words means a lot to me. At that time, I was lack of confidence. It was Elaine encouraged me to take roles every time. Starting with timer, Ah counter,grammarian, then I dare to raise my hand to be the first speaker of table topic session, then TME and prepared speech. My 2 year toastmasters’ journey had made me a more confident beautiful lady, I’m happy that what Elaine said are coming true.

The first trait of a mentor I learnt from Elaine is to make believe, a mentor need to make your mentee believe in their potential.

Elaine was good at making speeches without much preparation, she seldom wrote scripts, I like her very much but when it comes to prepared speech I always went to Elaine’s mentor Carol for help, who always helped me to polish my scripts time after time after time. She’s an experienced speaker who won many awards in her 10 years’ experience in TM. She taught me how TM operates and skills needed to improve public speaking. She influenced me not by words, but by action. Every time she made a prepared speech, she read the manual book carefully, follow the guidance, wrote script, polish and rehearse it. Once there was a time, she drove me to library on Sundays and read books for whole day with me, because in order to output more valuable speeches,a good deal of input matters. I like her wisdom, she was not only a good mentor for public speaking, but also for my life.

So the second trait of a mentor I learnt from Carol is to teach by personal example, influence proteges by what you do and who youare.

Jessie is Elaine’s good friend, the first time I saw her I was making my 4th speech of a coaching method called GROW. She was interested in that speech and volunteered to be my protege. To be honest, I’m not a very helpful mentor, I’m good at pushing myself, but not others. Several weeks after I became her mentor, I was still busy with endless work and not very familiar with her. One day, she asked me if I could treat her for dinner on Saturday, I was like:” Oh, I never met someone who asked me to treat her in that straightforward way.” And since I was her mentor, I said yes. I invited her to my favourite Hongkong style tea cafe, and she shared her fantastic life stories, in that 2 hours I was totally attracted by her confidence, humorous and talent.Instead of coaching her some useful speaking skills, she taught me how to build intimate relationship with a new friend since I’m not good at building rapport with different types of people.I do encourage you to ask your mentor to treat you, increase their money and time investment, exchange life stroies and make you their close friend. You see, our protege canbe our mentor, too.

Stories of my mentor Elaine, my mentor’s mentor Carol and my protégé Jessie made me realize that mentoring is good bound between us. The Mentor-protégé relationship benefit both sides and make both grows together. Mentors make believe, teach by example and learn from the protégé. Also, don’t limit yourself to the delegated mentor,develop more undelegated mentors and see what surprise they are going to give you.