Make Yourself Layoff-Proof

Serving your club as an officer may help you become "layoff-proof" by developing and strengthening your leadership abilities. In this post, I'll show you some of the opportunities offered by being an officer and a leader in our club.

The Toastmasters speaking program is designed to improve your communication skills. In an analogous manner, being an officer will improve your leadership skills with just a small amount of effort on your part. Before I start my examples, let me emphasize that leadership has nothing to do with the title of "officer". Having a vision of a better future and leading others toward that future is what makes a leader, not a title. What the title of officer does impart, however, is the authority to be easily accepted as a leader. If you're normally shy or reticent to express your ideas, you're given instant respect and an expectation to act.

Let's get to some opportunities as an officer:

• Getting good information while leading meetings, not as an emcee like a Toastmasters meeting, but among a smaller group where pulling ideas out of every participant is important, not just the few who always naturally speak up
• Performing long term planning, whether it's a membership drive, a website upgrade, an anniversary celebration, or even an organized sequence of blog articles ;-)
• Communicating your ideas clearly, generating support for them, and demonstrating your vision for changes that will improve the future
• Gaining experience with small working committees, breaking down large tasks into smaller tasks, scheduling and assigning them, and delegating the work to others
• Learning to get the best from each member of the team, providing support when they succeed and feedback when they fail, acting simultaneously as mentor and mentee to other officers

Sounds like work, huh? No, I mean really... This sounds exactly like what I and most employees do in their jobs every day!

And that's the point. As an officer, you will learn the same skills that are highly valued by your employer -- if you make the effort to identify improvements, speak up for your ideas, and work either individually or as a team to make your ideas a reality. That's what leaders do in all walks of life. Please consider your role as an officer -- and a leader -- and start layoff-proofing yourself as a Toastmasters officer.