I never thought I\u2019d be involved for 15 years! I have always had high goals and being a fantastic speaker is one of my top goals in life.<\/p>\n
I was so afraid of public speaking, I would drop a class while going for my Bachelor\u2019s, once I found out giving a speech was a requirement. That sounds crazy to me now. What I wouldn\u2019t give to speak to an audience of 500! My record is 250 and I know someday I\u2019ll break 1000.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve been counting, that\u2019s 2 reasons I\u2019ve stayed. Though I have my DTM, I\u2019m not the best speaker I can be.<\/p>\n
Getting over the fear of public speaking is not easy. It is arguably the hardest fear you\u2019ll conqueror in your life. According to Lominger, Presentation Skills have a development difficulty level of \u201cModerate\u201d (Political Savvy and Conflict Management are examples of \u201cHardest\u201d), which means it takes years to be proficient. How quickly you get better depends on many variables, about yours skills, your fear level and your dedication to self learning. I set 2 goals for myself:<\/p>\n
Leadership <\/strong>\u2013 A year after that, about 3 years in, I found myself as a manager of first one person, and then, as a result of people moving out of my area after a re-organization, a manager of 9. With no management experience, just my Toastmaster Officer training and my intuition, I lead that team to have the one of the company\u2019s highest Gallup Engagement scores and the Top Supply Department US Engagement Score<\/strong> for 2 sessions in a row! My team and I were famous for a brief time in our careers, doing interviews with real reporters for our company\u2019s, (Mars Wrigley Confectionary) internal home page. I also was nominated by a direct report for the \u201cMake the Difference Award\u201d<\/strong> and made it to the Regional Competition. All this I attribute to Toastmasters. Being an officer and networking with great leaders like Irene and Arnold Card and Paula & Willy Markert at Conferences gave me a foundation for being a Visionary, Motivational Speaker, and the ability to handle conflict.<\/p>\n I started 2 clubs. I co-started \u201cSkylands Community Club\u201d with Jen O\u2019Hagen when BASF left the International Trade Zone. When my job moved over to the “chocolate-side” of the business in Hackettstown, I started a new company club called \u201cMars Sweet Talkers\u201d. While Skylands disbanded due to a re-organization at the Mount Olive location where the entire leadership team left the business, \u201cSweet Talkers\u201d still exists with 35-40 people strong. Mars Wrigley Confectionary strongly supports the group, which has been a key to it\u2019s success. It\u2019s given our Leadership Team valuable visibility to President\u2019s and Vice President\u2019s, that still exists today.<\/p>\n Mars Sweet Talkers is currently working on building-out their mentor program. We\u2019re going from assigning everyone a mentor to giving mentors and mentee guidance and gathering feedback to assess areas of opportunities.<\/p>\n Our biggest challenge has been getting volunteers to take on the President\u2019s role. This year, we were able to successfully transition to a new President and we\u2019ve gone a lot stronger because of it! Our fearless leader, Patti Snyder, focuses on attendance while the club benefits from her passions as a Trainer and Education Leader.<\/p>\n I still can\u2019t do \u201chumor\u201d. It alludes me. I won\u2019t give up, even if it takes me another 15 years!<\/p>\n Mary Verrone, DTM I never thought I\u2019d be involved for 15 years! I have always had high goals and being a fantastic speaker is one of my top goals in life. I was so afraid of public speaking, I would drop a class while going for my Bachelor\u2019s, once I found out giving a speech was a requirement. … Continue reading “Why would someone stay in Toastmasters for 15 years?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,85,50],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tm83.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tm83.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tm83.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tm83.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tm83.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=831"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.tm83.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":848,"href":"https:\/\/www.tm83.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions\/848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tm83.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tm83.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tm83.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u00b7 2007 Toastmaster of the Year
\n\u00b7 2011 Area Humorous Speech Contest, 2nd Place
\n\u00b7 2011 Area Speech Contest, 2nd Place
\n\u00b7 2012 Area International Speech Contest, 1st Place
\n\u00b7 2012 Area Evaluation Contest, 2nd Place
\n\u00b7 2014 Area Evaluation Contest, 2nd Place
\n\u00b7 2015-2016 District Administrative Manager<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"