This morning at Toastmasters, two things stood out to me:
1. A reminder of important planning and preparation are.
2. How much I’ve taken these things for granted with our Toastmasters group.

In the Inc magazine article I read yesterday, the concept that resourcefulness is more important than resources was attributed to Tony Robbins.

Was that blatant this morning! Several people made a bunch of excuses explaining why they didn’t know what to do about this, or that they weren’t prepared for that, and so on. There are tons of resources available before the meeting, from people with decades of experience, to assigned mentors, to manuals provided by Toastmasters International to help us with our jobs. (Resources don’t do much good when they aren’t used.) There really wasn’t any reason for someone to not be ready. I thought it was interesting, considering how seldom this happens in our meetings, that it came up for three different people this morning.

That said, it is a totally volunteer program meant to be a training ground for developing public speaking a leadership skills. That we are, normally, very prepared group–OR can ad lib practically seamlessly when not prepared–made this morning’s glitch’s stand out uncharacteristically.

Being one who runs meetings, workshops, and I’ll throw working with clients in this same bag, it was such a great reminder of the importance of preparation!! Being “on the ball” does wonders for people’s impression of whether I’m competent or not.

Obviously, life happens, we’re human, and we make mistakes. This is where the resourcefulness comes in. How can I fulfill my duty with as little interruption to the group as possible? With focus on the purpose of the activity (and not on my own personal issues), I’ll likely be able to come up with some solution that will enable the momentum of the activity to keep going.