Every role counts

Having been a Toastmaster for many years, I usually take on more challenging roles such as language evaluator, project evaluator or Toastmaster-of-the-evening during chapter meetings.

At my club's August meeting, due to shortage of manpower, I had to double up as a timer. 'Chicken feed', I thought to myself. I had always considered the timer role as the easiest one. All you had to do was time every speaker's speech, show the colour cards at different timing and report the timings when called upon to do so.

During the table topics session, I was keen to jot down the topics. In doing so, I distracted myself from my duties as a timer! I was supposed to flip the green card at the 1 minute mark but forgot to do so for one speaker til it was 1 min 42 secs. Another time, I totally forgot to time the speaker and only realised in panic when she was almost concluding her impromptu speech!

What a terrible timer I was that day! The experience impressed upon me a very important lesson: EVERY ROLE COUNTS. Even if your role appears insignificant or easy, not doing a good job at it will affect others as well. I also learnt that if you want to do a good job, you must pay attention.

Last night, I reprised the role of timer at the Humorous & Evaluation Contests at the NUSS Toastmasters Club. I'm happy to report that I did a very good job this time and paid attention to each and every speaker I had to time.