AT: What is your title in Toastmasters and in coaching?

BB: DTM, IPDD, and PCC. Meaning Distinguished Toastmaster, Immediate Past District Director, and Professional Certified Coach. Professionally I help executives as their coach and I have also supported almost one hundred TEDx speakers during their preparation for the round red carpet.

AT: How did your TM journey help you become a speech coach?

BB: The experience in my club (currently Skylarks Toastmasters) and in other clubs, and the speech craft sessions I have organised and delivered helped me find my own message and the most efficient ways to transmit it. I look at the message of a speech differently, and this is how I can help speakers to be clear on their message and effective in bringing it to their audience.

It has to be added that we can better help others than ourselves. It is easy for me also to fall into the usual traps or make a common mistake. That is why I like to work with a coach, too, be it a speech in Toastmasters or outside. When I speak, I do it so that listeners think, feel and act differently afterwards.

AT: What brought you to Toastmasters? When did you join the organisation?

BB: I spent 24 years at GE (General Electric) and had a very successful career that took me all the way to the position of Financial Director and CFO (Chief Financial Officer). At certain moments I felt that although I work hard and contribute tremendously to the success of the company, I am not doing a great job in promoting myself. I wanted to improve in that area, and learn useful skills. One day in 2o11 I found myself in the California Cafe Company’s shop near the Basilica at a meeting of Budapest Toastmasters. Ballot counter and table topic speaker were my very first roles on that day. I liked the people, their attitude and the concept, so I joined.

AT: What keeps you there after almost ten years?

BB: The opportunity to learn and grow both as a person and a speaker, and the community. Transferring the knowledge, supporting others are key motivators for me, and I also keep learning and developing my skills.

AT: Professionally you also support others, mostly executives and business owners. How did your coaching experience help you grow in Toastmasters?

BB: The coaching skills proved to be very beneficial in leadership, as I see quite a few parallels. A well-constructed, skilled and motivated team can achieve much more than an individual. This is true for the corporate world, and especially for a voluntary organisation. Creating an efficient team is key for the success of a project, a business, or a club and a district in Toastmasters.

You have to trust your team, otherwise you start micro-managing, which is not good for anybody. There is a lot of strength in a good team, the power of the collective thinking and the synergies is incredible. You ask questions, then listen, really listen to the answers. To me this is one of the secrets of running a successful team.

AT: There is an important shift in leadership globally that takes us from the authoritarian style to servant leadership, where the leader is also a coach to his team. What is your view on this kind of leadership and how present is it in the corporate world in Hungary?

BB: I like to define coaching as a goal-oriented development process that uses solution-focused tools, offers new perspectives and keeps the client responsible for his/her own actions. We find many examples of this mindset in Toastmasters. It is a pleasure to see this shift taking place in businesses as well. There are still companies with authoritarian leadership. The good news is that I have worked with many companies with great corporate culture, a culture that supports the learning and growth of the people. These organisations believe that their competitive advantage is the happy, highly motivated and skilled persons employed there.

AT: How do you see the difference between coaching and mentoring?

BB: Coaching to me is a mindset, and that mindset can be very efficient in mentoring as well. Also, the tools are very similar. The difference for me lies in the focus. As a coach I focus on the knowledge and resources you have. As mentor I focus on a combination of your resources and my knowledge. I am happy to share my experiences and learnings,  and hope that it helps the mentee to find his/her own solution.

AT: When you need a team, how do you select its members?

BB: Luckily I know many people both in Toastmasters and in the corporate world. When I look for certain skills in a team member, e.g I need an organised person who is brilliant with administrative tasks, more often than not the positive emotions of our cooperation with that person pop up first. Then I think of the experiences and skills of that person before I approach him/her. I like to work with friends, it is a lot of fun.

AT: As executive coach you do not give advice, so I do not ask you to give advice. Instead, I ask you for a message to the readers of this article.

BB: Toastmasters is an excellent playground, where we can discover our passion, where we have the opportunity to grow and find like-minded people we enjoy working with. Be selfish, and take advantage of this wonderful organisation and all the good it can offer.

AT: Bea, it was a pleasure chatting with you. Thank you for your time and answers.