Welcome to SpeakUp! with Rita Burke and Elton Brown.
Rita Burke:Today we have with us, a woman who based on her bio seems to have a balanced, packed, exciting life. And her name is Tiziana Fathers. Let me tell you a little bit about her before we begin to hear from her. She's a member Toastmasters and has been for over two years. She's currently the president of one of her clubs and she held, several positions in cooperate, Canada. She's worked with hotel group. She's worked with the Hudson bay. She's a founder of a professional theater company. She's taught in the business program at Conestoga college. And today Tiziana is a business consultant and mentor focusing on self leadership and self inquiry. She has a successful, ironically, she has a successful podcast and it's called tizTALKS. What's particularly fascinating here is that we've asked her to give us a quote. That means something for her, that significant for her. And here's her quote that I like to ask her to begin by unpacking a little bit."The world is changed by your example, and not by your opinion". Now, I find that absolutely profound and meaningful, so help me, help us, help her listeners to understand exactly what you mean by that statement, Tiziana.
Tiziana Fathers:Well thank you, Rita and thank you Elton for having me here today. I love this quote. I have carried this one around for a long, long time. And it is a reminder that it's our actions speak louder than words. And they always say, there's another saying never, never listened to what a person says, but instead watch what that person does. And I think in today's world, particularly with everything that's going on in this entire world, we are bombarded by opinions and comments and oh, different viewpoints, which are fine. But I admire those that advocate and take action and put their focus more on doing something rather than. Providing a bunch of opinions, sometimes opinions just are that just opinions.
Rita Burke:You have hit the hammer on the nail correctly. Yes. We have lots of people that like to pontificate and offer their opinion. And very often they will not walk the talk. So thanks for that. Talk to us a little bit about your Toastmaster experience, please.
Tiziana Fathers:Absolutely. Toastmasters for me was something that. Well help me to pivot and a period that was very difficult for me. I had spent an entire year undergoing multiple ice surgeries. I wasn't able to work. I wasn't able to read, I wasn't really able to do anything that I normally did because my vision was severely impacted And I was struggling. I, my morale was at an all time low and I had a few very close people say to me Tiz, you. It's been a speaker for a number of years in various platforms in my past careers, et cetera, you have a voice and maybe we need to lead with a voice instead of eyesight. And I thought that was such good advice. And so I went out and I bought myself a microphone and started fiddling around with learning about podcasting and I joined Toastmasters. And I knew that that was the place that I needed to go to sort of find my people, if you will. And other people who really just have a passion for honing their speaking and communication and leadership skills, it was really one of the best decisions I made. Uh, walking through the doors of Toastmasters.
Elton Brown:I agree with you wholeheartedly with that last statement that you, that you've made. I wonder this, go back to example versus opinion. How do you see that work when you are a club or a club member gives evaluations?
Tiziana Fathers:A hundred percent. Evaluations, I think are incredibly important part of the Toastmasters experience and how we learn. There's I think a really important aspect to feedback. It can be subjective. However, if we start to provide just opinion versus valuable feedback that the speaker can back and work on. So I think it's really a fine line of opinion versus feedback. However, we encourage everyone at West Mall to be an example, so that at all, various other roles within the club, we are demonstrating. As best as we can with the skill, skill sets that everyone has in, in this is, this is how you would do this role appropriately, et cetera. Uh, so we, we try to teach that sort of walk the talk as Rita alluded to before. Uh, and we try to stay away from opinion and, and stick more to constructive feedback.
Elton Brown:What you talk about constructive feed, uh, constructive feedback and sometimes constructive feedback may not be as constructive because of the fact that it may be whitewashed. So they tell you how beautiful your speech was. Everything was wonderful, pure perfection. And you gain nothing from that, from the evaluation because you received nothing. How do you handle, have you ever found yourself in a situation where you felt you were being whitewash?
Tiziana Fathers:I, I believe that some people do struggle to give other people feedback and therein lies the opportunity for growth. We have a really strong mentorship program within our clubs. So we do encourage, uh, to work with individuals, to be able to say that, uh, you know, this is, this is a great format for evaluation. And to go through the fact that a really good evaluation focuses on a number of aspects. You know, with what they did well, what they could work on and what, what might be a good challenge for the next person for that person to try for that speaker to try. So we, we try to formulate the valuation so that it isn't just all. Oh, that was great. We really loved it too. A little bit more of a struggle. In that, uh, we do say this worked really well. We thought you did this extremely well. Here's some areas that we think would you could work on and I would challenge you to try to do this or this, whatever. So you would find that in our evaluations, that's pretty much the structure that we use at our club and it's pretty effective.
Rita Burke:I'm hearing then that you're satisfied with how evaluations that are done at your. And they're done in such a way that they certainly help the listener, the speaker to move forward and the growth and few futuristic aspect to it. This is what you can do next time in order to bring your speech, your presentation to different level. There's someone I know who, who is excellent at evaluating that evaluations and something that has stuck in my mind when I've heard him do his workshop on evaluations is the three questions that we need to ask ourselves as evaluators. Is it true? And is it true? Meaning. I may hear something that you did not hear in the speech, so we can't speak for us. Is it helpful? How is it going to help the person prove as a speaker, as a speech writer, as a presenter? And is it necessary? Sometimes we, the feedback we offer. We need to ask ourselves those three questions, but I'm, I'm, I'm shifting away from the purpose that we're here. I'm not doing the workshop and evaluations, but yes, I keep that in mind, consistent as I offer feedback.
Tiziana Fathers:Absolutely. It does need to be helpful and no question, it needs to needs to be helpful. Yes. I a hundred percent agree with you. Yes.
Rita Burke:And so. I have a question. And I think to some degree you can see it's loaded, but to some degree, I think it's going to help our audience to get a broader view perspective of who this woman is at interviewing today. And so here's my question. What makes you, who and what you are today? What makes you Tiziana the person you are today.
Tiziana Fathers:Well, that indeed is a loaded question, Rita. However, Can very confidently say that I am a culmination of my entire life's experiences and everything that I have gone through. Good and bad. And, and that's everything personal professional. My entire life. I bring my whole self and this is in to this day and I think. For me, I am highly introspective. I spend a lot of time in self-development. I'm very dedicated to that. I. Spend a lot of time speaking about self-leadership and self-inquiry, this is very much my, my line of business. So for me, that's really important that we put the focus in the lens are in ourselves. And I have this saying, we take ourselves wherever we can go, wherever we go, we don't escape ourselves. And really it is about. What can I do? And what can I bring? So if I'm struggling with something, then I know that I need to turn the lens on myself. So who I am today is I am a combination of a whole lot of mistakes. A whole lot of fantastic lessons, a whole lot of incredible learning, wonderful, joyful experiences, a lot of pain heartache. And, and I try to grab and take the lessons from all of that and bring that to, to what I do today, as best as I can I try to be as truthful and honest as I can.
Elton Brown:I think we all, that's one thing we all try to do is to be authentic. I think it's extremely important to, to be there not, then you have all of these things getting in the way of you actually moving forward in life or in your professional business. Speaking of, uh, we've been speaking about. Toastmasters you and self-development, uh, some of the places that you, you worked in in the past, and I would like to know what is your passion outside of Toastmasters, outside of all of that stuff? What is your passion? What makes you happy and relaxed?
Tiziana Fathers:Well, Elton it starts with an incredible cup of coffee in the morning. I'll tell you that I am passionate about my coffee and if anyone knows me, they would say that is absolutely true. I have a lot of passions that have nothing to do with what I focus on in my work. I enjoy interior design and decorating. I enjoy cooking. I can get very passionate about these things. I love to travel in my past life. I traveled extensively for a living, and that was just for me. The best thing ever. So traveled to me is something that I a hundred percent, uh, am extremely passionate about. I love to learn about other people and other cultures and learn about their food and way of life. And yeah, I'm pretty passionate about that kind of stuff. But I could sit and talk your ear off Elton about stuff that I'm passionate about. Music singing. I could go on.
Elton Brown:Well, we have you and I have many things in common. I worked for a project management firm and so I got to travel all over, uh, uh, north America. Uh, your, uh, uh, Australia, New Zealand. Uh, and at one point in my life, I was traveling so much until I would wake up in the morning and I would have to open the drawer when they used to put postcards in the, in the drawer, just so that I could remember what city town I would be in. I mean, this is how expensive my, my traveling loved every second of it. And I could not. Get enough of it. So I can definitely relate to your, to your, to your passion.
Tiziana Fathers:Absolutely. Yes. Yes.
Elton Brown:So what do you want to do next? Where do you see yourself in the next six months doing? Um, if you're, if you're, I w I, after hearing things about you. I think you are an individual who always have small goals, but they're ever present. And so I would love to know what a few of your goals are in the immediate future.
Tiziana Fathers:My goals for the immediate future. I'm hoping is one that allows me to make those steps forward. It's through the pandemic so much has been put on hold and on pause. So these are kinds of things that, for me, I've been extremely sort of vigilant about in terms of what I do next in terms of how that impacts everything in terms of safety, et cetera. So I, of course. Yeah, fulfilling my duty as president at West Mall Toastmasters and, and looking forward to passing the torch to next years and will be of course, the past president for West Mall on a business level, I'm going to continue to work in the area that I've been working in. I focus a lot on presentation and. First impressions and I'm doing a lot of that sort of stuff for individuals and companies at the moment, not seems to be going very well. I have a longer range goal. I don't know if I'm going to maybe do some of it in, within the next six months, but it's more of a longer range goal, but I would like to purchase something a piece of property in Italy. And, uh, the idea of even having perhaps, um, an Airbnb or just something that I can go to as well. But that is definitely something that is in my, uh, in my future.
Elton Brown:I'll be the first, I'll be the first to say, when you, when you, when you set up your Airbnb, please. Let me know,
well, I come from the hospitality industry, so this, you know, this kind of stuff comes naturally to me. And I love the idea and even running sort of even not professional or business retreats somewhere. And I think there's just so much more that I could do with a piece of property in say Italy would, that may be fantastic. Of course. Uh, Italian by descent. My mother and father were born in Italy and immigrated here in the fifties. And I have of course, a strong love and passion for all things. Italian, of course.
Rita Burke:Sounds so exciting. I just would like to be in your luggage when you're ready to go.
Tiziana Fathers:Let me tell ya. I'm chomping at the bed. It's, uh, you know, Elton, you talk about your love for travel, but it's been on hold for a number of years for me. And I was used to having two suitcases, one for. Warm climate and one for cold that we're always on the go because I never, within one week I would probably go from, uh, the east coast of, of Canada down to Mexico within the same week or down to LA or hopping over to, to England. And what have you. So I always had like two. Um, sets of luggage on the go. I had toiletries permanently packed and I was, I was a professional traveler, but I have not done that for a couple of years now and so I'm ready.
Rita Burke:Interesting. I've heard people call themselves professional, everything else except professional traveler that certainly resonates.
Tiziana Fathers:Oh yes. I knew how to get in and out of, uh, out of an airport very quickly.
Rita Burke:Fantastic.
Elton Brown:One of the things that I found out about traveling in ear and traveling is you get the best flights. I know this sounds absurd crazy but like, if you can get a flight, like at 3:00 AM, because nobody's on the plane. So if it's a long flight, you know, they have like six or seven seats that are together. And you can just, you know, just grab a whole row of those and just go to sleep. It's totally go to that.
Tiziana Fathers:Oh, good for you. I'm not, I don't particularly like those red eyes that I, uh, yes, for those that, do they quite enjoy? I know a number of people that were always, you know, fans of red eyes.
Rita Burke:So this is going to be my final question before. The goodbye, but here's the question. What would you like or listeners to one thing you'd like our listeners to take away from this session with us to the, about you, about what you do about your views, about your perspective, anything what's the one thing
Tiziana Fathers:I suppose. The one takeaway that I would love to impart on people is that things work. If you decide to work it that unfortunately we often missed opportunities and perhaps we don't completely fulfilled all that we want, but we also haven't given it our a hundred percent. And I say that even to some of the newcomers, uh, west mall Toastmasters. That you know, we have pathways and we have wonderful leadership programs, but it only works if you decide to work at. And, and I think that's probably what I have learned in the toughest lessons of all, because, Hey, we would love for everything to just come easy and naturally, and not have to work too hard on anything, but that's not always life and that's not always true, but when we can persevere and when we can overcome and when we can find the resources and the help. Things do work when we tied to work it. So that would be, I guess my little bit of wisdom today.
Rita Burke:Well, I'll say thanks for the lesson. Thanks for the opportunity for you to come and to chat with us about who you are and what you've done. And I'll remember that particular statement, things work when you. It certainly was a delight to have you on this podcast. We will be keeping in touch.
Tiziana Fathers:Thank you so much. Thank you, Elton and Rita for inviting me here today. Thank you.
Elton Brown:Thank you. Um thank you for listening to speak up to discover upcoming podcasts. Please go to www. dot Toastmasters 60 six zero dot come under News and Events. Look for the District 60 newsletter to locate the scale.