ranscript: Elena Paweta interviews Cristina Juesas

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS

nonprofit organizations, tedx, toastmasters, leadership, public speaking, spain, organization, nonprofit, people, work, reason, community

SPEAKERS

Cristina Juesas, Elena Paweta

Elena Paweta  

Welcome to the next episode of ideas and leaders podcast. And today we have a great guest. It is my friend Christina Juesas. And when I will introduce her, I will feel that I’m introducing myself because we are doing a lot of similar things. Christina is a public speaking coach. She’s a university lecturer. And she’s also active in many nonprofit organizations.

Cristina Juesas  

Hi, Elena. Thank you for having me.

Elena Paweta  

Christina, what nonprofit organizations are you active in? And what is your why? Why are you engaged, so much in nonprofit world?

Cristina Juesas  

Okay, so I’m engaged actually in three different nonprofits, for very different reasons. I organize TEDxVitoriaGasteiz in my in the town where I live. The reason why I joined TEDx was because I wanted to organize a big event. That’s the truth. The reason why I stayed is totally different. So after going to my first TED event, which I had to go, because I wanted to have a plus 100 attendees event. And I had to, I discovered the TED were the power of ideas, the real power of the TEDx community. And I decided that I wanted to belong there. I know, this may sound weird, but I kind of found my place in the world. So that’s the reason why I stayed and why I keep on organising TEDx events

Elena Paweta  

That does not sound weird to me, because I’m also TEDx organizer in Poland. That TEDx community is international that all organizers are connected. And being connected with such amazing people all over the world who want to change the world who want to make the world a better place is so inspiring, and I can totally understand you.

Cristina Juesas  

I’m engaged also with Toastmasters International, that’s the public speaking and leadership organization. Again, I joined for a reason I stayed for a completely different reason. I joined eight years ago, because I was so scared and afraid of public speaking, I was not able to be on stage. I had to take pills. It was terrible. But I had to go on stage a lot because of my work. So I had to do something, obviously. And I looked online and found Toastmasters. I went to the first meeting and fell in love with the system. And back in the day, my club was the only club in the surroundings in the north of Spain. And my club. Well, I live in the Basque Country, for those of you who well, who can picture the Spanish map, and the closest Club was in Barcelona, which is quite far away. It’s more than 600 kilometres. So well, the organization was just developing, I saw the opportunity to develop myself in the organization, and I loved engaging with the people going to the different, you know, gatherings, competitions and all of that. And I got hooked. Again, I have this problem that I get hooked too early, with many different things. So once I start I can’t stop. That’s that’s one of my things. 

Elena Paweta  

Yeah. I can’t believe it that eight years ago, you were afraid of public speaking now your public speaking coach and lecturer. And so you really, you really developed your skills in this organization. But why did you start your leadership career because now I know that your district director in Spain and in Portugal. What was your motivation to go on this leadership path?

Cristina Juesas  

So I always say about Toastmasters that the more you give, the more you take out. And you might not see the results, or what you expect immediately. So if you’re expecting an outcome, like an immediate outcome that you can touch, and right now, you probably don’t feel it. But I have experienced it myself from the beginning that one day, I discovered that I had lost completely my fear or stage fright. And one day, I discovered that I was able to make people cry. While I was making delivering a speech, or that I was able to make people laugh, well, while I was delivering speeches. It’s not that I didn’t have some of this required skills to be a leader. But I learned how to identify them. And to make them work for a purpose. It’s like, you are given a methodology that you can follow. And then you look around and say, hmm, I have this and I have this and then a team, okay, I’ll recruit a team. But you once you know how to put everything in place, let’s say you learn how to Yeah, how to do it.

Elena Paweta  

And you mentioned also the third nonprofit organization?

Cristina Juesas  

That’s a fun story to the third nonprofit organization is our Medical Foundation. It’s a nonprofit devoted to infectious diseases, tropical travel health medicine. And I met them last last year when the pandemic started, because they were trying to, to spread the word about questionnaires that they were doing to try to map the pandemic in Spain. I helped them in the beginning just well, they were desperate. I it was the very beginning of our IFR lockdown in Spain, and we were afraid, scared. Worried. And we liked each other. That’s how things work. And they offered to the offered me when everything ended to keep working from him. And well, it’s something that I do. Because I like to devote some of the work. I like to give back some of the work for free, let’s say pro bono.

Elena Paweta  

I have a similar approach, actually. And thinking about all the nonprofit organizations I’m also involved in. I think that everyone has a different reason to start volunteering for an organization. So what do you think is, are the most common reasons why people join nonprofits?

Cristina Juesas  

The reason for joining, I am certain that is different from the reason for staying. We all have our reasons and our motivations in some cases is because they need they have time and they want to do something with that time, that spare time that they have. In some other cases it’s because they feel they have to do something for the good of humanity or what because, yeah, but it’s pretty much of the same. And in some cases like Toastmasters because they need to improve something they need to improve, basically public speaking. I don’t know a lot of people that joined Toastmasters because of the leadership skills you can learn or put into practice, but basically, because of public speaking, they want to improve their presentations and so on. But most of the people that they spend years in Toastmasters, they do because of leadership, or because of fun. So they don’t want to go and continue with the leadership track, but they still like the social part of the organization gather with people from time to time. And social aspect. I believe it’s the power of community.

Elena Paweta  

So, Christina, what, if you have a leadership experience, you are organizing TEDx events, and you’re organizing your you’re a district director now in in Toastmasters. So what do you think is different in leadership in nonprofit organizations? What are the main challenges of leaders in nonprofits?

Cristina Juesas  

Okay, that’s clear to me is the outcome, the money in a company, you get paid, or actual money, or you have other type of health insurance, or food or other type of wages. And in a nonprofit company, you don’t have that. So I can’t pay my team with money. I can only pay them with feedback, which is important. And other type of rewards are worth several, I would say. Small thing, smaller things that have practically no money, no cost, no money value, but that, personally, might be very valuable to the people. For instance, I’m gonna show you something. This, as you see is a piece of cardboard. This has no value. How much money is this? I don’t know. 10 cents. This has no money. No cost. But this was awarded to me by my students last term. This is priceless. And I don’t know if you can see it, but it’s dedicated. These are the type of things for instance, that in a nonprofit have a lot of value. This do learn how to give value without money. It’s something that in the western world sometimes it’s difficult to understand.

Elena Paweta  

What about motivation? How do you motivate your teams? Because it is really tricky. You know, those people work as volunteers, they don’t receive any money for this. How do you manage to motivate your teams?

Cristina Juesas  

Well, it works different in the organizations where I would I volunteer. So the Toastmasters team, they let’s say, they are also a part of the organization as well. In some of the cases, they have to apply. And they have to follow a process and they had to be elected and chosen by the people, which is in itself. It’s a motivation for them as well. It’s like you run you learn how to run a campaign, and how to achieve something from scratch. So how to motivate them, we had a plan, we plan first thing in the beginning of the term, and we try to get back to the plan, but not just the written plan, what is expected from us to do. I also always like to ask them in the beginning of the term about their personal motivations for being there. Besides what’s obvious, right? Well, what we all say, what they want to learn what they want to achieve in a personal way. Like that, I’m able to get back to that. And see if they’re really learning what they were expecting to learn, if they are really achieving what they were expecting to achieve. And to try to make these two things connect the reality with the will of learning or the personnel motivations. In the TEDx world, it’s different because the type of volunteering is slightly different. And we motivate ourselves. By engaging with the speakers by engaging with the community. We get to know people in our surroundings that are super interesting and impressive people to meet sometimes the things that they do, or the way that they think it’s super inspiring to be around them. So it’s, in my opinion, it’s a different way of volunteering, we don’t get the same things from one organization and the other. 

And then I believe it’s something that also has to do with the with the personal life. Toastmasters person who lives in France, she told me that she liked the way I was able to transmit joy in the things that I did back in the day. But I believe that when you have a vision for something, for instance, what do you want to be? What do you want to achieve in a couple of years’ time or in three years’ time, and you’re able to transmit this passion to your team? Whoever this thing is, I believe that the team finds also the motivation and the self-motivation to achieve tougher goals to achieve more complicated and more difficult. 

Elena Paweta  

How do you motivate your team in crisis when you’re leading in nonprofit organization, and you know that your team does not get any salary for what they do, how to motivate them to work.

Cristina Juesas  

So I believe the two organizations where I lead work in a very different way, for instance, the TEDx community, the TEDx team, is more prone to, to self-motivate. Because they are ready to work for the sake of humanity, and the sake of humanity is a better world. And the better world is tomorrow, in a month, in two months, no matter if there’s a pandemic around or whatever. So that itself is like a motivator. But Toastmasters works in a very different way. We were used to learn how to speak before an audience. Now we don’t have audiences. But what I always say is, we’re learning new ways we’re learning new things, we’ll be learning how to look at the camera a year ago, we didn’t know how to do this, this year, we’re experts in looking at the camera talking to them playing with getting to know all the electronics and the technology. And in the same way, there is something that we are learning for our careers. And it’s we are learning how to develop teams that are able to work in the distance. Even if we don’t see each other we are working and performing as teams in very different locations, different countries, even Well, that’s my case, I have people in Spain, and I have people in Portugal, and some of them playing different roles, but some of them are in Morocco too, because we have one club belonging to Morocco. So different cultures, and this is something super enriching for all of us. If you know how to look at these points of improvement, and I’m at this points of, of achievement, and that’s what I tried to tell my team, hey, instead of looking at the bad things, why don’t you look at the good things? Because there are good things as well.

Elena Paweta  

Yeah, absolutely. We need to focus on the positives. As a district director, you have the senior leadership position. You’re a leader of leaders, and you’re managing the team of division directors and area directors. So how do you make sure that your team are engaged and they’re motivated, especially in this distant working environment right now.

Cristina Juesas  

In our district, we have different ways of communicating what’s official, let’s say we have the email. That’s the most efficient way of communicating things. But then we have an informal Whatsapp group that works very, very well for us. Because either Was it when it was not me, or the program quality director or any one at the core team put in all the area directors in but it were the division directors. So they asked every one of their directors if they wanted to belong to that group, a lot of them say said yes. And the group was created. So the full district executive committee is in the group. And we use the group not just for, say, for sharing, official well, sort of official announcements, etc. But also to communicate the minor things. As I say. I’ve read this about Portugal. I’m sorry about that. Are you okay? Or listen, this is going to happen next month in Barcelona, you’re welcome to attend if you want this kind of more informal communication, that helps us also bond the team. And we feel we feel like we are a part of something together. I believe that’s important, too.

Elena Paweta  

The informal part is really important. Now, especially when we don’t have so much opportunity to gather together to have some conferences and in person business meetings. It is really important to keep this informal communication going. And what about yourself because also is a leader. And I know that being a leader, it means that people are looking up to you that they are listening to you, you’re inspiring them. But it is not easy to be a leader, especially in the times of crisis and not to lose your own motivation. So how do you keep yourself motivated and engaged?

Cristina Juesas  

I like that you make this question, because it’s something that I always try to answer myself, I am a very self-motivated person. I rarely am demotivated about something. If I commit to something to a cause, I take the cost to the end, just because I committed in the beginning. So I don’t, let’s say I don’t abandon just because I committed in the beginning. And that’s what I said I would do. And I will do it to the end. And this helps me a lot. However, of course, there are times where it’s complicated. And I need to get back to the origin to the why and ask myself – “Okay, why did I join? Or why did I commit to this?” And it takes me a while sometimes to reconnect with my why. But once I do it, I stick to my commitment. It’s, I believe, because I have like this extra sense of loyalty. Sometimes that helps me get across these tough times, probably. But that’s how I do it.

Elena Paweta  

Christina, what would you recommend based on your huge experience in leading in nonprofit organizations? What would you recommend to our listeners who are listening and thinking, what is it worth going into nonprofit organizations? What benefit can they get? Would you recommend them to get involved? And if yes, then why?

Cristina Juesas  

I definitely would recommend to get engaged in a in a nonprofit of their tastes. Because of course, there’s a nonprofit for almost everything. Any type of tastes or likes that you have in life. And also about worries, too. There are things that worry me that probably you don’t care about. Not because you’re you don’t care about anything, but because you don’t care about what I care in my surroundings. So look around. Look for what you care about. Also look for your own possibilities, what’s your knowledge? What do you like to do? And also, what would you like to develop? What would you learn?. And another thing is, when you work for a nonprofit, you always get a reward probably is not going to be the reward that you expected in the beginning. But it doesn’t have to be that reward. But you always get something in return. And in any case, don’t have your expectations too high. That’s another thing when you expect a lot, then probably you’re not going to get what you were expecting to get in return. So for instance, in my case, in Toastmasters, well, like I said, In the beginning of the interview, right, I was expecting to lose my fear of public speaking. And of course, I found that I am not scared of public speaking any longer, but I found a lot else. And in the case of TEDx, more or less the same, I was expecting to organize a big event. And what I encountered was a huge community of doers and thinkers and world changers. That I’m so glad to belong to. So yeah. Expect don’t expect too much. Look what you want to do in life. How would you like the world to be? And I’m sure there’s a nonprofit for you out there.

Elena Paweta  

Perfect. Thank you very much, Christina, for sharing your experience with us. So if our listeners would like to contact you, where can they find you in the internet?

Cristina Juesas  

I’m Christina Juesas all around if you type my name on Google, and the first one a period. So that’s easy. I have a website. The website is basically mainly in Spanish, I believe. But I have a Twitter account and link the Instagram, I’m even on clubhouse. Just type my name and I am around. I’m easy to find

Elena Paweta  

Perfect. Thank you very much, Christina for our conversation today.

Cristina Juesas  

Thank you, Elena.