The last few weeks as your new Program Quality Director
2019-20 has been exciting, starting in June with the training of a great group
of Area and Division Directors. Do you know your leader? Find out who they are here!
If you are a Club Officer, many of you will have already
attended either a Toastmasters Leadership Institute (TLI) or your local Club Officer
Training (COT).
But remember, although the training is primarily targeted to
all 7 of your Club Officers, all members are welcome to attend; especially if
finding out what Club Leadership is all about!
There are a few sessions left to run to the end of August
and you can find a complete list of training on this summary
spreadsheet or on the District Calendar.
Although we are in the middle of summer, it is time to think
about our Autumn Contests (Humorous and Table Topics). As is the case every
year, the rules
have been updated, please take
a read if you are thinking of entering a contest or holding a functionary
role.
Many of you have already attended one of our District
Webinars, look out for more information as I will be releasing a Webinar
schedule towards the time of our next newsletter. If you are interesting to
hear about particular topics or want to get involved, drop me a
line!
Last but not least, I am looking to streamline the purchase and
availability of Toastmasters branded materials from the Toastmasters store and find a way
to bring a District 91 Marketplace to life for the benefits of all of you, our
members. Interested? Drop me
a line!
The new Toastmasters year provides all members with the
opportunity to review their personal goals for the year ahead. Already there is
interest in establishing new Toastmasters clubs across the District. With many
members seeking to complete their Distinguished Toastmasters Award by June 2020,
there is support for club sponsors, mentors and coaches and running speech
craft, speaker to trainer and youth leadership workshops for High Performance
Leadership (HPL) awards.
A busy year ahead beckons.
To support all the activity, it’s all about teamwork. With
the backing of the District Director, Florian Bay and Program Quality Director,
Arnaud Sartre, this year, I will be assisted by Club Extension Chair, Bob Bowes
and Member Retention Chair, Seema Menon. With the addition of each Division
providing a nominated representative to service on the Club Extension
Committee.
With this experienced team, members wishing to set up
demonstration meeting to set up new clubs, help is available. Each division has
expressed a projected level of new club activity, there may well be an
opportunity to be involved, right on your doorstep. There are plenty of
occasions for members to volunteer to serve to support and learn more about
themselves along the way. Help is at hand. The District will provide you with a
demonstration box to assist you in running the meeting. Along with volunteers
to assist with the running of the meeting too.
Many clubs organise membership drives, during the year.
Interest in hosting an Open House Meeting for this year has already began. You
may find members wishing to manage this event as their HPL project. The
District will support your club when you undertake this activity. There is an
open house box of goodies too.
For your events, you are not alone. Established members are
often seeking openings both inside and outside their own clubs. Their
experience is invaluable; from running advanced club meetings, organising club,
area and division events, Toastmaster specific training sessions and to
cutting-edge and forward-thinking workshops on speech and leadership. The great
gift of being a member of Toastmasters, is when you ask for help, it will be
there. If you are hosting an event and seeking support, ask for help.
Member retention will be a key focus this year. Our District
is ahead of the curve in putting in place provision for membership numbers,
before this becomes an aspect of the Distinguished Club Program. To encourage
our clubs this year, there is a new incentive is year of 10+. This award will
be given to clubs that grow from their membership base number as of 1 July 2019,
to 10+ members by 30 June 2020. The 10+ is in addition to the member retention
element to the pizza challenge.
Helen Boden-Brewer – D91 Club Growth Director
I am looking forward to serving all our members and driving
the Club Extension Committee. It’s going to be a fantastic year ahead.
I am genuinely excited to see what the 2019/20 Toastmasters will bring to all of you in District 91. So far, the year started with a bang with numerous excellent Club Officer Training (COT) sessions and our first-ever District 91 filming day. The videos you’ve seen in our latest newsletter are some of the many that were filmed that day. All of this is part of our ambitious plans to inspire more members like yourself, with the possibilities that Toastmasters has to offer.
A lot of you know my passion for achieving excellence at all
levels of our organisation. But excellence doesn’t mean achieving goals and
milestones. Excellence is far more than that!
Excellence is when you’re encouraging a new member to
step-up and do a role for the first time.
Excellence is when you’re pushing your club to do better
than last year on any metric or aspect.
Excellence is when somebody delivers a quality evaluation that builds members up, and inspires to come back for more!
If you are a club leader this year, I would like to invite you to plan ahead to make your club the best it can be. Make full use of the Club Success Plan template that Toastmasters provides. Note that you can also create your own document like Canary Wharf Communicators or London Victorians did. The only limits on what you can include in this document are those of your imagination.
Excellence is also about stretching your comfort zone. What
inspires me so much about Toastmasters, is that it’s a never-ending learning
journey of personal growth. Whether you joined Toastmasters last month or 20
years ago, there’s still something new to learn and more confidence to be
gained. Personally, the confidence I gained at Toastmasters carried through in
all areas for my life. Whether you joined Toastmasters recently or a while ago,
don’t hesitate to push yourself and to expand your boundaries. A good way to do
so is by visiting clubs through our Club
Ambassadors Programme.
By Bob Bowes DTM, Club President, Canary Wharf Communicators and Area K31 Director
Change is not easy. It’s frequently met with resistance and uncertainty. Nevertheless, change is inevitable.
Having completed 2 DTM’s and 14 of the 15 Advanced manuals in the traditional programme, you could ask me ‘anything’ about the old system. As incoming club president at Canary Wharf, the executive and I set an ambitious education target as part of the Club Success Plan. Subsequently, I attended a Pathways presentation (it wasn’t as enlightening as I’d hoped!) and off we went.
I completed my ‘Choose A Path’ questionnaire and enrolled in the Dynamic Leadership path but I soon discovered that learning the Pathways program is very much like driving a new car. Just as many drivers never explore all the feature on their display dashboard, many Toastmasters never visit the Toastmasters website or establish an online profile. In my club visits, I now stress how important it is to log into the website before starting Pathways, read the FAQ’s and carefully navigate the program.
Whilst working my way through Level 1 (Mastering the fundamentals), I had to make several phone-calls to Pathways experts to help guide me from one step to the next. How, for example, do you move from one project to the next within a path? Where is the printed evaluation sheet? When completed, where is it stored? What does the circle with the percentages mean?
Bob Bowes
By the time you progress to Level 2 (Learning your style), Pathways starts to get more interesting and different from the old programme. Prior to each project you receive guided information about your next project speech via short videos, learning notes and quick ‘tests’. The value in the Pathways learning program begins to emerge. At the completion of level 2, you are presented with an optional concurrentpath, the ‘Pathways Mentor Program’. I encourage all my club members to adopt this path too, as it now forms the competence and ‘backbone’ behind the club’s mentorship programme.
By Christmas, I noted that some club members were on speech 6 or 7 but had not submitted a level for completion! This didn’t make sense to me, as the level 1 requires just 4 speeches. It quickly became apparent that this was a consequence of members selecting a path and then never going to the ‘dashboard’ again or navigating the path as they needed to. By this point, because I was working through the programme myself, I could coach others through the process and clear the ‘log jam’.
This month I completed my Level 5 (Demonstrating Expertise), where one of my projects was a 360 evaluation with my club executive, and subsequently completed my whole Dynamic Leadership path. I’m now a strong advocate for Pathways. It may not be as simple to follow as the traditional programme, but it is a much more focussed, valuable and appropriate programme in today’s world. Participate in it, talk it up and your new members will quickly embrace it.
To date, 10 members of Canary Wharf have completed at least one level (16 levels completed in all), with another 17 members within one of two speeches of completing their level 1 as well.
Change is inevitable, but as a club officer, leading by example coupled with knowledge and enthusiasm makes all the difference. Pathways is here and it’s our new members future!
I have of course signed up to my next path already. ‘Engaging Humor’.
The teacher was a little perplexed when I asked her for the naughty kids and the quiet kids to be invited to be participants in the Youth Leadership Program (YLP). She felt that this special after-school club should be a reward for good behaviour to the children that were already achieving good grades. I explained that in Telford especially, (a factory and mining town) aspirations were not high and some children were destined to follow in their parent’s footsteps into benefits and crime without positive intervention.
Sam with the kids from YLP
YLP changes young lives forever, by giving a voice to young people who find it hard to express themselves in a constructive way, or at all! Most children have been told to sit down, shut up, and do as they are told. I ask them to stand up, speak up and tell me about something there are interested in.
I’m just about to start my 7thYLP with 15 x fifteen year olds. I have modified the program to better suit English culture and schooling whilst maintaining the structure and teachings of Toastmasters. We do three rounds of speeches, culminating in a showcase in front of teachers, parents and friends. I conduct group evaluations after each speech and table topic and I have added the grammarian role to help the class learn about grammatical devices, new words and filler words. Each session has a lesson and the participants all get to take turns at the committee roles.
The teachers are always so grateful and so impressed with the both the quantity and the quality of the lessons. The children evolve before your eyes. They surprise you, delight you and impress you. I have yet to encounter any actual naughty behaviour. Most schools ask me to return once they have experienced the program and words gets round – I am very much in demand in Shropshire and Staffordshire.
We do need more Toastmasters delivering more YLPs in schools. The teachers want it, the kids need it, and it’s a great development opportunity for any member who wish to enhance their own skills. I’m happy to advise and guide any Toastmaster that would like to give it a go. I have met adults that received the YLP training at school who have gone on to become Toastmasters and they say it changed their lives forever for the better.
If you want to know more, Sam has templates for all the agendas if you want to replicate her delivery of the YLP. You can email her
