Editor’s Note
Humans have an enormous capacity to learn. From our first breath, we learn our mother’s voice and to recognize her face. Later as a toddler, we learn by playing. In grade school, we continue our play and learn the tools that civilization has deemed indispensable: language, literacy, math and science. Adults who pursue their passion for learning are lifelong learners. Toastmasters are lifelong learners who facilitate the learning process with positive constructive feedback. At each meeting, we listen to speech evaluators, grammarian reports and general evaluations of the entire meeting. Nick Doulas, coach of the Golden Voice Club, used feedback to improve his approach to club coaching. He relied on feedback from the members of the Golden Voice Club, the members of his High Performance Leadership committee, his co-coach and from his own reflections. Throughout his journey of self-discovery, the club continued to improve, eventually earning the President’s Distinguished Club Award. Are you interested in learning to be a better club coach? Seek feedback from multiple sources, reflect on that feedback and make the appropriate changes.
Beginning the Quest for Self-Development
The Golden Voice Toastmasters was chartered in 1984 as a community club in Great Falls, Montana, U.S.A. The club originally met at the Great Falls Senior Center and catered to the folks who frequented that location. They met every Saturday at 9:00 AM except for the summer. It seemed to have a healthy, vibrant membership, going strong until right around the year 2000. Then, membership seemed to stagnate.
I joined the club in 2003. The membership was rather low; right around 12 members. One of the main reasons why I was attracted to this club was because I wanted to further improve my Toastmaster skills. My home club had a membership of close to 40, and I was not progressing as fast as I wanted. So I thought, let’s become a dual member. I was 27 at the time and by far the youngest member of the Senior Center club. This was really good because I learned how to work with more mature people and I gained far more than just my Toastmaster goals. I learned how to work with cross-generational issues. Shoot, a good percentage of these folks were World War II veterans or older! I finished my CTM in ten months. I was thrown into so many different things involving the club. I became a leader, but we could never gain or retain new membership. Between 2005 and 2010 we moved our location five times and changed our meeting time three times.
Despite our actions, we never added members to the club. In 2006, I became burned out and left the group, but not really. The group asked if I could visit and help at a few meetings. I was fine with this. Then, I was asked to be a club coach. I agreed, and continued my quest for self-development as a coach. My hard-won knowledge, learned on-the-job, is found in the remainder of this story.
I began my coaching appointment by conducting an informal assessment. I took a look at the club and its members. I could see that the current membership was tired and burned out. A few members were doing all the work and they wanted a break. The membership was mostly advanced members. They had tried to improve the club in the past, mainly with modules from the Successful Club Series, including the Moments of Truth, however, those programs never seemed to work. I imagine that the programs failed because the officers did not know what to do. Either they did not read their manuals or did not have the proper training. Plus, most were over the age of 60, and let’s be honest the club was more of a social meeting instead of a communication and leadership training ground. Most of the leadership roles were looked upon as figurehead positions. The VP of Public Relations and membership did not initiate or consider an advertising or membership drive.
In November of 2010, the club had an unexpected, yet huge shot of enthusiasm from two gentlemen from Belize. Both were recent college graduates who joined Toastmasters to overcome their heavy accents and to work on their communications skills. Both of them were definitely driven to succeed! Both had an insatiable desire for self-improvement. Their enthusiasm, drive and desire, created a fire in the club! They attracted new people to the meeting and they entertained the current membership. I learned that if joy and laughter could be measured, then a ton of joy and laughter would make any club successful. It is too bad that they moved on to graduate school in New Jersey. They would have been great leaders in the club!
Although these two men from Belize were with us for only a short time, I learned one major lesson – we needed to promote the club. People had to know about us to find us. The club did not find these two gentlemen; they found the club! It was obvious that the club leadership needed to create an atmosphere for recruiting new membership. They needed to initiate a public relations and membership campaign.
My Perspective Changes in the Second Year
For the first year of my club coaching appointment, I didn’t have a plan. Not surprisingly, very little was accomplished. In the second year of my appointment, two key events led to the formation of a plan, and ultimately, our success. First, Jayne Rogers joined me as a co-coach. She provided a much-needed boost to my efforts for several reasons: she helped with the workload, she was enthusiastic and she helped me reconnect with the members. Upon reflection, my coaching style was less-than-ideal. If I could describe it in terms of language, my coaching style that lacked maturity, sophistication, patience, and persuasion of a well-spoken metaphor. At times I angered members. Jayne worked to smooth ruffled feathers. I was the bad cop; she was the good cop. Together, we got things done. Second, in April 2011, I began using the High Performance Leadership program to guide my coaching efforts. This program added structure to the coaching process. For example, the program recommended a vision, action plan and ideas to implement the plan. Moreover, it encouraged me to reflect upon my actions, take inventory of my leadership skills, and recommended a three-person committee who could offer feedback. The HPL program was a key part of my success (see the Lessons Learned section of this story for more details). Guided by the HPL, I created a vision of club success. That vision was to recruit new members who could relieve the current members and give them a break. The members of the club fully embraced this vision. These tired, overworked members needed and wanted new people with new ideas. The plan was to add five new members by changing our meeting time and location. I had learned from a previous move that a Monday night meeting conflicted with a popular television show and it was the start of a new workweek (stressful to some). Based on this knowledge, we decided to move our meetings to Thursdays because it was closer to the weekend, but not the weekend.
We Won the President’s Distinguished Club Award
The club needed five new members. To accomplish this, we changed the location and the day. The new location was easier for the general public to find. The time was changed because the club leadership wanted to give people more time to travel to the meeting after work, so it went from 5:30 PM to 6:00 PM. These two changes: Monday to Thursday, 5:30 to 6PM, worked. Four new members joined. The location was interesting because we went from a university to the basement of a retirement home, but the local community knows the new location better.
There were two other goals: electing new officers and possibly changing the name of the club. New officers were elected, but that became an issue when both of our Belize members were elected President and Vice President of Education and then told the club they were leaving in the middle of July. This unexpected news caused us to reshuffle leadership roles. The name change was tabled because the long-term members did not want to change the name. This was an emotional issue for them, so it was decided to table it, and possibly re-address it in the future.
The club ended the 2010-2011 Toastmaster year as a President’s Distinguished Club. The 13 members of this club earned five Competent Communicators, two leadership awards, two Advanced Communicator Awards, had 13 new members with a net gain of five and won 10 of the 10 D.C.P points. Beyond the numbers, the club greatly improved meeting quality by revisiting and relearning meeting fundamentals such as meeting roles and responsibilities. This was a key part of them shedding their lackadaisical, social club stigma.
Lessons Learned
How did I succeed as a club coach? Well, I thought about it long and hard when I was asked to write this article. I came up with many aspects that made my coaching appointment successful. I thought about it from a global perspective like ideas of persistence, teamwork and tenacity, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt the general ideas just glossed over the topic. What I wanted to express in this article is tangible processes and ideas that could actually help someone meet the goal of club coach. So, I re-assessed it from a micro- perspective. Here are the four main points which created my success as a club coach: the High Performance Leadership manual, a co-coach, a persuasive vision, and honestly, luck.
The truth is, the club won the Distinguished Club Award in six weeks. My club coaching was to end on June 30th, 2011. I did not think that I would be successful. In the middle of April 2011, there was absolutely no movement towards the goal of a net of 5 new members in the club. The club was not seeing any recruitment, and I was not energized. There were two factors which gave energy and focus to my mission: my co-coach literally screamed at me. Jayne’s action made me realize I was accountable, and I made a decision to change the focus of my HPL project from being a co-chair of a committee for our District conference to the coaching of the Golden Voice Toastmasters Club. Before these two decisions, I was a boat without a rudder. I had absolutely no form, structure or plan.
The HPL gave me a plan with structure and form because the manual is designed to create structure and form. In addition, I had support in the form of a guidance committee and then, an implementation committee (the club). These two things created accountability; I was now accountable to others. I had folks actually analyzing my efforts, and they were helpful in many ways such as creating positive feedback, critiquing, and making suggestions. In addition the guidance committee was balanced well with two very seasoned Toastmasters and three members with great enthusiasm, each guiding and helping me. One member had nearly 30 years of Toastmasters experience and another was a DTM. Two members of my committee had less than two years experience, and the last one was my co-coach and the current Area Governor. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when accountability and peer pressure become factors in a process. The fear of failure is a powerful motivating force. I might add that four of the five were members of my HPL were from home club. This made the accountability factor even stronger – I did not want to look like a failure in front of my peers.
The event that really helped me make progress was the addition of my co-coach Jayne Rogers. As I mentioned in the beginning of this story, I joined the Golden Voices in 2003 and left in 2006. Many of the members were hurt that I left the group. Frankly, I did not see what the issue was. I like to join new clubs to meet new people and make connections. I like moving around. It allows me to gain new perspectives. However, I would like to apologize to all those I hurt. I did not intend pain. I was just trying to grow. This hurt created a dynamic of people having a hard time trusting me because I betrayed the group, and it took quite some time to get over that hurdle. Jayne was a catalyst that healed the injury caused by my earlier actions. Despite my best efforts, I failed to enroll a few members in my vision and plan, this depressed me and I fell into a rut. Jayne was able to motivate me and help me pull out of the rut and engage the folks who did not want to hear my message. The moral of this story is to be cautious when coaching a club you used to belong to and have a co-coach because the journey is long and hard. You need a support system to help you achieve your goals. Also, the co-coach may have a better rapport with certain members within a group. Once I was energized; I re-established myself and went about guiding the members who I could and engaging in possible new member prospects. It is important to have a support system and a co-coach is just that.
The third concept that needs to exist for success is a vision. The nice thing about the HPL, it creates a section for you to create a vision and that is the essence of leadership. Create a vision and follow through with it. My vision was to gain five new members to give the current members a break! Once I defined the vision, I created an action plan to achieve this vision. To review, the club changed it’s meeting location and time. These changes gave us four new members. In retrospect, the vision was helpful because it guided our efforts. I could ask, will this proposed action help us fulfill our vision? I recommend that each coach begin by clarifying and crafting a vision. Then proceed with your plan.
The last element that created success for me was luck. Obviously only a very few coaches succeed. However, most who do succeed have everything planned out and ready to go such as using the HPL program, but that only creates the environment for potential success. One can have all the plans in place, but a little blind luck luck has to happen. Some say you can create luck and I agree to some extent, but you still need people to walk in the room and join the club – getting that to happen is tough! For instance, we got lucky that five new members joined the Golden Voices in the final months. One new member wanted to join because he was giving more speeches at his job. One joined because she wanted to have a new experience with her boy friend. Another joined because I asked her to and the fact that she was the incoming area governor. Our fourth member rejoined because his girlfriend (a current member) told him to so the club would win the President’s Distinguished Award. He was a former member who had not been active for two years. And I was the fifth new member. These five different reasons all helped to make the President’s Distinguished. Each was unique with circumstances that came together for the club at the right time – luck.
There are a million reasons why people join and leave a Toastmasters club, but getting five new members to join basically at the same time is amazing. Keep in mind these five people joined in a six week period. In retrospect, I learned that the Vice President of Membership of every club should do membership drives throughout the year. The club I coached never initiated membership drives. In my opinion, this is why they gradually declined as a club over the years. Membership drives are critical for continued success in any club, but getting people to realize the importance is tough. Most view the Vice President of Membership as a figurehead position. This role drives the life of the club—it gains new members with new ideas. Make an effort to create membership drives.
Overall, these are the four points that enabled me to succeed. The first: do the HPL manual in conjunction with the club coach role. It creates a plan for you to follow. The second: have a co-coach because the journey is hard and you need a support system to help you. The third: have a vision. Have a clear direction you want to the club to follow. Most folks want to be led. The fourth element was luck. I was lucky that five people were ready to join in the final six weeks. Keep in mind though, if it was not for the first three elements the fourth element of luck probably would not have materialized. So, it boils down to this: planning, support, and vision and the opportunity for success exists—grab it and succeed!
By Nick Doulas
A Letter of Praise
Nick’s efforts were totally appreciated by the Golden Voice Toastmasters Club. The club had received other awards, but generating new members was the biggest hurdle. The club thanks Nick for his persistence in working toward And finding new members and as the club worked on improving the quality of the meetings. The club wanted to receive the award for President’s Distinguished Club. Nick was instrumental in accomplishing those goals in order to gain distinction for this award. As coach, he was influential in training, mentoring, and encouraging new members as well as regular members. To have a coach is an asset to a club and helped the club to maintain a level of excellence. The dedication that Nick had to pursue his desire to club improvement is certain to be commended. I believe by asking for assistance from a co-coach and the three-member committee certainly helped keep him on track. With a project of this magnitude one has to have high moments as well as low moments. There were several accomplishments that were needed. One, to increase the membership, changing the day and changing the location were pluses. The two young men from Belize were such great role models, their attitudes were always the best, and their drive and fire were inspiring. Membership recruitment will be a project again this year. It is necessary to keep a club progressing. Nick was smart enough to enter the HPL program to develop a vision, an action plan, including ideas to put into operation the plan. Nick’s recommendation for coaches is a good one: Clarify and craft a vision, proceed with a plan.
BertieTurville, member of the Golden Voice Club