Editor’s Note
New Zealanders have a passion for Toastmasters. They chartered their first club in 1962. The Dunedin Toastmasters Club #2890 still meets every Thursday and consistently wins the President’s Distinguished Club Award. The birthplace Toastmasters (U.S.A.) has one Toastmasters club for every 41,000 people, while the New Zealanders enjoy one club for every 18,000 people. The New Zealander’s passion for Toastmasters extends to their club coaching as well. In 2010-2011, 11 club coaches successfully coached seven clubs. This Coach Weekly contains four stories from the North Island. Brian Oxley gave a lot of encouragement to the Tauranga Club. Marian Phillips and Sarah Talboys share the steps used to successfully coach the Newlands Toastmasters. Marie Cullen, successful coach of the Peninsula Presenters Club, offers some advice for all club coaches. While Andrew Pass modified a Speechcraft to gain more members and thereby improve the Orakei Toastmasters. This edition also features a MAXPLAN case study of a struggling club beset by changes in its market. This plan gives district leaders a great way to support and improve below-charter-strength clubs.
The Tauranga Club #3089
I had previously visited the Tauranga Club to help as a judge and as area governor. When they were having difficulties, I was asked to help them. I chose to become involved and to give them my energy to overcome their difficulties because I did want a club of this stature to fold.
I went into the club with an open mind. I did not use ‘Moments of Truth’ but just observed what was happening before I made any adjustments. There was one long term active member and three other senior members when I was asked to be club coach. One of the appeals of a club coach is that there are times when people can not see the wood for the trees. When fresh eyes take a look, they see things that others do not. I went into the club with an open mind and observed what was happening before we made any adjustments. I spoke with the members and gained not only their opinions but also their support for change. I discovered that the club had much potential. The club culture generally was great and the venue in general was very suitable. The club had attained levels in the DCP for four years out of the last eight years and they had five membership building awards over the same period. Parts of the club culture, however, needed serious attention. The biggest difficulty was getting people to walk through the door. In addition, members were not gaining what they had joined to achieve, partly through not being given the oportunity to do all the tasks available. This is where I did stand on some toes and cause some issues with a member, who I felt was the main problem (subsequently found others were in agreement with me but were not prepared to speakout). There was some burnout in some of the senior members which could be corrected with some much-needed support. It also had a high turn-over of members – which I wanted to change.
My observations identified many holes in the programme that needed attention. I was able to use my influence and we all actioned changes. I instigated a few changes and encouraged change in others by speaking with individual members. One big change was increasing the activity of the educational programme. On average, there is now an educational on three out of six week roster cycle. This allows for either five speeches or three speeches with an educational. Sometimes, the small adjustments I made gave the results they were all looking for. Other changes included encouraging guests and members to realize their potential. When a new person walked through the door, I ensured they were always greeted warmly. I gave massive amounts of encouragement, particularly to the new members coming into the club. I gave encouragement to existing members to step-up and step-out of their respective comfort zones – which was needed to get them to achieve all the tasks required to achieve a successful meeting. I asked and discovered what individuals wanted to achieve and then encouraged and showed them the way they could reach their achievements. With the newfound focus on the individual member, we added several new members who are very confident business people, who are also forward thinkers and extremely keen to help the Tauranga Club grow.
At the time of being asked to help, I kept an open mind and did not to have a plan. We were successful on this occasion, but that may not always be the case. Even though these are not easy times, there is still a great need for Toastmasters and what they do. I see that largest oportunity that has ever been available to Toastmasters, is now at our feet. People want our type of training and encouragement. Because we have the right product, at the right time, there are members waiting to join your coached club.
If I could start over, I would recruit members from another club. I recommend that you gather a team around you and do not attempt to do it on your own. Get all the clubs, if possible or at least the struggling clubs, to join forces and help each other. It does not matter what club a person joins, so long as they join. Speechcraft is an effective membership building tools so long as the attendees are encouraged all the way through to programme and given support to join a club afterwards. Some of my thoughts were a bit hard for some people to accept. I feel it is mainly due to them having a ‘scarcity’ mentality and wanting to protect ‘their patch’ instead of wanting to help people first. Zig Ziglar says, “You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”
By: Brian Oxley Club Coach of the Tauranga Club
The Newlands Toastmasters #8610
The first step we took on our journey in coaching a club to become distinguished was attending a club coach clinic. The next step was reading Toastmasters’ guides about rebuilding clubs. The clinic and guides gave us ideas about ways that we could assist a club to improve.
Familiarising ourselves with the culture of the club we were coaching was the third step. We did this early on, by working through the Moments of Truth. We also worked with club members to develop an action plan. The Moments of Truth presentation allowed members to identify the club’s strengths, areas for improvement and the actions required to build the club.
Step four involved encouraging club officers to undertake the planned actions. This encouragement comprised of hosting committee meetings, asking officers about their progress on tasks, and providing assistance as needed. We were very clear that if the club was to succeed over the long term, then members needed to take responsibility to address issues, we could not do it for them. Our strategy was therefore to make the committee take ownership and implement changes.
To supplement the actions of the club members, we took a few actions ourselves. The final step in our journey was to contribute to improving the quality of club meetings by becoming members and giving informal educational speeches on meeting roles. We also role modelled by taking on functions like chairing meetings and giving evaluations. The increased sense of organisation and enthusiasm in club meetings had inspired members to stay and visitors to join us.
Ultimately we succeeded in coaching our club to become distinguished because we recognised at the outset that the existing members were committed to retaining the club. They were also very good at bringing visitors to meetings and making them feel welcome. We built on these strengths and nudged them to do other things well!
By: Marian Phillips and Sarah Talboys, Club Coaches of the Newlands Toastmasters
The Peninsula Presenters Club #963
When I first started out as a club coach, it seemed quite daunting as members were feeling low and in “burn out” mode. They were fulfilling a few roles at each meeting and not getting the full benefit from the Communication and Leadership projects.
The club coach can help out by first listening to members to gain an understanding on why the membership has decreased as well as getting to know the club members. Offering to fulfill roles and encouraging members to stay positive and enjoy themselves at each meeting, no matter how many members attend, is one of the ways a club coach can be effective. Having “fun” is also really important and often small adjustments like changing the orientation of the room to introducing a new role to members i.e. listening post, can provide that much needed lift!
Offering to work through with the “Moments of Truth” with the club executive committee is one of the most valuable and beneficial first steps in obtaining a full picture on where the club is and how the members are feeling. It brings to light the areas that need improvement and especially what the club is doing really well.
Regular communication with the club members and getting to know what skills they can offer the club to help rebuild and retain members is essential to bringing the “spring” back into a club. You will be amazed at the mix of talents and skills members can offer, such as website development, creativity with posters and signs etc. Simple ideas like a board or banner displayed outside the entrance of the club at each meeting can help raise awareness in the community that Toastmasters meets here.
Always keep focused on the positive and help the members to work on the areas that need improvement. KEEP GOING, even when times are tough it will get better. Always be open to new ideas and suggestions because not everything the club decides on to increased the membership will work and members may feel deflated at this point. KEEP GOING and striving to build a club based on foundations cast in stone. This is achieved one step at a time.
The club coach is a counselor, a source of knowledge and a fountain of ideas and provides an opportunity to Toastmaster members to help build people and give them back confidence in their ability to grow the club back to full strength. There may be times when the club is discouraged, but you must keep your enthusiasm. Remember what Winston Churchill once said: “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm”
By Maree Cullen, Club Coach of the Peninsula Presenters Club
Orakei Toastmasters #7721
After starting the year slowly with only nine members, Orakei Toastmasters finished it at high speed with 15 members and President’s Distinguished status.
How? Well Orakei began with the tried and trusted method of guest educationals and speeches. Some of them were pretty good, and even as an experienced member I learned some things. But it was a revolving door, no continuity. So six months into the year and standing still (gained four, lost four), that plan was dropped.
Orakei has a tradition of running Speechcraft courses twice a year in association with a local college. The courses were run at the college, and rather disappointingly the first course of the year yielded no new members at all. On a suggestion from another club we decided to run the second course at the club venue, on both normal meeting nights and the “in between” weeks (we’re a twice-a-month club).
At the first session there were 13 Speechcrafters, more than doubling the meeting attendance and, most importantly, sending the energy in the room skyrocketing. The Speechcrafters were marvellous, the club members lifted their own games to match (club standards were always high), and the rest is now history: five Speech- crafters joined the club and in the following few weeks three other guests joined after their first visits.
Orakei Toastmasters meetings had become attractive. Success bred success, and now the club’s challenges are to provide value to both new and existing members, and to continue to attract more to join us.
By Andrew Pass, DTM , Club Coach of Orakei Toastmasters
A Letter of Praise
The four stories found in this newsletter are about a club coach, going into a club with an open mind, and finding out what is so. Every club has strengths and weaknesses and too often when a club “is in trouble” the focus is on the weakness not on the strengths. These coaches found out where the club was at and where the club wanted to be. They then worked with the members to develop and implement a plan to get there.
Of the three options to satisfy the ALS requirement, club coaching potentially takes the longest, yet in very many ways, can be the most satisfying. You work with a club that is possibly headed towards extinction and see it regain vigour and enthusiasm Often a club sponsor creates a club in the image of their home club, yet as a club coach you work with the club leadership to develop the image or culture that is appropriate to their community and their market.
Some years ago at a club coach clinic I heard someone say “the role of a coach is to make themselves redundant”. This is a accurate description and the coaches mentioned in this newsletter worked with the members of the clubs to develop leadership, so that the clubs would continue strongly with their own leadership in place, once the club coach assignment was over.
One of the issues that District 72 faces is that the number of clubs which qualify for coaches, usually exceeds the number of coaches available. This can be exasperated by a struggling club being some hours drive from other clubs. We developed a programme that we call the MAXPLAN (Maximum Impact), available at… http://mikeraffety.com/blog/2010/12/13/the-max -plan-from-district-72/ It is for clubs where it is not practical to assign a club coach either due to availability or isolation.
The first step is a group session facilitated by an experienced Toastmaster. This can either have several clubs coming to a central location, or the facilitator going to the club. The session is four hours long. The first two are partly about identifying what is so, the clubs strengths and issues as well as identifying what resources are available. Part is also identifying what parts of the clubs market or environment have changed, without the club noticing or adapting to the change.
By resources I mean both what is in the club – people and material, as well as what is available from the district and Toastmasters International. There is a wealth of ideas and resources at district and TI, but these are worthless if the club members don’t know they exist.
The second half is the members of the club developing a plan of action (using a template) and evaluating the plan for do-ability and best use of resources (time. money, people). The plan is written down and the members sign it.
Where the virtual coaching comes in, that a copy of the plan is given to a virtual coach. (The role does meet the ALS requirement). It is not expected that this coach will visit the club, instead they have regular scheduled either phone or Skype calls with the club leaders to discus how the plan is going, what issues have come up, what victories have been achieved and whether the plan needs tweaking. Just like an official club coach is working through the current members to rebuild the club, so is the virtual club coach, albeit by technology.
Murray Coutts, DTM2010/11 Lt Governor Marketing
2011/12 Lt Governor Education & Training District 72