Editor’s Note
Humans have an innate desire to accomplish great feats. Once such feat was the construction of the Empire State Building in New York City. The architects and builders overcame many design and construction challenges to complete this marvel of engineering five months ahead of schedule. It became the world’s tallest building and held this title for 40 years. Club coaches accomplish great feats too. They have up to 24 months to rebuild a low-membership club, helping the coached club win the Distinguished (or better) Club Award. Gayle Perron-Krawetz only needed five months to successful reconstruct the Ball Jars to Stars Toastmasters Club. Her plan was a model of efficiency – finish the Distinguished Club Plan. To accomplish this feat, she consulted with current members to obtain commitment for completion of educational awards and focused the club’s attention on the recruitment of new members. Along the way, the club reinvigorated itself with new ideas, members and success. Whether you have five months or 24 months to complete your coaching appointment, read this story. Gayle’s efficient and successful approach will help you reconstruct your club and with a little luck, it will stand as a marvel of club coaching for many years to come.
The Match is Made
Ball Jars to Stars takes its name from the Ball Aerospace and Technologies, a corporation that made everything from Ball jars to a variety of high-tech products including equipment for NASA. This corporate club was chartered at their primary office in Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A. in 2004. They originally met weekly alternating between two corporate locations, Boulder and Broomfield. As membership declined, they decided to meet only in Boulder and twice per month. The club that had thrived for many years now dwindled in membership as corporate layoffs took their toll in 2008-2009. By early 2011, membership had dropped to 12 members.
A core of determined members sought help from Betty Chavira, the District 26 Coaching Chair. It was fate that brought both a member of Ball Jars to Stars and a willing club coach together at Betty’s Club Coaching session at the Denver Toastmasters Leadership Institute in January 2011. With Betty’s matchmaking and helpful guidance, Ball Jars to Stars began a five-month process that would become an unbelievable success story.
When the coach began the journey, the club usually had one speaker per meeting and was filling some roles as people walked in the door. With few members in attendance, it was not uncommon to have people serve multiple roles. They had some experienced Toastmasters that had been charter members and some newer motivated members who were the glue that held the club together. They had an active website which occasionally brought in a guest. Because of the tight security at Ball, outside members and guests had to be escorted to the room and only US citizens could enter. Sometimes this presented a problem if a member or guest was late. Someone had to keep running back to security to see if someone showed up late. There was no mentor program and no member goals were identified. With no member goals identified, a plan to be a Distinguished Club could not be formulated. With two meetings per month only one, maybe two speeches at each meeting, even the 12 members could not move forward quickly in the speech manuals. Advanced members gave up speaking so that newer members could give speeches. “I haven’t given a speech in months” was a common mantra. Use of the Competent Leadership Manual was not an apparent goal nor was use of the Leadership Track for self- development. One strong point was that the officers were having monthly meetings in an attempt to revive the strug- gling club and seemed determined to have at least one speaker at a meeting.
Let’s Win the Distinguished Club Award in Five Months
Club officers Joe Girard, Mark Von Bokern, Dave Gutow, Kathleen Shulz, and Kym Wootton teamed up with their new Club Coach, Gayle Perron-Krawetz to set plans for Ball Jars to Stars to become a Distinguished Club. The plan was to win the Distinguished Club Award in five months. Two members agreed to complete their Competent Communicators; which meant giving more than one speech per month. The club already won another DCP point by attending officer training. They planned to submit their April dues renewals on time, giving them a third DPC point. The club only needed two more points; they decided to focus on adding four more new members and four additional members. The membership goal was important to not only grow the club, but also to get the minimum of 17 members they needed for the Distinguished Club Plan. They also formulated a back-up-plan in case something came up and the two members were not able to finish their Competent Communicator manual in time. The coach joined the club and began earning another Competent Leader, at the same time demonstrating the use of the manual, which would give them a point.
Steps to Win the Distinguished Club Award
- Two Competent Communicators – obtained commitment of two members.
- A minimum of four officers trained at the summer and winter TLI – successfully completed.
- Submit officer list and membership dues on time – obtained promise to complete.
- Recruit four new members and four additional members – became highest priority.
- Coach joins the club and completes the Competent Leader – a backup plan for one point.
The club had already detached itself from its origins at Ball Aerospace. It was now a community club open to all. To attract additional members, the club proposed some additional big changes. With input from the club coach and its officers, the club, agreed to meet weekly instead of bi-weekly, change the day of the week on which they met, and as if that were not enough, they changed their meeting location.
To support their club during these dramatic changes, the Ball Jars to Stars Toastmasters partnered with a neighboring Toastmasters Club. The members of Speak With Ease promised to send two Toastmasters to present modules from the Successful Club Series. This would teach the current and new members about meeting fundamentals and improve the quality of their meetings. Another member of Speak With Ease volunteered to promote the club by distributing flyers to local businesses as part of a Competent Leader project. The coach decided to take on the coaching assignment as part of a High Performance Leadership Project so that she would be getting feedback from her HPL team who were also members of Speak With Ease, improving the chances of a successful club coaching experience.
Rapid and Dramatic Success
The club secretary worked at E-Source, and prior to the club coach coming on board, Ball Jars to Stars had conducted a demonstration meeting at E-Source to spark interest in Toast- masters. Since the interest was there, E-Source management agreed to reimburse the club membership dues, there was a meeting room available and all 12 current Ball Jars to Stars members agreed to move locations, the process of moving to E-Source began. The club secretary made the arrangements for another demonstration meeting for the first meeting at the new E-Source location. She made special effort to advertise the meeting throughout E-Source.
Within two months of moving the club’s meeting location, Ball Jars to Stars added 15 new members! The members began giving standing ovations for ice breaker speeches, an outcome of a decision the club made with the coaches prompting. With all the new members, the coach suggested implementing a mentor program with the more experienced core members serving as mentors, ordering a club banner and giving out badges as rewards for earning a new Toastmaster designation. The VP of Membership suggested using the on-line role sign up on the FreeToastHost club website and he gave a speech on why and how to do that. The VP of membership also started tracking history of meeting assignments and speeches to readily identify where members were on achieving goals. Members started to bring their CL manual to meetings. The President and VP of Education visited Speak With Ease which demonstrated what a successful club looks like. The two members who promised to give one speech a month fulfilled their promise, so the extra CL point was not needed and could be used to start a new Toastmaster year in July. The once struggling club was back on track and came into the station on June 30th as a Distinguished Club! What began as a hopeful plan for a struggling club, ended as a true success story.
Lessons Learned
As a coach, I learned that a club coach needs to identify the clubs strengths and weaknesses and work on playing to the strengths and overcoming the weaknesses. It’s important to identify what the club is doing successfully and what they need to do to be a successful club. Regularly giving modules such as the Successful Club Series not only help the club, but the members of the club to earn Communicator and Leadership awards. It is important that the coach listen to the struggling club and brainstorm with them so that the ideas they come up with are their ideas, not the coach telling them what they have to do. Partnering with a strong club in the area helps demonstrate how to be successful and also gives the stronger club an opportunity to go beyond the club for speaking and leadership opportunities. Every club has a different culture that needs to be respected and supported. Change is not easy for many people, but with tender and gentle guidance, a struggling club can make the necessary changes to become a vibrant club. Contributed by: Gayle Perron-Krawetz Club Coach of the Ball Jars to Stars #698823 District 26
A Letter of Praise
Greetings Toastmasters. I feel a song coming on, and it’s about the benefits of having a club coach. My name is Joe Girard and I was the president of the Ball Jars to Stars club in Boulder for one full year. We had been limping along at 10-12 members for several years. Officers were getting burned out. In fact, I myself was a nearly brand new member upon taking the reins. About half-way through the year Gayle Perron-Krawetz came on-board as our assigned club coach. It was a critical time. We were just about to take some bold steps in member recruiting through a local business that was interested in hosting us. Simultaneously, we were about to make a significant day of the week and a site change. Here is what Gayle did for us. She improved how we run our club, drawing from her extensive experience; from how we run our officers’ to our regular meetings. Some officers were even newer to TM than I was! She showed us how to set up our new venue to be welcoming and encourage speaker-audience engagement. She helped make the details of regular meetings more smart: from handing over the floor to how we perform Table Topics. She became a steady and positive encourager of members who showed potential and helped push several to competent communicator. She recognizes potential everywhere, and helped us build upon it. She has a tremendously positive can-do attitude. The member drive and site change were smashing hits, with many thanks to Gayle. Old members reached new levels. New members became involved. And we went from a struggling club to Distinguished Club status in a few short months. And in the end, I think, we made it because we didn’t want to let her down. Our club is very grateful for the coaching – and the multitude untold details that it includes – provided by Gayle. Regards Joe Girard, Immediate Past-President Ball Jars to Stars, Boulder