Editor’s Note
Journeys are exciting adventures with three distinct stages. The beginning is fresh and new while the novelty fades and challenges emerge in the middle ground. When the end appears, the excitement and focus return. This edition of Club Coach Weekly contains the successful coaching story of Shirley McKey and the Carleton Toastmasters. Shirley started the journey with a selfless offer of help. The club must have been excited because Shirley is an experienced Toastmaster. Like so many other university- based clubs, the Carleton Toastmasters faced three major challenges: low membership, poorly attended summer meetings and the absence of a permanent meeting location. To move through the middle ground, Shirley wisely established regular meetings of the club’s officers. This gave officers an opportunity to create, implement and follow-up on ways to improve the club. The officers quickly moved into the lead with Shirley offering key behind-the-scenes support. Together, they overcame two of the three challenges. Shirley’s journey as club coach ended when the club finished the 2010-2011 Toastmaster year as a Distinguished club. Every club coach and coached club undertake a journey. Will your journey end with success? You will be successful if you can help the club overcome the challenges found in the middle ground. Good luck!
Carleton Toastmasters – The Successful Journey Begins
I recently read a book in which the author, not knowing where to begin the story of his father’s life, decided to start at the end. I chose to follow his lead in this account of my journey as a club coach. In June 2011, in it’s fourteenth year and after a three-year drought, Carleton Toastmasters Club 9482, once again achieved the status of Distinguished Club. With this accomplishment, my official role as club coach ended and the reflection on how quickly eighteen months had passed was foremost in my mind. I felt a strong connection with all of the members of the Carleton Toastmasters Club, and for me it was a bittersweet end to my role. The sweet part was in knowing that the members had a firm hand on the torch and they would continue forward with the success they had achieved. Here is the story of their journey.
The members of the Carleton Toastmasters Club have always worked diligently to achieve club goals, particularly a handful of longtime members who have enjoyed the benefits of the TM program. They continue to pay it forward to new members, however, as a club located at a Canadian university, there have been recognized challenges over the years with maintaining charter strength after ‘school’s out for the summer.’ In past years, without enough member support and the energy to make it work, the club would reduce the number of meetings held in the summer, and some years even suspended the meetings for the summer months all together, making it a challenge to pull everything back together in September. Regular executive meetings, while commonplace in most TM clubs, were few and far between, as students struggled with assignments, exam schedules and going home for vacation, while the few core members juggled several executive roles at once in support of the absentee students and the club. Another recognized challenge at university clubs is finding a consistent location to meet. In previous years, while the club always had a location to host the meeting, it often changed from week to week and in some cases could even change on the day of the meeting if the room happened to be double booked. This instability did not allow for a very professional image and often discouraged guests (and even members) from attending meetings. While never a member myself, I have history with the club as their Area Governor a few years back. I am also intimately aware of the challenges of membership and the profile on campus because my High Performance Leadership project, supported by a team of Carleton Toastmaster members, was based on raising the profile of the club with the upper administration of the University. At that time, the project did not achieve the results we had hoped for (an interesting story for another time). It was because of my High Performance Leadership project, and its lack of success that I wanted to help the club move forward, with or without the support of the University’s upper administration. I registered as a coach with District 61’s club coach program, with the condition that I wanted to help Carleton Toastmasters, if and when the club qualified for and wanted coaching assistance.
In November 2010, I was asked to step in and in early December of the same year, I officially became the club coach. In my early days as the club coach, I facilitated regular Executive meetings and round-robin brainstorming sessions with the Club Executive and other members. During these sessions we did a SWOT analysis, reviewed the ‘How to Rebuild a Toastmasters Club’ checklist, and laid out a plan for success. In addition to the challenges mentioned above, we identified additional challenges which included; not enough experienced members to lead and coach new members; scheduling conflicts which kept members from attending meetings regularly; and insufficient resources to effectively demonstrate and promote the benefits of Toastmasters. As the confidence and participation of the Club Executive members grew, and after just a few sessions, I handed over the facilitation of the Club Executive meetings to the President, working with the President as a mentor behind the scenes. It didn’t take long before I was more of an observer and quiet contributor in the President’s well-facilitated meetings.
Planning for Improvements
During our discussion of the challenges facing the club, we brainstormed some new ideas to overcome these challenges. One of the first ideas the club members agreed upon was to change the mindset from the idea that the club was a ‘student club’ to the attitude that it was a ‘Toastmasters club that included students’. We felt this would produce more members for each meeting, especially for those sparsely attended summer meetings. We also took a vote of the membership regarding the time and day of the meeting to see if a change might address intermittent attendance. The vote determined that the time and date would remain the same and the members would make the commitment to ‘be there’ when they could. Another strategy that we committed to early on was regular open houses with more wide spread publicity, including the on campus daily e-zine, and a free local publication. It was our belief that this would promote Toastmasters and demonstrate what Toastmasters was all about. The club hosted several open houses to build membership. We are grateful to the many external Toastmasters members who participated in these open house programs, willingly sharing their experiences with the members and guests. As time progressed and self-reliance grew, the Carleton members took on the roles at the open houses that were previously handled by Toastmaster colleagues from other clubs.
A Broader Membership Base Produces Dramatic Results
The main benefit garnered from the mind shift from ‘student club’ was the immediate appeal to a broader membership base. A base that includes more graduate students who don’t go away for the summer, alumni who are familiar with the benefits of the TM programs from their days as an undergrad, university employees and external community members. The advantage of the broader diversity of membership became crystal clear at the end of June 2011 when the members voted overwhelmingly to continue the regular weekly meeting roster throughout the summer, a marked difference from just a year ago. Not only did the club have charter strength on July 1st, 2011, the membership numbers have actually grown throughout the summer. The club is thriving!
Personal Observations
There is at least one significant challenge still facing the club – a secure meeting location. A newer member, who happens to be an employee at the university, is working with university administration to secure suitable space for each semester so that members and guests will know in advance where they will be meeting. The challenge will likely continue as space at the university is at a premium, however, the club members are maintaining their optimism that suitable meeting space is available, and keeping members and guests informed with the use of the web site and regular e-mail updates. With the new stronger membership base, and a positive commitment from the Executive members, regular executive meetings have become the norm. The Executive continues to engage newer members in leadership and supporting roles, working toward a succession plan that will ensure a strong core of members to continue for the future. This summer after I had left my post as club coach, the Club Executive discussed and acted on ways to increase membership, ways which included, delivering external presentations to potential members; maintaining an energetic poster campaign on campus; improving the outreach through a new and enhanced web site; adding external social activities, such as a club volleyball team; and planning an open house in mid-September to inform new and returning students, alumni and university staff about Toastmasters.
On September 14, 2011, I returned as a guest speaker at the first Open House of the fall semester. I was excited for the Club and filled with pride as the meeting room filled up. I stopped counting as over 50 people entered the meeting room, and was thrilled as the Chair of the meeting did an impromptu poll of the guests to inquire how they had heard about the meeting. The club members had used multiple mediums to get the word out, including the web site, a poster campaign, on campus e-zine, direct e-mail and personal invitations. The majority of speakers at the event were members of the club and they were all outstanding. The venue, refreshments, and greeting of and interaction with guests were handled professionally and with grace. The members of Carleton Toastmasters worked collaboratively on the Open House and their efforts and success were impressive.
Lessons Learned
Over four months have passed since my role as club coach ended and the club is stronger than ever. At last count, the membership had grown to 28. I am blessed to have worked with such an amazing group of people and I know that I learned more from them than the other way around. As a club coach, I learned to listen more effectively, inclusively formulate positive solutions, and engage and encourage members to embrace their club and all of the tools that Toastmasters has to offer. In the words of Lao-tzu, the sixth century B.C. philosopher, “A leader is most effective when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, his troops will feel they did it themselves.” Congratulations Carleton Toastmasters Club, you did it! Thank you for the opportunity to join you on your successful journey.
By Shirley McKey, DTM
A Letter of Praise
I joined Carleton Toastmasters in September 2010, during a period of transition for the club. A university club, Carleton Toastmasters has historically struggled to maintain its membership base, especially over the summer as students graduate or leave for home. The summer of 2010 was no exception and the club struggled to fill its roster. Shirley McKey, as club coach, recommended reaching out to graduate students, alumni, university employees and external community members. Under her guidance, the executive promoted Carleton Toastmasters using speaking workshops, open houses and advertising on the university website. My own experience with Carleton Toastmasters was positive as the result of the hard work of Shirley McKey. When I joined Carleton Toastmasters the weekly roster was filled, and members enthusiastically participated in the Toastmaster’s educational program. As membership grew, Shirley focused on developing the communication and leadership skills of club members. Shirley always ensured every guest to our club was warmly welcomed. In June 2011 Carleton Toastmasters, a once-struggling club, achieved distinguished status. Much of this success was due to the hard work of the Club’s coach, Shirley McKey. The Club held weekly meetings over the summer of 2011 and membership grew to a high of 28 in September 2011. The current Executive has a goal to continue the club’s momentum and the Club is on its way to becoming distinguished again in 2011-2012, with four of ten goals already achieved. As a result of Shirley’s efforts, Carleton Toastmasters is a dynamic club that offers members of the Carleton University community the benefits of the Toastmaster’s educational program.By Beverly Zawada, Club President