Manage and Motivate – Coaching the Quannapowitt Club

What’s 61 years old, but doesn’t look a day over 15, is always enthusiastic, fun to interact with, and offers those who want to learn a plethora of opportunities to do so? NO, it’s not your mother, or your fixer up house. I’m describing the Quannapowitt Toastmasters club.

The Quannapowitt Club turned 61 in May, which is an incredibly long time to be an active community club. They have continued to thrive because the club is made of many dedicated members and because District 31 values the historical significance of the club enough to enlist help whenever necessary to keep its long standing clubs running strong.

Why am I telling you this? This past year, I served as a club coach for the Quannapowitt club and today I would like to share with you the reasons why I have found coaching a club to be not only beneficial to the club that you are serving, but also beneficial to yourself.

When I was asked to coach Quannapowitt, they had a mere six members. No matter how many guests they had visit, it wasn’t an enticing environment. Imagine walking into a speaking club meeting for your first time expecting an exciting meeting with lively speakers and being just a little bit intimidated by the idea. And then find you find just TWO people sitting there? Or maybe, on a good night, FOUR people who each create a speech off the cuff to fill the time for the next hour without any planning or preparation going into their presentations? Not exactly the situation most guests are imagining. No matter how much they tried, Quannapowitt just couldn’t sign enough new members to make the meetings lively and some of the long standing members were slowly fading away.

Some people wonder why we would bother saving a club like that. Why not just let it close. Saving clubs is necessary for the health of the district. We need clubs to be a district in good standing, just as clubs need members to be in good standing. Without clubs, the TM organization, an International organization, would fade away. We also need to remember that members make up a large part of the Toastmasters experience and we need to
retain clubs in order to retain members. We can’t have one without the other. And finally, we lose a piece of history with each club that we lose. Imagine the expertise and the tips and tricks that we can all garner from clubs that have been around for the past 60 years. An old Toastmasters club is like your favorite pair of broken-in jeans: soft, worn around the edges, familiar and comfortable, and most importantly, you keep wearing
them out because they offer the benefit of making you look and feel great!

You might think that club coaching sounds like too much work. Why would you want to commit yourself to a club that you barely know? Or don’t know at all? Why would you want to walk into a room full of strangers and assert yourself as a subject matter expert on helping clubs to thrive? WHY?! Because you’re a Toastmaster and being a club coach is an opportunity to test your leadership skills outside of your own club as well as give back to the Toastmasters community for which you belong. In addition, if you serve as a club coach, and your club becomes distinguished while you are coaching them, you will earn the recognition of Successful Club Coach and therefore have completed one of the requirements for earning your Advanced Leader Silver.

Now you’re probably starting to think that maybe you CAN coach a club. But…You don’t know how. How can you teach a man to fish, when you don’t know how to use a fishing pole? I’ve learned a few things along the way that I am happy to share with you. Here are five ideas that worked for me and may work for you too.

(1) Join the club. You don’t have to but it shows your commitment to the club, adds to their membership, and encourages you to attend regularly. I already belong to a club. I was serving on various committees for the district. I didn’t need another membership or the extra dues expense each year, but I joined to show my commitment and it meant a lot to the members of the club to have me as a member. And I don’t just feel like a temporary coach anymore, but someone invested in the club’s success.

(2) Earn the trust of the club. You can’t just walk into a club and start directing them to change their ways. The club may not be thriving, but no doubt the officers are putting their heart and soul into the club to have kept it going this long. You are there to guide them in the right direction, not take over. I earned the club’s trust by showing up and offering advice gently. I didn’t barge in and tell them what to do. I also became an active part of the club rather than sitting on the sidelines. I think that being a part of their meetings and demonstrating my experience as a Toastmaster helped to earn the club’s trust.

(3) Be willing to rollup your sleeves and put a little elbow grease into the process. Sometimes a coach will suggest, suggest and suggest some more, but the members don’t act on your suggestions. At times like these, it may be beneficial, once you’ve gained their trust, to take the bull by the horns and get the job done yourself. One example of how I did this with Quannapowitt was on the topic of meeting agendas. Agendas are helpful in ensuring that members run meetings consistently from week to week, they help guests follow along, and they are encouraged by Toastmasters International. Quannapowitt didn’t bother with agendas and as much as I suggested, and visiting Toastmasters suggested, and the Area Governor suggested that they start bringing agendas to meetings – the idea just didn’t catch on. I decided to do it myself. First I created an agenda following the meeting format to the best of my knowledge. Then I asked for officer input into correcting the format so as not to force other club practices on Quannapowitt, and finally after providing them for a couple of months I received an offer from a club officer who volunteered to take over the responsibility of providing agendas going forward. Success!

(4) Enlist the help of others. One thing is that failing clubs have low attendance, which is the primary reason for being assigned a club coach. It is very hard to attract new members to a club when they arrive to find three people trying to fill an entire agenda themselves, with none of them prepared with a formal speech. To help make the club more appealing to guests, I enlisted the help of my area. I reached out to the other clubs that I knew in our area and asked if they would be willing to attend Quannapowitt club meetings as guests to beef up attendance. This worked great. We had several club officers from other clubs attend to lend a helping hand and they came with prepared speeches. We also got members from other clubs who wanted to practice speeches for contests and work to attend and contribute to the agenda. This helped recruit new members to the club, as well as show the existing members how prepared speeches and full meeting agendas help everyone involved. The TM guests were motivational.

(5) Keep your eyes open for opportunity. We also, sheerly because of “luck”, found ourselves in a position to need to find a new meeting location. The club was very insistent on certain criteria such as meeting on Monday nights, which they had always done. The Quannapowitt club is in Quincy, MA. There is another club in Quincy that also meets on Monday nights and they have 30 members. Not good competition. By convincing Quannapowitt to move their meetings to a Tuesday night, we were able to find a new location, free of charge, in a more accessible part of town. I think this helped a lot. When in doubt, look at the things that might turn people off to your club and look at how you can differentiate yourselves in a more positive manner. They now provide TM meetings on Tuesdays, and none of the other clubs in the area meet on that night. Quannapowitt Toastmasters club has made me proud and made me a “Successful Club Coach”. They are officially a Distinguished Toastmasters Club this year, for the first time in many years.

I became a club coach not because I needed to fill a square towards earning my DTM. I became a club coach because someone asked me to. I said yes because I wanted to help a 60 year club rebuild. I saw the value in keeping this club going, I saw the dedication of its officers, and I wanted to help. I had already served as a successful club mentor and sponsor, so I did not coach the club for the credit. I coached them because I wanted to give back to my district and in return I received more leadership experience, more speaking experience and a great new group of Toastmaster friends.

So tonight, I want to take the first step in encouraging each of you to earn one more requirement towards your DTM, to challenge yourself in a new leadership role, and to give back to District 31. Tonight I ask YOU to consider serving as a Club Coach for the 2011–2012 Toastmaster Year. You won’t regret it!