Club
Officer Training (COT#2)
“We learn best in moments of enjoyment”
is my favourite quote by Dr Ralph Smedley, the founder of Toastmasters
International.
I am sure he
would have been proud to see his words in action at the Division H Club Officer
Training (COT) held at Cranfield University, UK, on 2 Feb 2019. There was a
buzz in Room 2, Building 115, from around 09:30 when Club Officers started
arriving for the COT #2. At 10:00 promptly the Division H Director, Steve
Campion, warmly welcomed everyone, and set out the agenda for the day. 
Area 44
Director Binal Sawjani then explained that the format of the training sessions would
be different from the normal ‘front-of-room’ presentations. It would involve rotation
of the topic facilitator at a different Table every 15 minutes.
I was one of
the six facilitators and my topic was: ‘Growth
and Retention.’ This is a perennial issue for Toastmasters clubs globally
as annual attrition rates can be as high as 40-60%. The rotation format worked
well and encouraged the small groups at each of the six tables to engage more
than they would as part of an audience in a large room.
The
brainstorming session on ‘Retaining Members’ and ‘Attracting New Members’, the two ways identified
to aid Growth and Retention, provided a plethora of ideas that filled many flip
chart pages.
Key themes
emerged for both topics. To retain members it was crucial to ensure the
following: 1) Understand each members ‘WHY’ 2) Quality meetings that are fun
and engaging 3) Provide Mentors, especially to assist with adoption of
Pathways.
To attract
new members the following ideas were considered key: 1) Using Social media (Meetup,
facebook, Twitter) was crucial 2) Presentations to local Businesses, Organisations
and involvement in local events.3)Flash mob
presentations e.g. Table Topics in hospitals and Town Centres.
I felt confident
that club officers would return to their clubs energized and ready to continue
to deliver their club’s mission i.e. a
mutually supportive and positive learning environment in which every individual
member has the opportunity to develop oral communication and leadership skills,
which in turn foster self-confidence and personal growth.”
The hard
work of the Division Director Steve Campion and his team of Area Directors:
Woytek (Area 20), Fay (Area 14), Binal(Area 44) and Martin (Area32) and Deputy
Area Director, Violet Cuffey (Areas 20, 32) paid off handsomely. The day ran
smoothly, and the quality and creativity of the program engaged members from start
to finish.
Asked for
his reflections on the day, Division Director, Steve Campion said: I'm always delighted by the level of
enthusiasm and dedication demonstrated by our club officers. Everyone
braved a cold and icy winter's day in order to develop their own skills and
learn how to better serve their clubs. This high energy event was full of
great ideas and discussion facilitated by experts including Elizabeth
Jordan. I'm sure that everyone left the room feeling more knowledgeable,
connected and inspired than when they arrived”.
Elizabeth Jordan
6 comments:
Testing that comments are coming through ok.
May I admit? Informative post. Not really post, more a rapport.
For me boring. Read at the beginning, scanned the rest.
In the blog, hoped you would put more of you.
Can be improved by When more than 5 members told me or wrote to me the same point for improvement, I learned to accept it with an open heart and tried to ameliorate it.affordable,h
Pre space, between a) b) etc
Less enumeration and more soul.
In my opinion, the blogposts are not When more than 5 members told me or wrote to me the same point for improvement, I learned to accept it with an open heart and tried to ameliorate it.
Wow! Thanks, Julie. No holding back. I am first of all happy that I can now see the comments, and I appreciate all feedback as I start this Toastmasters blogging journey. You did mention that it's important when blogging to find one's voice. I am sure I will.
Thanks for your summary of the day Elizabeth, and thank you once again for the role you played. I like how you combined a number of elements in the blog - description, photos and a couple of quotes. The Ralph Smedley quote is one of my favourites too.
You asked for feedback on how to improve your blog and I'm assuming that you wanted this publicly. So like Julie I shall not hold back :-)
One simple thing you could do is to use numbered lists or unnumbered (bullet point) lists when listing items. That will make it easier to read. I also found that the layout of the text and images wasn't particularly neat on my screen, with some parts of the paragraph at the side of the image and part of it underneath. I don't know whether that's an issue with blogspot, the way that the information was entered or an issue with my computer, but it's worth knowing about.
I agree with Julie's comments about the "report" style and the opportunity to find your voice here. It was a well-written summary of what happened on the day and would have lent itself well to a newspaper or newsletter article, but I think your intention here is to have a personal blog - and it didn't come across to me in that way.
I would have loved to read more about your personal reflections. You had been asked to facilitate six separate discussions with barely a break, and then to present a summary with no time at all to prepare. It would have been a challenging task for even the most experienced facilitator (and I was impressed by what you did!) So, what did you feel? What did you learn? What surprised you about the day? If someone was considering doing the same thing, what advice would you give them? It is to leap in with both feet or run screaming for the hills?
One final point, although I like that you finished with a quote (and naturally felt honoured that it was one of mine), this is your blog and should really end with words from you. Even better would be to set up some anticipation for what will be in your next blog posting.
As always, these are personal impressions and I'm sure that others will have different views. I'm excited to see you embark on this blogging journey and look forward to reading your future posts.
Keep it up!
Hi Elizabeth,
That is a great summary of the training event.
Perhaps you could just put a subtitle for the pertinent topics and then write how you felt about them or how you thought the attendees reacted to them?
A tip regarding images would be to choose if you are going to have them all left aligned or centred and to stick to that style as it looks better.
I would recommend only wrapping text round an image if the image is narrow.
If possible, make all the images the same width as it looks best.
Well done!
Dorothy
Interesting quote to start off piece.
I've found that I learn best through hardship much like the old adage 'if you don't hear you must feel' haha
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