On Our Way to Distinguished Status
It’s July. The 2008-2009 Toastmasters year has just ended and the 2009-2010 year is beginning. Does your club have its goals set? Well, Spectrum Speakers does!
In the last 10 years, Spectrum Speakers, an open corporate club at Alcon Laboratories in Irvine, California, has achieved Distinguished status twice and Select Distinguished status three times. This year’s goal? President’s Distinguished! The club officers know it’s going to take a lot of hard work and effort, which is why they got started planning in June at their final 2008-2009 club officer meeting. Club treasurer and Division F Governor of Founder's District Ryan Durkin says, “We discussed our upcoming DCP goals, and will finalize them with our incoming officers. We want to ensure that the incoming officers, who were not present, may also participate and learn. It’s important to have them involved because it helps the buy-in process.” Spectrum Speakers focuses on the transition between outgoing and incoming club officers, to ensure that all officers are prepared and trained for their duties in the club.
At their executive meeting, Spectrum Speakers’ outgoing officers looked at their members from a strategic standpoint, focusing on which members were realistically in a position to achieve an award within the next six months and within the next year. After discussing their strategy, they approach the individuals they identified to find out whether they would be willing to commit to achieving an award in a set amount of time. Durkin says he finds it best to ask for the member’s help, letting them know how important their participation is to the club, as well as emphasizing the benefit to the member. A member is going to be more likely to help if she can see how helping the club also helps her.
Other steps Spectrum Speakers takes in order to reach their DCP goals include:
- Encouraging every member to speak at least once a month by holding speak-a-thons and extra meetings, thus ensuring that there are plenty of opportunities for all members to speak. By doing so, a member’s goal can be to speak once a month, instead of achieving a CC, making the goal much more achievable and less intimidating.
- Breaking down the DCP goals into Process goals. Instead of focusing on getting eight new members by the end of the year, Spectrum Speakers focuses on the activities they have that make guests want to join. For example, when a guest attends a meeting, they are welcomed and seated with a member so that they can ask questions easily. At the end of the meeting, the Toastmaster asks the guest for feedback and thanks them for attending.
- Holding an open house potluck and inviting other employees of Alcon Laboratories to come and find out what Toastmasters is all about.
- Emphasizing the CL program each meeting by reminding each member to bring their CL manual, so that they can get credit for any meeting role they fulfill.
- Posting the Progress Wall Charts at each meeting so that members can see how they’re doing and be recognized for the hard work they’ve put in.
- Stressing the importance of club officer training for all incoming club officers and providing the necessary information to get it completed in a timely manner.
As you can see, Spectrum Speakers begins planning out their DCP goals at the very beginning of the year, so that they have more goals achieved earlier. This enables them to focus on other club goals later on in the year. Imagine if your club had more time to devote to the club Web site and newsletter, or to press releases for the fall speech contest winners! These tips can help you get there.