Planning a Division TLI / Officer Training

Overview: this timeline reflects a non-Division Director’s approach to putting on an officer training that included breakfast, one keynote, and two workshop sessions that had Toastmasters and non-Toastmaster related topics. This approach was meant to also include the general public, promote Toastmasters, and raise the bar regarding officer training.

Date	Task
7 months out	Meet with those interested team members (doers, not committee people)
6 months out	Secured a venue
	First team meeting to discuss name, audience, sponsorship, keynote, program, registration, call for presenters, etc.
	Email a “call for presenters” out to division clubs, area director, and division director
	Email hosting club members interested in volunteering to mark their calendars
	Email hosting club officers a request to facilitate an officer training workshop
5 months out	Ask planning team to bring five title and tag line ideas to planning meeting along with sponsor ideas
	Decide on event title and tag line (e.g. Big Bad Ballyhoo, elevate your speaking and leadership skills)
	Brainstorm sponsorship ideas and levels of participation. E.g. $50 or less: mentioned in emails and program, $50-99: poster, program, email, social media; $100-499: poster, email, program, email, social media, recognized at event.
	Begin social media campaign: personal tweets, club and district tweets, club and district FB, personal LinkedIn and TM group LinkIn posts, hosting club / event website post
	Ask Division Director to invite other divisions to attend
	Follow up with keynote leads / ideas. Attempt to nail down a keynote speaker.
	Ask Division Director to email another request for workshop proposals
4 months out	Deadline for workshop applications and descriptions
	Create and send out first round of division emails with attached flyer promotion via Division Director
	Extend workshop and keynote commitment finalization to three months out (if struggling to obtain commitments). Begin thinking about 3rd keynote alternate if first two have not committed.
	Post promotion graphic on District Facebook page
	Meet with team to decide on keynote
	Send out sponsoring invite to hosting club members
3 months out	Meet with team to discuss catering, advertising, program, etc.
	Contact caterers for prices and menu ideas for 50-75 people
	Set facilitator training dates
	Contact alternate workshop facilitators if necessary.
	Contact local radio station about set up a radio interview
	Recruit someone to be the MC
	Create draft online registration
	Resend sponsorship invitation to hosting club members
	Follow up with hosting club officers about leading workshops and being trained
	Ask someone to put together a logo slideshow and setting up projectors for the event
2 months out	Submit announcement to local publications (to invite public)
	Send another promotional email out through the Division Director
	Create poster and email to division club presidents
	Get prices on poster printing
	Ask hosting club members to sponsor (reminder email) and send money to finalize budget
	Submit event to local online event calendars
	Email presidents and area directors about some of the workshops being offered to generate interest
	Update event /club website post with more details regarding keynote and workshops
	Follow up with hosting club officers about facilitating workshops
	Create draft program
1 month out	Contact alternate facilitator to secure commitment if necessary
	Secure local radio interviews to promote the event and write an article for the local paper
	Create a volunteer sign up form
	Go live with online preregistration form
	Ask local coffee shop to sponsor and get a commitment
	Create draft poster with sponsor logos and send out to sponsors for review
3 weeks out	Meet with team to firm up details regarding program, posters, catering, budget, etc.
	Contacted caterer options
	Update poster and program with any changes
	Receive any last minute sponsor money
	Send pre-registration link to Division Director and District Director
	Recruit any replacement facilitators to lead an officer training
	Send final for 25 posters to be printed with overnightprints.com
	Finalize programs and send to printer
	Email pre-registration link to Division Club Presidents and Area Directors
2 weeks out	Assign volunteers to be greeters and set up / tear down
	Remind and invite workshop facilitators to training a training the week before
	Email to Division Director to forward to division (and send it to club presidents and area directors too) regarding the workshop line up, free breakfast, and link to pre-register
2 weeks out	Hang posters around town
	Email .pdf of event poster to local hosting club members to invite people
	Remind event team, volunteers, and facilitators to be at event at 8:00am for a pre-event briefing
	Meet with team to firm up catering and send check.
	Contact local coffee shop to remind them of their beverage sponorship
	Create facilitator template / training and email out and go over at training to insure every workshop has the same interactive experience
1 week out	Facilitator training, walk through venue with team and venue contact, and talk through final details
	Purchase card and gift card for keynote, hang more posters
	Send another email to District Director, Area Directors, and Club Presidents
Day before	Email team reminder and tally of pre-registration
	Email Area Directors and Club Presidents to invite membership
	Post event invitation on LinkedIn one last time (for public invitation)
Day of event	Arrive early and brief team on what needs to be done to set up (signage, sound, food tables, breakout locations and set up of rooms, etc.).
After event	Meet with team to debrief, go over event comment sheets,

 

Let’s be honest with each other…

The Mad Mega Mentoring Machine

For several years now I’ve been helping my Toastmaster’s club to implement, organize, and build a mentoring program. For several years now I’ve been frustrated with the results. For several years now I’ve tried numerous different strategies to obtain different results. But alas, all my efforts have disappointed.

My Failed Strategies

1. Recruiting seasoned members to mentor new members.
2. Assigning new members to a mentor with in the first week they join.
3. Meeting with interested mentors to share the vision of mentoring and expectations.
4. Giving education speeches about the value of mentoring and explaining a clear initiative for our club.
5. Seeking out people with strong follow through to be mentors.
6. Encouraging every member to have a mentor as someone to give them encouragement and push them forward on their Toastmaster journey.
7. Encouraging new members to seek out an un-assigned mentor who they might connect with more and desire specific input from.
8. Simplifying the mentoring process to a once-a-month, five minute phone call or face to face conversation initiated by the mentors.

The Irony of Initiative

What strikes me as odd is that we, who show initiative to join Toastmasters, give speeches, show up week to week, pay dues, attend parties, stay after for coffee, take on meeting roles, sign up for roles months in advance, and choose to serve in club leadership, will often not take the initiative to make a phone call. Maybe I’m wanting it to be too formal. You know, a conversation that can be checked off on a to do list. When what more likely happens is members having conversations outside the ‘mentoring’ program, asking for help, bouncing a speech idea off others over coffee after a meeting.

We are overwhelmed.

And we are distracted.

Work demands, family activities, and household chores are enough to sap us. Add on top of that the ever pesky handheld computing device that receives phone calls, text messages, emails, tweets, facebook updates, calendar alarms, etc. Then there is the laptop or desktop computer, television with either the latest movie from Netflix or hundreds of tantalizing cable or satellite channels to watch. Recreation. Exercise. Reading. Ad nauseam.

What I’ve Decided to do about it – The Mad Mega Mentoring Machine

1. Encourage each new member to strike up conversations with anyone that want to get input from. Call it micro-mentoring.
2. Add each new member that joins this year to my mentoring memo email list.
3. Send a mentoring memo once-a-month and cover the basics – explanation of the minor roles, how to be the table topic master or respond to table topics, how our online and paper scheduling works, etc. I will keep these saved in my gmail ‘canned responses’ to either keep using in years to come or to pass on.
4. Hold once-a-month new member orientation, as needed, to give a quick 20mn overview of Toastmasters and our club to new members.
5. Offer to be a sounding board for ideas to any new member. And, no, I haven’t been overrun despite our club’s healthy rate of attaining new members. It’s a form a approachability.
6. Look for those opportunities to have a conversation with a new member after a meeting to encourage them.

I know, it’s not what we are supposed to do. We are supposed to assign mentors. And we are all supposed to be super-human too. Well, instead of waiting for the planets to align, I’m taking the bull by the horns and incorporating a strategy that works and that can be passed on the next guy or gal willing to oversee mentoring.

Jon Henry
VP of Membership
Club Co-Founder

Four Common Mistakes Made by Public Speakers

Unfortunately, not every successful leader is a strong communicator. It is a mystery to me how someone can lead well, but speak in public poorly, but it happens all the time.

Recently I listened to two speakers, both successful leaders, who made these four common mistakes:

1. Sharing too much information. We are all tempted to believe that we can wow an audience with our shear wealth of knowledge. But we can only absorb so much information before we tune out due to overload. Remember to keep your ideas succinct and few.
2. Not telling a good story. A great presentation is a blend of information and story – one without the other compromises the effectiveness of a speech. A good story is more than just telling us your history or the history of your organization. A good story involves characters, a little background, setting, dialogue, conflict, a twist, a happy ending, etc. Never underestimate the power of a good story.
3. Failing to speak with passion.I used to make this mistake as a preacher when I first started preaching – I’d give a bunch of background info with any excitement and then I’d finally warm up to the good nuggets of content towards the end. Why waste everyone’s time on the boring stuff? Why not get right to the good stuff as quickly as possible and speak from our hearts and with passion? Both these speakers started getting a little more excited towards the very end of their speeches – oh, if they had only started there and talked from their heart!
4. Not interacting with the audience. We had two hours with these accomplished leaders and part of it was for Q & A. There was 7 minutes left when it was handed over for Q & A. SEVEN MINUTES out of 120! Ouch! I know the audience would have loved to have been reached out to and included in the presentation. Why not interact with the audience and ask them questions? This endears a speaker to the audience every time it is done right. And the audience may want to hear about something you didn’t think they wanted to hear about – a chance for another story!

I’m guessing that if we master these four areas as speakers, doors will open for us in leadership as well.

Go get ’em!

Speaking Spontaneously

Two kinds of people: PUSHERS and PULLERS.  Pushers always have words inside them, like bottomless Pez dispenser.  Pullers have to pull the words out of themselves, much like an undesirable object in a puppy’s mouth.  Whether it is after being called on for Table Topics at a Toastmasters meeting or after you’ve responded to a question in a business meeting, pushers and pullers alike are critical of their responses.  A puller will inevitably THINK, “I wish I would have said THIS instead!”.  Since a pusher says what they are thinking, they might think, “I wish I had thought of something else to say”.  What does a pusher say (since I am not a pusher)?  We are on a growth journey and none of us arrives instantaneously.  So don’t be too hard on yourself – expect failure along the way.  In either case, both categories can benefit from the following strategy for speaking spontaneously:

 

1. PRE-LOAD : Fill your tank ahead of time and tie the question to what is on your mind (reading, experience, thoughts and ideas, etc.); what we value and are familiar with affects what we believe about life (positive spin). demonstrate

 

1. PLUNGE : Pause and start slow and turn the question over in your mind and talk about the question as you develop the body of your question.  Ask good rhetorical questions about the question; analyze it.   demonstrate

 

1. POINTS : there are several things I’d like to say about that…; 1,2,3 points; contrast: this –vs- that; plus/minus; tie into what is on your mind; tell a story; positive spin – how does the question relate to your values/experience? demonstrate

 

1. PUNCH : summarize; when inspired, end with a wow! (quote, wit, declaration, let some dynamics fly!, etc.) demonstrate

 

The Toastmaster of the Day Wears Two Hats

VP of PR Workshop

There is one essential element for promoting any Toastmaster club – well planned, exciting, and meaningful meetings. Everything rests on excellent meetings. If our meetings are enjoyable, word will spread.

If our meetings are fantabulous and we can get a SALESMAN to join our club – membership will explode. This happened serendipitously for my club. Scott, who enjoyed horses, invited Mark, who also enjoyed horses to speak at our club. Mark is a former NBA All-star basketball player. Mark has an executive coach at the time named Julio. Mark invited Julio to come along to the club when he spoke. Because our club was conducting meaningful and exciting and well planned meetings both Mark and Julio joined immediately. Mark is a professional speaker. Julio is a SALESMAN.

According to Malcom Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point, a SALESMAN is someone whose unusual charisma allows them to be extremely persuasive in inducing others’ buying decisions and behaviors.

After two years of over 40 members we had to approach Julio to stop persuading others to join our club.

Meaningful, exciting, well-planned meetings are so important that everything else related to Public Relations pales. If we don’t have great meetings we will only be turning people off to Toastmasters by inviting them to bore themselves.

In addition to word-of-mouth sales, we can help people discover what Toastmasters is about and where and when we meet by:

• submitting meeting information to be printed weekly in the local paper for free under the community meetings section,
• submitting news and pictures to the local newspaper to be printed and bring attention to what the club is doing,
• submitting PSAs (public service announcements) to the local radio station that tells people when and where you meet,
• asking to be interviewed by the local radio station regarding recent breaking news related to your club or to inform the community about what Toastmasters is, and
• creating a blog/website that provides information that is easily found by visitors looking for meeting times and locations and explanations about Toastmasters. By posting current news and information onto our blog we can drive traffic to our sites and increase awareness in the community.

Putting the Pitch into Your Pitch

Have you ever sat through a boring presentation?

Of course we have.

A boring presentation, specifically one that uses a monotone voice tells us two terrible things: the speaker isn’t excited about their message and the speaker doesn’t care about his audience. Ouch!

But before we a too quick to cast judgement on others, have we ever been guilty of a boring presentation?

I know I have been.

As public speakers we must utilize inflection. Inflection utilizes several components: volume, rate, pause, pitch, and timbre (tone variation – think Bob Dylan -vs- Johnny Cash).  The hardest of these elements to utilize is pitch. There are three reasons why pitch is so hard to use: 1. fear often constricts our throats and makes it really hard to change the frequency of our voice, 2. we often mistake and substitute volume for pitch, and 3. we are often ignorant of our voice quality and pay it little mind.

Three ways to add pitch to our presentations:

1. Loosen up our throats.  A big ol’ yawn before going on stage is an easy way to open up our throats. It doesn’t hurt to loosen up like we would before an athletic event – roll our shoulders, roll our heads, jump up and down, etc.  Anything to stay loose can serve our throats.

2. Intentionality. We are unlikely to use pitch if we don’t plan to use it.

BIG SECRET HERE: find an interval in pitch (like twinkle, twinkle little star – do to sol in the eight note major scale) and start speaking on that higher note.  We will be surprised at how starting on a higher note will raise our awareness and use of pitch immediately!

3. Accept your voice and use inflection to make it sound even better. If we don’t like our voice we are more likely to ignore what we can do to make improvements. I used to cringe at listening to my voice on a recording, but every time I use inflection and start speaking at a higher pitch I am happy with the improvements I am making to my voice quality.

Anyone can be a good grammarian

I’m not good with grammar.  When I tell my family that I was complimented for being a good grammarian at my Toastmaster club they howl with laughter.

Most people who fill the Grammarian role in my club make too few observations.  I believe anyone can be a good grammarian with a little bit of guidance.  The biggest suggestion people can benefit from is to learn to look for what people are doing right with grammar.  Below is my collaboration of grammatical guidelines that I am sharing with my club:

THE WORD OF THE DAY

1.    Choose a word to match the meeting’s theme before the meeting.  Choose a word that will most likely be used in everyday speech and not simply be an obscure challenge for the day.  Attempt to pick words that are truly rich in meaning and in which members will gladly use in their vocabulary.

2.    Print several copied of the word with at least a 60 point font so it is legible through out the room.  Include a definition that can also be read from a distance.  Letting members know the word before the meeting gives them the chance to work it into their speeches.

3.    Place the word around the room using scotch tape before the meeting starts and be prepared to explain the word, definition, and an example of its use to the club at the beginning of the meeting.

4.    It is your responsibility to keep track of who uses the word throughout the meeting and report on this at the end of the meeting.  Table topics participants must use the word of the day to qualify for being voted on for best table topics.

GRAMMAR

1.    Find the Good

• Vocabulary – interesting, enriching words like cathartic.
• Alliterations – he ate a lot of fatty, feel-good food.
• Emotion, emphasis
• Good adjectives (deep, beautiful, puffy, humid, warm, foreboding, blustery, etc.)
• Word pictures, transitions, puns, word play, metaphors, similes, etc.
• Use of good words and using words correctly.

2.    Pointing out where to improve

• Refer to a dictionary for exact pronunciation.
• Colloquialisms – ya’ll, gonna, wanna, ‘old as the hills’, ‘there is more than one way to skin a cat’, etc.
• Jargon – words hard to understand by those outside the profession or group.
• Dialect – e.g. New Yorker yelling, “wassa madda wichoo?”
• Buzzwords and overused words.
• Disconnected ideas
• Ineffective wording, misused and misunderstood words and phrases.
• Tense consistency, active -vs- passive voice, incomplete or run on sentences, etc..
• Off color or offensive words.

3.    Things to avoid

• Making someone look bad.
• Pointing out too many things about one person.
• “Should” and “shouldn’t” statements.
• If you can’t explain why something is wrong or give the proper alternative than don’t mention it.
• “So”, if over used, can be a filler word, but don’t mistake its use as bad grammar.

4.    Tricks of the trade

• Make general observations and avoid knit picking an individual.
• Point out the positives over the negatives.
• Make simple diction suggestions to ESL members instead of attacking their many mistakes.  Consider talking to them in person or writing them a note instead of singling them out before the group.  Compliment their success in English!

Too often people talk too much

Timing.
It is possible to say too little, though a rarity.
It is possible to say too much, which is more likely.

I was disqualified from the recent Evaluation Contest because I went over my time limit of 3 minutes and 30 seconds.
Shoot! and I watched the timing light turn red too!

My attempt to fit in my ‘summary’ into my evaluation cost me the chance to be considered to win and, had I won, to go on to the Area contest.
Details. Timing.

It matters in contests.
It matters in speeches.
It matters when we are giving reports at work.
It certainly matters if the preachers long winded and the roast is in the oven.

Rehearse your speeches and time them.
Eliminate the unnecessary, give yourself some cushion to finish in plenty of time, and don’t give in to the temptation to be spontaneous and add material on the fly and lengthen your speech unless you can do it with extreme moderation.

At the club International Speech Competition this February, I WILL be within the time limits! (And was.)