Speaker 1 0:08

You're listening to the Talkative Toastmaster podcast. I'm your host, melanie Surplus. In this podcast, we explore how Toastmasters can help you to polish your public speaking skills, communicate with confidence and amplify your authenticity. You'll hear from my fellow Toastmasters and I how this global organization has impacted our lives for the better and how it could impact yours. Now let's get talkative. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to episode 42.

Speaker 1 0:42

This week I'd like to focus on one of my favorite Toastmasters resources, and it only really became a favorite resource when I moved into leadership roles and, most recently, my current role as Area Director for Area 26. And this is the Club Up Project website, and I'll put the links in the show notes so you can go directly to it. This site was created by two of my Leading Edge Club buddies, kate Norris and Thomas Craft, both distinguished Toastmasters, and they've both been in Toastmasters for many years and have held many different leadership positions, both within the club, division and district, so they're very experienced. And again, I want to focus on this particular resource that is available to everyone, because, through my club visits and just in talking with other Toastmasters, there's always common themes and common challenges. Toastmasters' slogan is where leaders are made, and really I feel that the more you can understand about the leadership roles you've taken on, the better you can actually do them. And so, really, the mission of the Club Up project website is to provide unique and pragmatic strategies for club growth and leadership. The team are also looking to create a wider pool of leaders and trainers and to foster a community of passionate club leaders. So everything I talk about in this week's episode you will find on the ClubUp project website.

Speaker 1 2:23

One of the things I love is the Club Officers Hub. I refer back to the leadership trackers. So for each of the executive committee roles so president, vice president, education, membership, public relations, the secretary role, the treasurer and sergeant at arms there is a leadership success tracker which talks about exactly which part of the distinguished club program that role is responsible for, what the focus and outcomes of that role are, and just provides a really nice summary and even a little calendar of the main responsibilities for each of those roles. And so, even if you've been to club officer training for any of those roles and we have just finished the first round of club officer training but if you need a refresher of what those roles involve or what you should be doing within those roles. This is definitely worth checking out. These documents can be fantastic to be used in handovers or if new people are coming on board in different positions in the executive. So we know that leadership positions can come and go through the year or people can come and go in those roles, and if you need to get someone up to speed really quickly, the leadership tracker, or leadership success tracker on the Club Up project is going to be a great resource for them.

Speaker 1 3:52

Now, in that same section of the website there are also gateways for each role. For the most part, there's a lot of information on each of the roles. They're still filling out the content for president, treasurer and sergeant at arms, but certainly for vp education, vp membership and vp public relations, there's some very detailed resources for each of those roles. So again, if you've only recently stepped into the role of, say, vice president publicity for the first time, this is a great resource and even if you are in that role and you mostly get what you're meant to be doing, it can be really interesting to review these resources and just see if there's anything else you can add or that you can tweak in the way that you might be doing things, and this may help to make this role your own and to really take it to the next level. These strategies that Kate and Thomas talk through both in written resources and there's quite a lot of videos on the site as well are based on their many years of experience and of running large, thriving clubs, so definitely worth checking out.

Speaker 1 5:13

In the Vice President Public Relations Gateway page, for example, the resource page there there's resources about how to create a credible online presence. So, whether that's looking at your Google Maps presence, your club's website, your club's Facebook account, there's a bunch of resources there and some videos that are going to help you to create, improve whatever PR you might be currently doing. There's also some guidelines for how to take photos and some social media prompts and, again, all available publicly in downloadable documents. So, even if you had a fantastic handover, but you're still wanting more information, still wanting more information these pages are going to be really helpful. Similarly, with the vice president of membership role, there's a great conversion process page which talks about, for example, using the Down Under Club, which both Kate and Thomas are members of, as well as the Leading Edge Club. They have their process and they have documents supporting how to introduce guests, how to convert guests through to members and the flow that happens in that process. Again, it's useful seeing how successful clubs do this because if you are struggling to either get members in the door get guests in the door or convert guests to becoming members, it can be useful to review these practices. The vice president education page is fantastic as well.

Speaker 1 6:57

This really goes into detail about the agenda and a particular layout or format of an agenda that certainly the Down Under and Leading Edge clubs use. I've been obviously a member of Leading Edge for 18 months and I've seen how this particular two meetings approach works in the agenda and that's basically running the first half of the meeting with a couple of speeches, table topics and evaluations and then doing the same thing in the second half of the meeting. So a lot of clubs will have all the speeches up in the first half of the meeting and then table topics and all the evaluations in the second half of the meeting, and it's just really interesting to experience the difference. And again, they give you a sample agenda of this on the website. So if you want to spice things up at your club and give your members a different experience, it can definitely be worth giving it a go. You know, if you haven't seen this different agenda format, it can't hurt to try it and your members will let you know if that's the sort of agenda they want going forward. I know I like the variety of agenda formats I get between going to two clubs, but again, if you're looking to change things up, then this might be a great way to look at doing that.

Speaker 1 8:23

Now one of the other parts to the vice president education. In the quick tips section there was a fantastic video on how Thomas, in his capacity for VPE last year, uses a forward planner, and this is a conversation I've been having with a few of my clubs. So some of the clubs in my area use forward planning, some don't, and you're probably experiencing this in your own club as well. If your club is having trouble getting people to do speeches or to fulfill roles each meeting, then having a forward planner is absolutely going to help drive the behavior of people turning up to do speeches and fulfill roles. Certainly, at my Mount Gravatt club we have a really well-planned forward agenda where everyone knows what's coming up for them in the next few meetings and that really works for us.

Speaker 1 9:24

I know it works for Down Under. I know it works for Leading Edge and, yeah, I find that clubs who don't have a forward planned agenda, at least for the next two or three meetings, it just means they're struggling to get members to do speeches. And that's ultimately why members join they want to talk and if they're not given that nudge, they can very well slide into the oh, I'll do that, I'll get to that speech at some point. But there can be long gaps between when they choose to do speeches or when a speech might be allocated to them. So if you're having trouble filling speech slots, there's a fantastic video in the quick tips section on this ClubUp website.

Speaker 1 10:10

One of the other resources you'll find is they call it the Club Success Strategy Ladder, and this document is broken up into three sections. So gain, entertain and retain. And it's really that journey from bringing in and attracting new prospective members through your club, giving them the amazing club experience and encouraging them to join, and then getting them to start to fulfill roles or get involved in contests or moving through the organisation in various leadership capacities. It's just a helpful map, I suppose, of looking at where your club may want to focus its activity. For example, if you're having no problem getting guests through the door but you're having trouble converting them to members, then maybe it's something in the way of you're having those conversations or perhaps you're not asking them to join. It can be a number of things. It's understanding which part of the process your club may be having challenges with and then looking for the suitable resources to help that Many clubs it's still getting members through the door is the main challenge and, again, the VPPR resources on this website are excellent.

Speaker 1 11:33

So there's a lot of information on club leadership roles and if, again, either you are in one of these roles or you're thinking about taking one on you know it might be in your future plans or your plans for next year to take on a leadership role. It's not too early to start looking at these resources and to think about what it entails to be asking questions of the people in those roles and, again, using these resources to give you an idea of what the role entails. Another major resource on this Club Up website is the how to area director section, and as soon as I knew that I was going to become an area director, I came to this website, had a look at what resources were there and found a fantastic, very detailed guide, a 30 page document about how to be an area director, toastmasters and the Toastmasters website has some fantastic resources, don't get me wrong. So does our District 69 website. There's a mix of resources there, but of the documents I looked at and I pretty much scoured and devoured every document I could find to get prepared to do this role the how-to area director guide on the Club Up project was just the most practical Again written by people who've done the role, and talks about the challenges they faced and really what the focuses should be.

Speaker 1 13:12

And when you're moving into a new role and particularly you know whether it's president or area director or some of those more senior roles in the organisation you want to get it right and typically the first half of the new Toastmasters year is very loaded in terms of activity. It's when the contest seasons are, it's when club contest seasons are, it's when club officer training is, you know, lots of moving people into positions and getting them into their role and getting them trained and getting the teams up and running. So the how-to area director guide became a bit of a Bible for me and even if you're currently an area director and you want a reminder of what and how you should be doing the role. This document is excellent. So it talks through the key responsibilities of the role, looking at things like budget, the district leader training, the conference, the area council meetings and the club visits, and then goes into a whole lot of detail for each of those categories and those areas.

Speaker 1 14:16

As well as the document, there's also a fantastic tracking spreadsheet and, again, even before the training happened, I got into this spreadsheet, filled out what I could, and it gave me again an idea of what I was going to need to focus on and when, what types of people I was going to need on board or what I needed to know. So, for example, I know I needed to know who the presidents for each of the clubs under management were and who the VPMs and the VPEs were and the secretaries. I knew I needed to know when each of the other area contests in my division would be. I needed to know who the area directors were, and the area director tracking spreadsheet is just. Again, it's my Bible for this year. It's how I'm managing my role and it's keeping me on track. And then there's other useful templates like area council minutes and an agenda and just a nice little wheel document like a pie chart of what type of time I know I should be focusing my time on, or how much time I should be focusing on each of the key areas. So as a new area director, I can categorically say this resource has been a Bible. And you know, when I hand this role over to my predecessor next year, I will absolutely be recommending that they get to know this document very well.

Speaker 1 15:52

And the next logical succession from that is the how-to division director. And this isn't a role I have done, but certainly Kate and Thomas have both held division director roles, I believe, and this is based on their experience and also the experience of other people who have been in this position. So Kate and Thomas do pool knowledge and they collaborate with other experienced Toastmasters who have done these roles to really bring a best practice recommendation into these documents. So in the how to division director guide, again, it's a comprehensive document and it talks about the main responsibilities there. So this is more of an administrative role. So it's about gathering a team and leading the team, which is the team of area directors and other division positions. It's looking at the division conference and the various meetings that division directors need to get involved in. If I were to look at taking on the role of division director, this would be the first document I would look at, and again, just looking at the calendar resource they provide and the reporting requirements that are required and just getting my head around that type of role.

Speaker 1 17:22

One of the other areas on the ClubUp site is a program called the Showcase Sprint. I did this program with Kate and Thomas last year, just sat in on it, and this is really a step-by-step walkthrough to help clubs run and host a successful open house meeting. It's really a membership drive activity. This particular program is I know last year it was run twice. I believe I sat in on one session, as I said, and it's a very formulaic way of running an open house, but they weave in some of the documents and the techniques that are available elsewhere in the website. So, for example, the different style agenda, how to go about creating an event and to the point where they'll give instructions about what type of speakers should go in, which types of slots and how to market it on Facebook and social media and all of that. Again, that was a fantastic program. I believe it's going to run later this year and is open to clubs in District 69. So stay tuned for that program to become available.

Speaker 1 18:44

And then even the quick tips section of the website is very useful. As I said, there was a video about how Thomas, in this instance, goes about forward planning and agenda, which is really important. I cannot stress how valuable this is for the clubs that use the forward planner or any form of forward planning agenda, whether it's this spreadsheet template or whatever your club uses. But, yeah, incredibly helpful and I think it really helps to drive the success of the clubs that are using it. And then, on this tip, there are other sorry on this page there are other useful tips, like a really sneaky way of getting free timing devices because, as we know, in Toastmasters we use typically a lighting system for gauging where we're up to with our speeches. So there's a great tip about a very low cost, in fact free option for timing resources and also videos around how to increase facebook page likes, asking for the sale and how some clubs vote in members.

Speaker 1 19:56

In summary, the clubupprojectcom website is a fantastic resource for Toastmasters in any of the leadership positions, or thinking about going into any of the leadership positions, as I said, if you want to research a particular role and you're not sure what it's about or what's required. This website is going to give you some fantastic details, again written by people who have done the roles many, many times. They're trainers in their profession. That's what they do professionally, so the material is really easy to follow. It's modular, it makes sense, it's in plain English and you know. A huge shout out to Kate and Thomas and Thomas, I know you'll be listening to this at some point. So run, thomas, run, but yeah, great job on this particular website. It's been up for a few years, but it's an evergreen, solid resource for any Toastmasters who want to understand how to do their roles better, how to train people to do their roles better within a club and how to prepare people for those future roles in leadership that they may be interested in.

Speaker 1 21:13

If you haven't yet checked out this website, the links are in the show notes below and I hope you find it as valuable as I did. If you're ready to unlock your potential, consider joining a Toastmasters club near you. Check out the find a club link on the Toastmasters International website at wwwtoastmastersorg. It's worth visiting a couple of different clubs as a guest to see which club best suits you. If you do take the leap and visit a meeting, I would absolutely love to hear your experience.

Speaker 1 21:46

Feel free to message me at talkativetoastmaster at gmailcom or tag me in the comments if you found this podcast on YouTube, facebook, instagram or Twitter. Thanks for listening to today's show. Head to talkativetoastmastercom, where you'll find the show notes for this and all other episodes, as well as links to some awesome Toastmasters resources. If you found value in today's content, I'd really appreciate if you could share it with friends and colleagues who may be interested or leave a review on iTunes. This helps more people to find us Until next time. Remember the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson all the great speakers were bad speakers at first. Have a great week.