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Leadership in Toastmasters

Looking for an opportunity to become a leader? Consider joining a Toastmasters Club. Toastmasters is an International Organization that helps members become better communicators and leaders. To be honest, I believe Toastmasters is the best kept secret for anyone who is determined to improve themselves, willing to work and not afraid to leave their comfort zone.

I joined Toastmasters because I was deathly afraid of speaking in public and it was something I had to do more of as a Director of an Admissions Office in a level one trauma center. I will discuss my accomplishments in Toastmasters in a future posts. But I do want to talk to you about leadership. In a Toastmasters club there are 7 leadership positions (Club Officers) and it is their job to help the club member reach their goals.

The individual member goals help the club become a distinguished club. There are several levels of being distinguished, from distinguished to select distinguished and president distinguished. I am currently an Area Governor in my Toastmaster District and responsible for 5 clubs. I work with the club officers to help them become distinguished. If a club meets all 10 goals they will be president distinguished.

Last year I presented a workshop which focused on Toastmaster Club development at the Spring Conference in both New York and New Jersey. Below is an excerpt from that presentation which focuses on the Distinguished Club Program (DCP). There are a number of acronyms in Toastmasters.

So many times the idea of club development is a boring topic to present in a workshop so I decided to spice it up by being a Michael Jackson Impersonator (This was before Michael’s untimely death). I preformed a different Michael Jackson song parity for each segment of my club development workshop. Humor is one of my talents and I love to make people smile. I hope you liked the video and if you are not a member of Toastmasters consider joining a club near you.

Chairing A Conference

Last year I chaired an Anti-Racism Conference for the Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey. The Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey has more than 158 parishes and covers the area south of Newark to Cape May, New Jersey. How I came about this position is really funny. I happened not to attend a diocesan committee meeting and was selected as the conference chair.

Tip # 1 – Be sure to attend all committee meetings

I had been a committee member on the previous anti-racism conference team and had experience as the inaugural fall conference chair for the newly formed Toastmasters District 83. One of the challenges was coordinating group meetings because the location that we met previously was not going to be available. The rising gas prices and logistical issue prompted me to come up with alternative solutions.

Solution # 1 – Establish a free Teleconference line for the committee

Solution # 2 – Meeting time will not exceed an hour

Solution # 3 – Record conference call so people who missed the meeting could hear it

Solution # 4 – Built and internet membership site to post the recorded meetings

These solutions introduced the committee members to technology that they had not used previously. This allowed the meetings to be more efficient and productive. In fact this process worked so well that they have adopted this process and currently use it for meeting.

I presented the results of being an anti-racism conference chair at my local Toastmasters club as part of a high performance leadership project (HPL). High Performance Leadership is a module project in Toastmasters in which you establish a committee, a vision, a leadership project to work through and give speeches along the way. In the video I am presenting the results of my HPL and hope you enjoy it.

Leadership in Toastmasters

Chairing A Conference

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