Lunchtime Club Leadership Training

Lunchtime Club Leadership Training was on offer for the first time this year. This initiative was the brainchild of Area E3 Director Sam Masters (High Noon Bankers, Willis Quarter, Taxing Toastmasters, BNZ Harbour Quays and Up Top clubs). Sam explains the thinking behind his push to make it available and shares what happened. 

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Why club committee members need training

The most important part of being on a club committee is being able to serve your club effectively and efficiently. The truth of the matter is we are all volunteers and the result of this is that if we can't be efficient with out time spent on Toastmasters often our clubs will suffer. This is not to say that we as leaders do sub par job, rather that the more efficient we are with our time the more we can do for our clubs. In the past I have heard people say I don't need Club Leadership Training (CLT) because if needed I can always find the right information somewhere. Although true to some extent, there is a major flaw in this logic. What happens when a members question needs to be answered or a club decision needs to be made and we don't have the time to look it up? To me, this is the issue that training helps to solve.

The quest for flexible training to fit member's needs

CLT is run to get committee members trained in how to effectively serve their clubs. When we joined Toastmasters choosing a club was driven by many factors. One factor that everyone of us would have considered would have been 'Does the meeting time suit my schedule?' We asked this question to ensure we could attend meetings and get the most out of toastmasters. At the start of my role as Area Director I realized that if Toastmasters choose their clubs based on times that suit them, surely we should be trying to train them in the same time slot. This idea was met with some serious skepticism as it was not the norm. With some persistence the idea gained momentum and we have successfully run the first ever split session lunchtime CLT with 18 officers trained.

The lunchtime format

To provide the same level of training the lunchtime CLTs were run as three, one hour sessions over consecutive Mondays with attendance required at all three to complete the training. This format allowed for all the same information to be delivered to trainees as in the traditional trainings but in a different time slot. Some Toastmasters are unavailable after work or on weekends due to family, extracurricular activity or geographical restrictions but they have spare time at lunchtime. These people are who this training was targeted at. There is no intention to replace all CLT sessions with lunchtime sessions rather to provide a range of sessions to choose the one which suits best. On the whole, these sessions achieved this purpose.

And the results were ...

I would like to say a big thank you to all those who help run the lunchtime sessions (Rob, Mike, Owen and Tim), to Gael and Larrie for believing this idea could possibly work and most importantly to all those who attended and made it a success. As a result of this successful experiment we will likely run lunchtime sessions again in February for the second round of CLT. I look forward to seeing even more of you there!