Summer training available for club officers

Happy new year to all! Although the sun is still hot, many of us are getting back into work mode and starting to make plans for the year ahead.

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Within your club, a great way to start off the new year is by attending club leader training (CLT). This training is an opportunity for you to reflect on how your Toastmasters year is going so far and to plan for the second half of the year. Sessions are open to all club officers and anyone who is interested in being an officer in the future.

In December, more than 70 club officers from around Wellington attended early pre-Christmas training sessions. Here are some of the new things they said they're going to try as a result of their time at training.

• Start organising a nominating committee
• Update guest packs
• Use Spirit of Success awards
• Survey members
• Succession plan
• Social activities
• Get feedback from guests
• Instigate reserve speaker
• Organise a Moments of Truth session
• Track CL progress
• Set up Facebook page

Do you know what all of these mean? Come to CLT to learn more about them! Since December is a busy time, the same training is being offered again in January and February to make sure everyone has a chance to attend. Your training opportunities are:

Division J sessions (email Gregory for more information)

• Saturday 30 January, 9.30am-1pm, Petone Baptist Church
• Sunday 31 January, 1-4pm, Lands Trust Masterton Education Centre (click for map)
• Saturday 27 February, time TBA, Linden Community Centre

Division E sessions (email Gael for more information)

• Tuesday 16 February, 5.30-9pm, Wellington Girls' College library (click for map)
• Saturday 20 February, 9.30am-1pm, Wellington Girls' College library
• Lunchtime CLT (must attend all three sessions to receive credit): Monday 15, 22 and 29 February, 12.15-1.15pm, St Andrew's on The Terrace

If you're a club officer, attending training will help your club to achieve recognition in the Distinguished Club Program. Each club needs at least four officers to attend training twice a year for recognition. If you want to see how your club is doing, check out the Toastmasters International dashboards (you can navigate to your Division, Area and club in the main body of the page, or enter your club number in the search box at top left to go straight to it).

See you at CLT soon!

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!