Episode 30: Reflections and key takeaways from an outgoing club President

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 30 of the Talkative Toastmaster podcast . As the financial year draws to an end , so too does my role of president at the Mount Gravatt Toastmasters Club .

As I mentioned back in episode 18 , each of the seven active executive committee roles are rotated each year , which gives other members the chance to move into those roles and take the wheel for a year .

So this week I'd like to cover some of the key takeaways and lessons learned for anyone who may be considering becoming the president of a club at some point , some of the club's achievements of which I'm most proud , some of the areas where I felt I could have improved my performance as president , and I'll finish off with a bit of news about the next exciting

step in my Toastmasters journey in 2024-25 . Let's dive into it . So , firstly , here's a couple of the key takeaways and lessons that I learned from being the president of a volunteer membership-based club and I had actually been president many years ago when I first started my Toastmasters journey , but I haven't done that role in over 25 years .

So I guess these are reflections of how my last year as president have gone . Firstly , like any organization or club or group of people , communication is key .

So letting members know what's going on , what's coming up , just sort of addressing areas of club business as they need to come up , keeping the executive committee in touch and on track and again addressing any issues as they come up , and whether that communication is via email between meetings or in spoken form at meetings , I guess it's about providing members

context of why we may need to discuss something or why we may need to resolve a particular issue and then just keeping the communication open . So it might seem like an obvious takeaway , but it's an important one . Also , in a volunteer member-based organization there's always going to be different levels of priority that members place on being involved .

Some members will turn up religiously to every meeting while others don't , and that's fine . One of the portable skills here really has been to be able to pivot very quickly , either a couple of days before the meeting if we get noticed , or right before the meeting starts , as is more often the case .

When people don't show up to a meeting for whatever reason , you know whether it's illness or they're late , finishing at work or have sick kids or whatever . Whatever comes up . Being able to pivot and doing that in conjunction with the evening's Toastmaster or whichever other members are around is an important skill to have .

It really teaches you to think on your feet , to get creative with solutions and just to have even backup speeches prepared or backup activities or backups of things that you can do to continue to make the meeting run smoothly . Also , at some meetings through the year and this is the case , I've seen this happen every year I've been in Toastmasters .

Just depending on whether it's the season or what's happening in people's lives , some of the meetings can really dip in terms of the number of members and guests turning up , but some of those smaller meetings were absolutely some of the most powerful and impactful meetings for me this year .

So whereas once I perhaps would have stressed that , you know , at some point the numbers of members were dipping slightly because we had been a fairly vibrant club at one point in the last couple of years having 25 members on the books and we got down to about 18 members at one point . This year it's now back up to 21 .

But yeah , some of those smaller meetings really were very impactful . So again it's , another takeaway in helping to run a club successfully is just understanding those dynamics , being able to prepare for members being there or not being there and just having some flexibility and ensuring that , no matter what , the meetings run smoothly .

And obviously meetings running smoothly is not solely the responsibility of one person either , so there's always members who are willing to step in , take on a role , volunteer for a new position or whatever it happens to be .

So it's again just having that clear communication and asking for help and , again , just focusing on the quality of the meeting , whoever happens to be there . Now , in terms of a couple of new skills I think I picked up .

One was experience in running business meetings and you may have heard us talk about business meetings with some of the guests and the importance that having quite a specific way of running Toastmasters , club meetings or executive meetings works in Toastmasters and it can be excellent training for things like body corporate meetings or any type of meeting , even shareholder

meetings or the like .

So being able to run club business meetings or club executive meetings where we make decisions about the club , I think is an important skill and it's one I feel like I definitely need more experience with , and probably some guidance from more experienced Toastmasters , just so I can get my confidence in running those kind of meetings up a little bit more .

But some of the issues we had to decide on as an executive committee this year , for example , included the implications of allowing members to pay via self-pay through the Toastmasters website .

Some clubs have made that available and some haven't , and there are very valid reasons for offering both , because sometimes clubs will need to add on additional fees associated with the running of their club and the like , and the self-pay option doesn't really allow for that . So that was one decision that we had to consider .

Also things like purchasing equipment , whether that's new lecterns or microphones or computers or just general equipment for the club that would become ongoing club assets .

So we had a few discussions about that and most of our conversations in the executive level really were about the ongoing running of the club how best to improve the member and guest experience and if there were any tweaks that we needed to make along the way in that respect .

So it's quite surprising how much behind the scenes activity actually there is to make a club run smoothly , to ensure the culture's good , to ensure that members are getting value from each meeting and everyone's got mentors , everyone's being onboarded properly , and again , these are just some of the many aspects of Toastmasters that you don't necessarily get to see unless

you're on the executive , and sometimes some of those are quite specific to the role of president . So there were some quite important skills there .

One of the other areas that became important was succession planning and , again , with every member-based organization , to be able to think about who might replace you , because presidents can only stay in the role in a Toastmasters club for one year or in the States it's six months , but in our club our terms last for a year and president is the only role that

someone can't take on for a second term . So I had to think about who that person might be , who might be willing to take it on , who would be interested in taking it on , and the way that whole process panned out for the changeover that's due to take place later on this week actually was excellent . It was very organic and that's how I wanted it to be .

So I'm very happy to see that Christian will be coming in as our new president . I have every confidence in him and his ability to lead this club on to bigger and better things .

But generally getting succession of all of the roles so the other six roles to change over and ensuring that everyone is handing over their roles and that the incoming executive are trained up that is still part of my responsibility while I'm president , and I take that bit seriously .

I want to ensure that the next executive is set up for the best success that they can be and as the immediate past president , I will continue to remain on the executive committee , but more in a guiding or advisory capacity . So I can't wait to see where our incoming president takes this club .

Now some of the things I'm most proud of in my year as the president of Mount Gravatt Toastmasters Firstly , the work of the 2023-24 executive committee . So a huge shout out to Rhys , hayley , chantel , daniel , christian and Brodie for throwing themselves into their executive roles and contributing in their own unique way to the club's success .

I think the meetings throughout the year were fantastic . I believe guests had a great experience and I believe this is very much due to . You know both the mentality of the executive and the culture of the club , and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a sec .

So also a shout out to all of the members and guests of Mount Gravatt Toastmasters who turned up this year , all of whom helped to make each meeting as interesting , informative and fun as they were .

I think it was in one of the very first episodes where my guest , melissa from Mount Gravatt , said that she's never been to a Toastmasters meeting that she regretted going to , and I echo those sentiments .

And particularly with our club meetings and really most Toastmasters clubs , I still have not yet been to a club meeting , either at Mount Gravatt or anywhere , that I ultimately regretted going to , and I think that's the nature of this organisation . Also , just now I touched on the culture of the club .

So as president , you're effectively responsible for facilitating and maintaining a positive and welcoming club culture that not only encourages new members to join but that encourages all members to renew , and so throughout the year we received some great feedback from guests who ultimately went on to join us , and the consistent feedback that we received about our club is

that we're warm and welcoming and that we do what we can to make our guests and members feel valued .

So we really do try to explain to a new guest who walks in the door what the meeting is going to involve where they may or may not have an opportunity to speak and that's entirely up to them and how they can go about joining us if they wish , but also making the point that there is no pressure for them to join and that they're welcome to come along to

as many meetings as they like as a guest to ensure that we're the right fit . So I'm definitely proud of the culture we have at Mount Gravatt .

One of the other surprising projects , I suppose , and outcomes , was towards the beginning of the financial year , our VP of Public Relations , chantelle , undertook a project to revamp our club's website and the objective was to make it more user-friendly and engaging for prospective members , and it really did need a refresh and Chantel did a great job in getting that

site live . Much to our surprise , the website was awarded a Best Website Award at the District 69 Conference in May . Now , I'd been on the organizing committee committee of that conference and I had no idea that the club website was going to be awarded that award .

And yeah , it was an amazing moment because it recognised the huge amount of work that Chantelle , as our VP of Public Relations , put into that website . So well done , chantelle , for that fantastic project . You've left us with an award-winning website but , most importantly , a club asset that will continue to support new members as they check out our club .

One of the other big achievements for the club throughout the year was to achieve the status of select distinguished in the distinguished club program , and this means we met eight of the 10 goals in the distinguished club program .

This is a , I suppose , a measure of quality set out by Toastmasters International about how a club is performing , and it looks at things like the number of members there are moving through their pathways programs and the split between you know whether people are achieving level one pathway or level two or three or four or five .

What that split shows is that there's a diverse range of new members and experienced members , very experienced members , and that , I feel , is also a fantastic measure of quality because it means you've got the people who really know what they're doing and how Toastmasters works and they can impart that knowledge to the newer members , and certainly at Mount Gravatt we

have really everyone from very new public speakers to people who have been doing it for 30 years , and one of the benefits in coming to a club like ours is that you do see that massive range of experience . It means that when we allocate mentors , people are going to get , ideally , a fantastic experience when they're being paired with a more experienced speaker .

So I'm pretty happy about that achievement . It's not all about the points in Toastmasters . At the same time , if that's what Toastmasters deems as a quality club , then I'm happy to have been driving the club towards hitting those goals and I'm also really thrilled about the way our new executives nominated themselves during the club election a couple of weeks ago .

I wanted to make the election very much a self-nominated exercise . Some clubs choose to nominate or choose to have members nominate who they would like to see in different roles . But I wanted to have it so that whoever wanted to be in a particular role nominated themselves and of course they would be seconded and we would absolutely welcome them into that position .

But I'm really happy with how that process played out , because what ended up happening was that some of the more experienced members took on some of the really meaty roles like president and vice president , membership vice president , education , where you need to have some idea of how the club works , how the educational program works , how the membership process works .

And then we had newer members stepping into roles for the very first time . So I'm really proud of that election process and how the club and members stood up , volunteered , threw themselves into the process and again , I can't wait to see where this new executive committee takes us . So there are heaps of things that I am proud of during my term as president .

A couple of areas where I feel I could have improved were around organisation . At the beginning of my tenure , so back in last July , august , I was so busy at work .

I was doing a lot of traveling interstate and overseas and in hindsight I probably left it a little too late to have the first executive committee meeting and I would definitely book that in much earlier if I were doing that whole role again and along the same lines .

I think because I was traveling so much with work , I didn't really do a solid handover with the former club president and I could and should have arranged that and it probably would have given me a better feel for some of the activities that were coming down the line that I wasn't really aware of until they were more or less upon us .

So things like the role of the club in the area contest , also the area division and district council requirements , and again , all of that is definitely dictating the way I do a handover to our incoming president . So I think as well , creating well-documented systems of how this stuff works in our club I mean Toastmasters provides guidelines .

The club officer training also provides guidelines , but there's still the ins and outs of how it works in each club and I will definitely be looking back at what I wish I'd have known when I was the incoming president and documenting that , hopefully in a document that can be used in an ongoing way .

But all in all , being president was a really rewarding experience . I feel like I really got to understand the inner workings of the club and also the club's relationship with area division and district , and that segues into my news about my next steps in my Toastmasters journey .

So I've decided to take a step back from the Mount Gravatt Executive Committee and that'll be the first time in three years that I haven't had an active role on the committee , although as immediate past president , I still am a member of the committee this year , although not one of the active roles . So I'm really there in an advisory capacity roles .

So I'm really there in an advisory capacity , but what I will be doing is taking on the role of Area 26 Director , and Area 26 has five clubs . Mount Gravatt is one of those and then there are four others in the geographic area that form Area 26 . And this is a completely new role for me . I've not done this role .

I've not really done a role in Toastmasters outside of the club before , so it's going to come with its own challenges and opportunities for growth .

I'll go more into the specifics of the area director role in an upcoming episode , but basically it's going to involve me actually getting out and visiting the five clubs in the area Some informal visits , some formal visits .

For the formal visits I'll need to complete reports of just some of the things we were talking about the quality of the club and what the experience at each of those clubs is like .

And this role is really the direct liaison point between the clubs and the district and the higher levels of Toastmasters , and really the role of the area director is to ensure each club is fulfilling its responsibilities to its members . So I'm really excited about this . As I said , it's a role I haven't done .

I know I'm going to be learning a whole lot real fast .

One of the big focuses for the first six months of the year will be around pulling the Area 26 conference together , and this is where the five clubs in our area will compete in the area contests for humorous and international speeches , as well as the table topics and evaluation contests , and the winner from that then goes on to the division level .

This coming weekend I'll get a major immersion in the role of area director at district leadership training , and this is arranged by the district 69 committee , and the whole training weekend is about preparing incoming area directors and division directors for their role in the next 12 months .

I'm really looking forward to the networking opportunities here , as well as specific guidance about how to be an area director . So that's my exciting news for the year ahead . As I said , it's a new role for me . I'm really looking forward to throwing myself into it and getting out into the area to see and experience other clubs .

Over the course of the next few episodes I'll probably talk more about what that role entails and just observations , as I continue to see them from a slightly different lens , so stay tuned for my observations as a newly minted area director in District 69 . Look forward to chatting with you soon .

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 . 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 Seth Godin If it scares you , it may be a good thing to try . Have a great week .