Macroom Toastmasters

This post is the second in a series on the VPE role. Click here for the first post. This post is aimed at people who are filling the role of Vice president of Education for their Toastmasters Club.

The next big task for the VPE is making sure that everyone is pursuing an educational track and is enthusiastic about doing it.

This requires a bit of pre-planning. Say your club wants to achieve a Distinguished Club award at the end of the year, and I think you should – This may involve 4 of your members finishing their Competent Communicator programs, 2 finishing the Competent Leader program and and up to 2 Advanced Communicator awards.

If you intend to get these awards by year end, get agreement from people at the start of the year as to what awards they will achieve individually. And this requires planning. Say you want someone to achieve a CC award and they start the year with 2 projects done. By getting them to agree to complete the CC award, you are asking them to give a speech at every second meeting. That’s a bit much, one for them, because it limits the other roles they can enjoy at the club, and secondly for the rest of the club, because despite the best intentions in the world, its completely normal to get sick of listening to the same speakers over and over!

So you need to plan it out very carefully.

If one of your charges misses the last two meetings of the year with the Flu and is only one speech short of their award, you may well demote your club from a President’s Distinguished Club to a Select Distinguished Club.

Photo owned by Cushing Memorial Library and Archives, Texas A&M (cc)

Not the end of the world, but it does mean that others who put a lot of work into getting their awards may be disappointed that the club didn’t benefit fully from their efforts.

So if you have the members available, why not over aim, and have 5 or 6 people on the brink of CC awards with 2 months to go.

A quick aside here: Not every club pays much attention to the Distinguished Club Program – It can be a pain in the A. But it does give you a structure within which to work as a VPE. It gives you goals, and can be an excellent motivator for the club as a whole, as well as individuals.

However, and this applies to Clubs and Individuals also, Pursuing awards for the sake of awards is a pointless process. Don’t let or make members flake through the ten speeches so that the club looks good. When you do that, you are missing the whole point of why Toastmasters exists in the first place.

This post has been authored by Ant Galvin, former VPE of macroom Toastmasters, 2008/2009. The material in this post was orginally used during the Club training meeting in Clonakilty, Cork, July 10th 2009.