The theme of thepresident of Toastmasters International, Dilip Abayasekara,DTM,and outline of his program and goals.

Transcription

1 The theme of thepresident of Toastmasters International, Dilip Abayasekara,DTM,and outline of his program and goals.

2 Table of Contents Presidential Theme 4 Club Quality and Educational Growth 5 Leadership Development 6 Membership Growth 7 Club Growth 8 Districts Serving the World by Serving their Clubs

3 Dilip Abayasekara s Presidential Theme: Find Your Voice. Serve Your World. The English author, Horace Walpole, coined the word serendipity, which means the faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident. Incidentally, Walpole formed the word based on an old name for my native country, Sri Lanka, Serendip. If we are but open to them, life can have many serendipitous surprises for us. A nice friendship can ripen into a full-blown romantic relationship. A hobby can develop into a successful business. A visit to a Toastmasters club can change the course of one s life. We know from surveys that the reason most people join Toastmasters is to improve their confidence and skill in public speaking. If they stay with the program and apply themselves to it, they will make the serendipitous discovery that not only have they become better speakers, they have found something of great value within themselves. Our Toastmasters mission statement points out that the arts of listening, thinking and speaking are vital skills that promote self-actualization. In other words, you discover something of inestimable value you find your voice. However, the greatest satisfaction of the Toastmasters adventure lies beyond discovering one s own voice. Having experienced self-discovery, we are challenged to help others find their own voices. This is the joy of serving our world. These twin experiences, I believe, are the high water mark of the Toastmasters adventure. That is why I have chosen as my theme, Find Your Voice. Serve Your World. I m sure you know of many Toastmasters who have found their voices. I recall when Sheila, a rising star in my district, told me her story many years ago. Sheila grew up in a family where she was continually put down and made to feel inadequate. She married a man who perpetuated that notion. She joined a Toastmasters club because she desperately wanted the self-confidence and poise she saw in many of the other members. After suffering through a divorce and quitting her club membership, she joined again, thanks to the insistent invitations of her Toastmaster friend, Carmen. Sheila very slowly and hesitatingly, with the help of Carmen, worked her way through her CTM. And then with newfound confidence, she completed her ATM. She became a club officer and later served as president and area governor. She was recognized as Area Governor of the Year, and the following year she was selected Division Governor of the Year! Sheila looked me in the eyes and said, Dilip, Toastmasters changed my life. Sheila had found her voice. Yes, she found success at many levels, but it may not have happened without Carmen, who invited her to visit her club and then mentored her. Carmen was serving her world! Find your voice serve your world. In finding your voice, you discover your potential and the joy of achievement. In serving your world, you help others discover their potential. When you look carefully at the mission of the club, you find that it is geared to helping people discover their own voices. In fact, our organization s founder, Ralph Smedley, said, The first result of speech training is self-discovery. Likewise, the mission of the Toastmasters district to enhance the performance and extend the network of clubs results in serving our world. Again, listen to the words of Ralph Smedley: Our business... is to serve our members in the best and most efficient ways. In such service we shall find our greatest satisfaction and the best excuse for our existence. Consider the vast array of tools and programs designed to help Toastmasters find their voice: The Communication & Leadership Program manual, 15 advanced manuals, The Better Speaker Series, The Successful Club Series, The Leadership Excellence Series, the Success/Communication Series, the Success/Leadership Series, the High Performance Leadership Program, opportunities to accelerate growth by competing in speech contests, leadership opportunities from the club to the board level, openings for leadership at district conferences, speech contests and special events the opportunities to find your voice are mind boggling! How do we serve our world? Consider this: The 2

4 highest award a Toastmaster can earn, the Distinguished Toastmaster award, is not for giving speeches but is recognition of the service a member has provided. Reaching out to others, such as mentoring or sponsoring a new club, coordinating a Speechcraft or a Youth Leadership program, mentoring a new member, or rescuing a weak club, are all examples of the way Toastmasters serve our world. Justice Arlin Adams of Pennsylvania said, Be ashamed to die until you win a victory for humanity. Toastmasters programs offer us many opportunities to win victories for humanity. Serve your world. Many years ago, the late Jerry Starke, a past international director and the 1988 World Champion of Public Speaking, said that he viewed the Toastmasters opportunity like a banquet table heavily laden with a tremendous variety of delicious foods for the mind and soul. I believe the reason Jerry found his voice was because he became aware of the tremendous opportunities for self-discovery and then he acted on the possibilities before him. My message to every Toastmaster is this: To find your voice, all you have to do is become aware of the opportunities our programs present and then act to claim those benefits. The great challenge for our leaders is to open our members eyes to what is on the Toastmasters banquet table, and then to fan the flames of desire for these life-changing foods. Great leaders, like great teachers, know the truth of what the Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats said: Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. When you help someone light their own fire, you will warm that person forever and serve your world. Who helped you get your Toastmasters fire lit? How many fires have you helped light? It is a new day for Toastmasters. We are now a global presence with more than 200,000 members and 10,000 clubs in 91 countries. Leadership development is a strategic priority. We need to continue to increase the effective use of technology and seek creative approaches to penetrate new markets. But the success of our organization will reach a new pinnacle if these two things occur: Every member has the serendipitous experience of finding their voice; all members use their voices to serve their world. That is my heartfelt wish for you. May you win a victory for yourself and win a vicory for humanity. Find your voice and serve your world. 3

5 Club Quality and Educational Growth The Toastmasters club is the nurturing place for our members. Here the members deliver most of their manual speeches and receive evaluations that help them improve and grow. The club is also where members learn leadership by helping to organize and run meetings and events, take on the role of Toastmaster and general evaluator, and are elected to serve their members in various club officer positions. In other words, the Toastmasters club plays a profound role in helping members find their voice. What the family is to society, the club is to the Toastmasters world. The stronger the club, the greater the chance that its members needs are met, leading to Toastmasters who serve their world by helping others enjoy the fruits of the Toastmasters experience. Every club can do four vital things to ensure excellence. They are: Mission Understand the club mission and act on it. Every Toastmasters club is duty-bound to its mission statement, to provide a mutually supportive and positive learning environment in which every member has the opportunity to develop communication and leadership skills, which in turn foster self-confidence and personal growth. Training Make it one of your club s goals to have every club officer trained. Don t aim for less. If you had a business, you would expect every person who has leadership or managerial responsibility to receive the training and resources to do their jobs, wouldn t you? Likewise, successful clubs take the same attitude toward the officers they elect to lead them. Trained officers are more likely to perform their duties effectively. Leadership There is no substitute for good leadership. A useful definition of leadership is, Leadership is the ability to empower and inspire others to strive toward a vision of the desired future. Leadership is not limited to club officers. But every club that serves its members has leaders who have embraced their leadership responsibilities. Distinguished Club Program (DCP) The DCP is one of the most useful and powerful tools for a club that wants to help its members grow. It gives you a blueprint to track your club s educational accomplishments, membership growth, officer training results and administrative success. At the start of your year, agree as a club what level of success you want Distinguished or Select Distinguished or President s Distinguished. Then go for it! OBJECTIVES: To achieve by June 30, 2006: Every club a Distinguished (or higher) Club Four CTMs per club Two ATMs per club Encourage clubs to conduct The Distinguished Club Program module from The Successful Club Series to promote understanding of and participation in the program. Encourage clubs to decide at the start of the year what level of success they will achieve in the DCP. The club president should inform the area governor of the club s intended goal. Having a goal in mind for the club will help the vice president education identify members who want to achieve specific educational goals, encourage officers to attend training, and help create a positive club culture. Encourage clubs to survey their members needs at the start and the middle of the year. Then the vice president education should design the club program to help those members achieve their goals. A satisfied member, like a satisfied customer, is likely to be active and invite others to visit club meetings. Encourage clubs to display the following at each meeting: member progress charts, Distinguished Club Program wall chart, a selection of advanced manuals, and the Toastmasters Supply Catalog. Encourage clubs to conduct The Successful Club Series program titled Mentoring to promote the benefits of mentoring members. Urge clubs to use the Club Mentor Program Kit to establish and maintain a mentor program for all club members. Urge clubs to honor and recognize members who achieve educational goals and bring in guests. 4

6 Leadership Development Every organization rises and falls on the quality of its leadership. Toastmasters International is no different. Recently we made the commitment to make our organization as well known for leadership development as it is for communication training. How should we do this? We can start in our clubs and districts by encouraging our members to earn their Competent Leader and Advanced Leader designations. We can promote and use the High Performance Leadership program (HPL) and reward and recognize members who complete the CL, AL, and the HPL, knowing that what gets rewarded gets done. Outstanding leadership development materials are available, such as the Leadership Excellence Series and Success/Leadership Series, and a new leadership manual will be released in the coming year. Introduce your club and district members to these resources, for you will help to build leaders who understand and practice the skills that will help our clubs and districts serve their world. Bring these resources to the attention of people in the community who have yet to hear about Toastmasters, so they can learn what our organization offers. An important role of leaders is to watch for and nurture potential leaders from among our members. The leadership pipeline must always be full and active, for we must be committed to excellence both in the present and in the years ahead. OBJECTIVES: Every district governor and lt. governor attends official training. The district trains every area and division governor. The district trains at least 90 percent of club officers. At least one member in each club achieves a Competent Leader award. At least 900 members achieve the Advanced Leader award. At least 800 members achieve the Distinguished Toastmaster award. Be mission-focused in our clubs and districts.the Toastmasters International mission for the club or district is publicized and followed at all club meetings and district events. Deliver high-quality training to club and district officers, using the core information in the training programs published by Toastmasters International. Encourage every district to use excellent trainers in all officer training functions. Districts should prepare all trainers to excel. Urge districts and clubs to continuously recruit new leaders, selling them on the benefits of their own development and challenge them to grow by serving others. Encourage current officers to actively search for future leaders. Urge every club and district to use and promote Toastmasters International s leadership development materials in its meetings and events. Urge every district to have at least one leadershiprelated session at each district conference. Recognize and reward outstanding leaders and leadership accomplishments. 5

7 Membership Growth While the district builds new clubs, the clubs bring in new members. The clubs also retain current members. So the key to long-term membership growth is for every club to be a strong and vibrant club. Such clubs become magnets for attracting guests and converting guests into members. Such clubs also are likely to keep most of their existing members. Club quality, mentioned previously, impacts both the educational achievements of our members and membership growth of the club. The district s success at membership growth is inevitably tied to the health of its clubs. Most of the guests at a club meeting are there because a club member invited them. This is the power of the enthusiastic Toastmaster at work. Enthusiastic members usually come from clubs that are true to the club s mission. Once guests are exposed to a well-run meeting filled with quality speeches, evaluations and Table Topics in a fun and supportive atmosphere, odds are good that most guests will want the same benefits for themselves. So all a recruiter needs to do is to invite a prospect to a club meeting. By doing this simple but very significant act, you will be serving your world. An important tool available to every club is the Distinguished Club Program. By following the DCP and accomplishing the membership goals, a club will gain eight new members. Spread over 10,000 clubs, that would come to 80,000 new members in a year! Concurrent with newmember recruiting, we have to keep our current members. This brings us back to the importance of club quality. Let s strive for every club becoming a Distinguished Club! Then we can be assured that more members than ever before will find their voice and serve their world. OBJECTIVE: Increase total membership to 210,000 by June 30, Challenge clubs to increase their member retention by determining and meeting members wants and needs. Challenge club officers to make active participation in the DCP a top priority. Encourage them to share the club s DCP goals with the members of their clubs, and to regularly inform members about the club s progress. Challenge club officers to make every club meeting an excellent one. Since well-run meetings with good content turn guests into new members, excellent meetings are vital member-recruiting tools. Everyone Get One! Ask every member to invite at least one friend, relative or colleague to a club meeting this year.this is one of the easiest ways to serve your world. Ensure that districts promote and encourage the use of Toastmasters International s membership-building programs and promotional materials. 6

8 Club Growth Ibelieve Toastmasters International is now at the threshold of an era that will be remembered in years to come as the time when our organization experienced unprecedented global expansion. We are growing rapidly in South and Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Our movement has also gained a foothold in China, where we can expect strong growth in the future. While this global growth is exciting and should be nurtured, it is fundamentally important for the future of our organization to understand and apply proven principles for club growth to all our existing districts. Part of a district s mission is to extend the network of clubs, thereby offering greater numbers of people the opportunity to benefit from the Toastmasters educational program The district leads the club-building effort. More correctly, the district leadership guides and manages the club-building structure and the members who are involved in that activity. So knowledgeable, trained, motivated and enthusiastic club builders are vital to achieving our district mission of extending the network of clubs. Club building is too big a task to be left to one or even a few district officers. It needs to be shared. Based on the most successful club-building districts, we must strongly encourage area governors to achieve President s Distinguished Area governor status by attaining a net gain of one new club per area. Each division governor can be urged to recruit an assistant division governor of marketing to help with new club-building efforts in that division. Sponsors and mentors should be trained prior to beginning their assignments. The members of the club-building teams should be given the kind of leadership that inculcates the realization that new-club building is one of the greatest ways that Toastmasters can serve their world...for they will touch and elevate lives in a profound way. One important point to keep in mind regarding club growth is that while we encourage new club development, we take an equal interest in strengthening and improving our existing clubs. Every year as many as 800 clubs are chartered, but several hundred clubs are lost. If we are more successful at keeping the clubs we currently have, then we will experience a much greater growth in clubs and members. Two of the best tools we have for club retention are the DCP and the Club Coach programs. When these two programs are effectively used along with great district leadership, a strong club-building structure, training and recognition of club builders, sponsors and mentors, club coaches, and Distinguished Clubs, we will make giant strides toward fulfilling Toastmasters International s mission of making effective communication a worldwide reality. OBJECTIVES: Have a net gain of one new club per area. Increase the total number of clubs to 10,800. Train district officers so that they have the knowledge and skills to build effective club-building teams, search for new club opportunities, and activate strong clubbuilding efforts in the district. Encourage districts to provide training for club sponsors, club mentors and members of demonstration teams. Motivate area governors to support club-building efforts and commit to a net gain of one new club in their area. Encourage division governors to support club-building efforts by appointing an assistant division governor marketing to assist with and promote club-building efforts in their division. Encourage club retention by actively promoting the DCP and the Club Coach program. Recognize and reward all members who contribute to new-club development and club retention. 7

9 Districts Serving the World by Serving Their Clubs Districts help their clubs succeed just as the clubs help their members succeed. We have 2,500 district officers worldwide. Each officer makes an important contribution to the success of our organization and strives to make each club a place where members can discover their own voices. These volunteer district officers are committed to our vision of helping people throughout the world improve their communication and leadership skills. The mission of the district is to enhance the performance and extend the network of clubs, thereby offering greater numbers of people the opportunity to benefit from the Toastmasters International educational program. Districts do this by: Supporting and encouraging clubs to help members get the most out of the communication and leadership programs so that they experience the joy of selfactualization. Increasing the number of clubs so that more people are able to experience the thrill of self-discovery and personal transformation that results from applying our educational programs. Training club and district officers to be successful at serving others. Helping clubs become distinguished. Ultimately, Toastmasters International will be successful if its districts are successful. Districts will be successful if their clubs are successful. Clubs are successful if they become Distinguished, which is a mark of serving the most important person in Toastmasters the club member. The poet John Donne said, No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. So also, every member, every club, and every district is interdependent. Our continent, that which we have in common, is the great yearning of the human spirit for achievement, significance and meaning. That is ultimately what becomes real in the Toastmasters program. This great program of self-development through communication and leadership, nurtured by the club and supported by the district, helps you to find your voice and serve your world. OBJECTIVE: Every district achieves Distinguished District status by June 30, Focus on the mission of Toastmasters International and the district. By enhancing the performance and extending the network of clubs, districts help more and more people discover the benefits of the Toastmasters program. Make achieving Distinguished District each district s top priority. Every district should be the best it can possibly be. Achieving Distinguished District Program goals is the measure of a district s success. Promote the Distinguished Club,Area and Division programs and focus on helping every club, area and division become Distinguished. Train club officers and make training an ongoing activity that helps people achieve club and district goals. Promote the use of Toastmasters International s membership-building and educational programs.these effective tools must be used in order to derive their benefits. 8