First Oakville Toastmasters isn’t like every other Toastmaster club…thank goodness. It’s been successfully turning out really great speakers for over 50 years. But that doesn’t mean there have been some challenges along the way. I’ve been a member for over 13 years now so I have some sense of the club’s history.
It seems that every so often we forget that new members need special care if they are to grow in their Toastmaster program. About 10 years ago we did an audit of people who visited our club and then never returned. We discovered that guests were intimidated by us but worst of all they didn’t feel welcomed.
After some discussion the club members decided to make it the duty of the greeters to see to it that every guest was paired up with an executive or senior member who would not only introduce them but help them to understand what was going on during the evening. It wasn’t too long after that change that we started to see most guests join as members of our club.
Now we’ve got another challenge. Some of our members aren’t fulfilling their roles at the meetings and worse than that, they aren’t taking the time to find a replacement. This issue was brought to a head at the last meeting when 16 of the 20 assigned duties were ultimately carried out by someone else at the last minute.
Not only are we failing our members who don’t understand the consequences of their absent behaviour (Here’s a maxim from the men’s groups that I used to facilitate: How you are in one thing is how you are in all things. So where else, new members, are you not showing up in life: your job, your relationships, your family, your friends…?).
The Toastmaster educational program is about so much more than just speaking. it’s about learning how to contribute to the society around you.
In order to address this issue, the mentors of offenders are being asked to speak with delinquent members. Also, there has been much talk among regular members and this situation is going to get resolved. We might still be intimidating as a club but there’s a reason why so many of our members stay for years and years.
