For the last couple of weeks, this blog has featured mostly housekeeping elements, such as introducing myself and promoting club officer training (Saturday, July 18, KINS in Daejeon, 1:30 to 6:15 PM; please join us!). Now I'd like to move on to the more practical side of this blog by offering some ideas and advice for improving your club. This week, I'll be sharing some ideas for increasing participation at meetings.
Some clubs are fortunate in that every member is an active participant during meetings. Other clubs feature a core group of members who tend to take on the heftier roles such as Toastmasters, General Evaluator, Speaker, Evaluator, and so on. Even though my home club is quite strong, this is a challenge we face. Recently, we conducted a brainstorming session to determine some methods of helping our new or shy members to become more active. Below is the list that we came up with:
Some clubs are fortunate in that every member is an active participant during meetings. Other clubs feature a core group of members who tend to take on the heftier roles such as Toastmasters, General Evaluator, Speaker, Evaluator, and so on. Even though my home club is quite strong, this is a challenge we face. Recently, we conducted a brainstorming session to determine some methods of helping our new or shy members to become more active. Below is the list that we came up with:
There is a lot to this brainstorm, so I'll talk about our top three ideas: potluck meetings, biweekly mentoring, and new member assignments.
Potluck Meetings
For those who don't know, a potluck meeting is a special meeting in which only the Speakers sign up in advance. As members arrive, each draws a role from a hat. Whatever role a member draws, that is the role that he or she takes that night. This is a great way for people to try new roles. For example, one of my good friends was Toastmaster for the first time at a potluck meeting. He said that it was a great experience because he would not have had the confidence to sign up for Toastmaster. However, because everyone was a little unprepared, he felt less pressure. He also felt like he got even more encouragement than usual.
Biweekly Mentoring
It says "Bimonthly Mentoring" on the white board, but it should say "Biweekly." In other words, engage in Toastmasters mentoring twice a month (every other week or so). This is especially effective for my club because, rather than one-one mentoring, my club has something called mentoring pods.
Basically, my club is divided into four groups. In a single group, everyone is a mentor and mentee for each other. For example, my pod has 7 members. That means that I mentor six people, and six people mentor me. We have been meeting about once a month, but we are now trying to meet twice a month.
At our meetings, we help each other to brainstorm ideas for upcoming speeches. We also help each other to fulfill our Toastmasters roles, whether that's being General Evaluator, acting as VP Education, or planning a speech contest. If your club does not yet have a mentoring system in place, I would encourage you to give this system a try; it's been a lot of fun, and with so many people involved, there is greater accountability for meeting regularly. We usually change the pods every six months or so.
New Member Assignments
My club hasn't tried this idea yet, but I hope that we do soon. Currently, my club doesn't have any requirements for new members. However, during our brainstorming session, we agreed that it might help new members to get more involved if, after signing up, they are required to try a few roles.
For example, one of my members suggested that new members be required to give their Icebreaker within four weeks of becoming a member. This, I believe, is something that Toastmasters International already recommends, but it's a practice that my club hasn't adopted.
We do want to be cautious, though. As you can see in the picture, some of my club members expressed concerns about assigning "homework" to new members. If your club decides to adopt the strategy, please remember to be sensitive to the fact that your members are adults with busy lives of their own.
Now I would like to hear from you! What does your club do to encourage active participation from all members? Have any of you been to a potluck meeting before? What did you like or dislike about it? What is mentoring like in your club? Do you think one-one or group mentoring would be more effective for your members? Finally, what is your opinion of requiring some role-taking from new members? What kinds of roles and timelines do you think would be beneficial?
I hope that you enjoyed this week's post. Please feel free to share your ideas, comments, questions, and reactions by commenting below. I would love to hear from you and get a lively discussion going.