How to be a successful club
Stefan Bogdanov
February
2004
There
was a slow person from Berne
Who was grim, serious and stern
Until he could learn
To hold speeches of yearn
With the fabulous toasters of Berne
Maybe not everybody in this club was grim serious and stern before he or she entered this club, but all of us had the dream of becoming successful communicators and speakers. Me, personally, I wanted to forget the fear of speaking as a stuttering person and enjoy the fun of speaking.
A successful toastmaster has climbed the mountain and has reach the top, enjoying the freedom of communication, but joyfully aware that there are more mountains to be climbed.
In this talk I would like to give an outline the goals of our club in its quest to become a successful a so called Distinguished Club.
Last year the Berne club became for the first time in its history a Distinguished Club. What do we need to become a successful, a so called Distinguished Club?
Let us look at the different goals separately
We have the potential to have 3 to 4 members completing their CTM until the end of the year. Hans, Peter, Barbara, Marianne and Lydia, you all have the potential of becoming a Competent Toastmasters. I want to encourage you, to fulfil your dream. I want to ensure that the TM journey will not end there. There are no limits to excellency. So we can count with fulfilling one to two goals for becoming a DC.
The next goal to be fulfilled is to become a Competent Leader, CL. In order to realise this, you have to give two additional speeches of the “Successful club series”, like the one I am giving. So will will finish CL. Vicko has already completed the two speeches??? So we can surely add two points to our account.
Let everybody take a copy of this table, and mark his own achievements as well as the achievements of our fellow club members - it is good to have an overview of the everybody’s progress. I am not going to discuss the achievements of the different members. Everybody has a pace of his or her own, and can determine it according to his personal situation, capabilities and motivation. I am confident, that everybody will chose the optimum pace to realise his dream.
Mark on Goals Chart
Fulfilling the DC goals will be a resultant, which will mark that the club as a whole, has become more successful.
As mentioned before, after climbing the first 3000 meter CTM peak, there are higher Toastmaster mountains with 5, 6 and 7000 meter peaks of different levels of Advanced Toastmaster Bronze, Silver and Gold. Pamela, Marian, Rodrigo, Vicko and me are climbing on a ATM bronze peak, while Graham and Alan are climbing even higher, silver and golden peaks. Summarising, we could achieve two ATM goals for becoming a DC.
New members.
We have now 27 or 28 members in our club. Having 27 members, we fulfil the basic requirements for being a Distinguished Club Hans has prepared a club address member’s list and everybody can get it from him. An ideal size of the club is between 25 and 35 persons. About 10-12 of our club members for some or other reason do not appear at the meetings. We have now meetings with about 15 members, and some guests which is a quite good success. In my first Toastmasters year we had regularly less than 10 people per meeting, so we have achieved a pretty good success. But we can improve to have meetings with about 20 members, this meaning that an ideal size of the club is about 30 members. This is the ideal for having enough people for all the roles of the meeting, ensuring also a great audience for the stage performances of the toastmasters.
Having gained in this Toastmasters already 5 new members we have already reached one goal. By adding 3 more members until June we could add another goal.
All members can be active with Word of the Mouth to attract more members to our club. So I hope that your achievements will not only inspire you to continue the here but that also convince your friends to join and make similar experiences. My duty is to promote the club in the public and thus gain new members. Our webmaster and governor of the area Graham has created an excellent homepage, which is also a very good advertisement of our club to reach potential new members. I am responsible for public relations and have to advertise the activities of our club in the public. I have organised a demo meeting with SECO, the Swiss Foreign Economy Office, which is going to take place in the middle of April. Two of our members from the Swiss Foreign Office came to know Toastmasters at a similar demo last year. So I hope to get some more members from this demo meeting, too.
Have a minimum of 4 officers trained during each Club Officers training period
The club officers play a very important role for the success of our club. We have a young and dynamic President Rodrigo Guerra as the leader of our club. We have as a vice president of education Alan Hart, one the most experienced doing a great job as responsible for the education of the club. We have our treasurer Hans, an experienced manager, responsible for enlisting new members and keeping control of the finances of the club. We have as secretary Tony Weitz, who supports the organisation of our club. We have Carmen Schürch, a native Bernese as facilitator, who makes us feel comfortable in our meetings and helps everybody to feel comfortable. I, myself am responsible for advertising the activity of the club outside of the club.
We officers are doing our honorary job as good as we can, but we need some training to improve our performance. Two trainings per year are organised for all officers of the TM clubs of our area are organised by the governor Graham Tritt. We thank Graham, the founder of this club for his work. These trainings should help the officers to better perform their roles. The officers of our club missed the first meeting in Lausanne three weeks ago. Graham is now organising a meeting on the 23rd of January from 5 to 7 pm. We hope that most of our club members can attend the training.
Let everybody in this club give the best he can as a member of this club. Let him be a successful Toastmasters. We have the potential to achieve the necessary 5 or even 7 goals and to become a Distinguished Club or a selected Distinguished club until the end of the toastmasters year.
To finish off I want everybody now to join in a song for our club.
The Toastmasters of Berne
Can’t wait for their turn
To enter the stage
A speech to engage
With great fury and rage.