We made it! Yeah baby, it became official on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008. The Talk of the Town Toastmasters Club attained Presidents Distinguished Club status when we got one more Competent Communicator qualified with her 10th speech. I am extremely proud of all the hard work the club put in to reach the finish line once they saw that it really was in sight. No mediocrity hounds, this crew. This is the pinnacle of club achievement in Toastmasters International and we reached it with a strong kick at the end. Yep, I am proud of my club and more importantly they are proud of themselves.
I’m really proud of myself too. I can’t think of anything I’ve done as satisfying when it comes to leadership. If someone had introduced me to Toastmasters early in my first career I probably would have been more effective much sooner as a young professional. Those are what we call lessons learned though. But, I am so glad that I got this opportunity later in life because I definitely know how to apply my newfound leardership skills once I re-enter the workforce in a couple of years.
As far as the club is concerned we have made massive progress over the last three years. We have moved steadily up the chain from Distinguished in 2005-06, to Select Distinguished in 2006-07 and on to Presidents Distinguished for 2007-08. We’ll add that top notch banner to our club flag and fly it with pride. I have our two previous presidents to thank for setting the precedent and giving the inspiration for success. Brenda Curtis drove us to earn our first banner. That was when I was a new member and had no interest in being an officer. Last year Jeanette Peters pushed us to improve and not remain static. That’s when I started to get excited. So to continue the trend, once I saw that the next level was possible I pushed my fellow Toastmasters even further just as my predecessors had done. So thank you ladies for being great examples for us.
Last week we had an officer transition meeting and we handed over the reigns to the new leadership team. I’d recommend this to all Toastmasters International clubs as well as to any other organizations. Over the last year I documented a club success plan, outlining in particular, what got us to the next level. The purpose was to create a repeatable system that would keep us at the highest level of club recognition annualy. Among other things we started doing every business function online. This made us much more effective in every way. We could do everything in a much more timely fashion than in previous years purely by eliminating paper and the snail mail process. I handed that “how to do it” document over to the new president and there’s no stopping now.
For the benefit of those of you in other clubs and organizations, here’s how we did the handover. We took our normal meeting time and gave the new officers a full orientation of their duties. We handed over files, binders, and notes. I reviewed some basic business functions on a couple of key web sites for the new officers. We huddled up in three subgroups and then swapped chairs to include and talk to other officers with related duties. It was a great way for the new folks to get on the same wavelength. At the end of the meeting our new president and her officers gave us the plan for the new club year.
There was even a usefull activity for regular non officer club members. Our area governor came by and gave a speech writing tips meeting in another room down the hall from us. And now that they know the 2008-09 master plan they can hit the ground running in full stride helping us to hit those new goals.
The transition meeting was a good change of pace all in all and last night the new officers took on their first meeting by themselves. Here’s to another great year for the Talk of the Town Club. Hey have you found a club near you yet? Sign up now and elevate your communication and leadership skills today.
