On the Table – Topics for Toastmasters

Season 1 episode 12   take 2.

Today On the Table, we take a look at the Mythical Community Toastmasters Club number 31415923 and a problem that their VP of Education Vera knows was coming – and what she has to do about it.

AND – we’ll talk about the giant mistake I made on this podcast.

 CL to ALB - Not So Hard, If You Plan

VP Education Vera has a problem.

Club President Ralph held an executive team meeting this morning at 6:30 a.m. – no, that wasn’t the problem – and informed the team that his goal for the remainder of the year was to get the club to Presidential Distinguished – the highest award Toastmasters gives to clubs.  He gave everyone specific assignments – the VP of Membership is to find Mythical Club eight new members before June 15th, the VP PR is to hold at least 2 open houses, and the Sergeant at Arms is to start looking for a new location for all these new people.

Vera’s job is to look at the education awards and figure out how to get all of the points they can.

Looking at the Distinguished Club Plan, Vera sees that there are a total of 6 points of the 10 point program related to education awards.

[Record scratch]

Here is the beginning of the problem – I can’t math.  I’ve never mathed well and this is a prime example of it (and yes, that was a math pun.)  I was right when I said there are 6 points in the DCP related to education awards, I was right. Back to the original podcast…

The 4 competent communicator awards will be completed in the next few weeks – Vera completed hers last month, and Hilda is scheduled for her final speech next month.  President Ralph and VP Membership Kofi still have three speeches each.  Both of them have enough time to complete the manuals.

But looking at the Advanced Communicator awards, Vera has no one close to finishing any of these awards.  Looking at a calendar, unless she or Hilda is going to speak at almost every club meeting in the next 5 months, they can’t complete the 10 speeches necessary.  President Ralph will have to find a way to solve this problem.

Vera has four people who are on the edge of completing their Competent Leadership manuals.   It’s important that at least two of them get completed before June 28th, because Vera likes to submit awards before the crush that crashes the Toastmasters International website on June 30th every year.

But there are also Distinguished Club Points for advanced leadership awards – and the club will need both of them this year.

[Record scratch]

And BOOM! That’s where I went wrong.

Thanks to David Hendrickson on Facebook, who pointed out my error.

The Advanced Leadership Awards points are not counted like the Communication Award – any Leadership award counts toward these two points.  Not a CL for the first and an advanced award for the second.

Back to the original

Membership Campaigns to get to the CL

Back in July, during the club success planning meeting, she knew that she needed at least 2 CL manuals for 2 Distinguished Club Points, and two Advance Leadership Bronze awards for 2 more DCP points.  Making sure that the manuals were passed out and credit properly given had been President Ralph’s task this year – he’d done a good job.

[record scratch]

Ok, mea culpa. My mistake and mine alone. The rest of this podcast is factually correct – the CL bottleneck is a real problem to get the last 3 or 4 projects done.

Back to the orginal -

All of the members had been working, but now, at the halfway point, she sees that the dreaded CL bottleneck was about to stop her in he...