Photo by: VictoryNH: Protect Our Primary

I just came back from Division Z Club Officer Training. There was a wide variety of topics covered by various Toastmasters. There were topics like leadership, marketing, publicity…

I have strong interest in leadership skills and marketing & publicity techniques and I felt that this workshop was very fruitful and multiply.

I am someone who strongly believes that there must be a way to solve a problem. Problems are there for us to solve, that’s life. Throughout the 7 months serving as The Frontier Toastmasters Club President, the problem that I faced is “The Proactiveness of Executive Committee.”

Whenever someone asked me about what problem I faced in my club, I would say, I have a group of very committed exco members, however they were not very proactive. They always waited for my order, my idea, my instruction… How to make them become more proactive?

I have learnt from today’s workshop that as leaders, we shouldn’t blame our members. In fact, leaders are the ones who stimulate the proactiveness of the members.

Then, I started to reflect what I have done throughout these 7 months.
1) I always planned meeting agenda before an exco meeting. All the items needed to be discussed, I would state clearly in the meeting agenda. For example, discussion about “Get-together dinner”.
2) I tried to delegate tasks evenly to each member, so that they had chance to learn not only about speaking but management.
3) I assigned a new task to a member who was totally no idea what’s going on. For example, I assigned my treasurer to be the International Speech Contest Organizing Chair.

I think… I think… I’ve made some mistakes. I’ve misunderstood the true meaning of Delegation. Delegation is not about delegating a “To-Do-List”. Rather, we have to delegate the ownership and involvement.

I always thought, why my exco members were not so enthusiastic on the tasks which were assigned to them. For example, the club website. I was expecting the VPPR would update the website frequently and come out with new ideas in how to promoting the website. However, all the while, I was the one who gave him ideas. Instead, I should ask him to give me a proposal. To do that, he would feel the ownership of the new proposal and automatically he would involve and immerse himself to the new activities.

I have also discovered that my treasurer has done a great job as a Organizing Chair. At first, I provided him some guidance and then asked him to come back to me if he faced any problem. I think he felt the ownership of the contest and he really put in a lot of effort in organizing the contest. I look forward to seeing his closing address during the contest.

These are what I want to try in the next exco meetings:
1) To have more brainstorming session during meeting. (To let them feel the ownership of the ideas)
2) To ask the member’s ideas during the meeting. (I used to ask them go back and think…)
3) To stimulate and guide them in brainstorming session.
4) To let them know what’re my expectations on them and visions to the clubs.

So, the key words for the delegation are “Involvement” and “Ownership”. There are 5 more months to go. Hopefully, by the end of this term, I could make improvements on the club and members.