| Q: Won't joining Yahoo!groups result in a lot on unnecessary electronic mail. |
| A: No, Yahoo!groups carefully guards against unnecessary electronic mail or "spam" in a variety of ways. |
| Q: ...I'm the President of the ... School
of Management Toastmasters club. Do you have any for benchmarks (ideas, suggestions) on how to run the club?...
One of our main concerns is that the usual Toastmasters format is not
appropriate for a school environment where time is precious and students
demand value-added propositions from clubs. How have you structured your
meetings and positioned the club in order to cater to your student body?
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| A: As an economist, I must say that everyone's time is precious. The
Toastmasters format, which is rather flexible, provides an excellent
format to insure that speakers say what they want to say within a
specified time limit, that listeners, (evaluators), pay attention to what
is being said and how it is being said, and that all members have the
opportunity to sharpen their "thinking-on-their-feet" skills with Table
Topics.
The most important lesson a manager should learn, but is usually the last and most expensive lesson ever that a manager learns, is that
communication is a two-way street: it is not what you say that counts, but rather,
it is what the audience hears.
Most undergraduate students underestimate the importance of
communication skills. Our graduate student members and MBA candidate
members appreciate feedback from a diverse audience and welcome the
opportunity to speak in front of a group of non-peers and to evaluate
and motivate non-peers.
Officers and members need not do everything in every Toastmaster manual,
but the manuals do provide useful benchmarks. Why 20 members? Because
over time, 75 plus years, having 20 members has been shown to make for a
dynamic group where each person is making a contribution. There are
successful clubs with 40+ members that meet for 2 hours over dinner.
There are successful clubs with 20 members that meet for 1 hour during
lunch. And there are successful clubs with fewer than 20 members that
meet for breakfast, but they have dedicated people and attendance is
close to 100%. The Club Success Plan is your benchmark.
Having an agenda, beginning the meeting on time and ending the meeting on time reminds everyone that time is precious.
So again, officers and members need not do everything in every
Toastmasters manual. However, if you do most of what is proposed and if
some of what you do, you do well, then the members will be successful and therefore the club will be successful.
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Q: How the does the Yahoo!group fit into your PR strategy? How do you attract people to the Yahoo!group, and what do you do with it? How you go about
attracting guests? Are there any insights here that other clubs might benefit from?
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| A: Some people find out about Toastmasters and Toastmasters @ MIT through the internet, but we don't track how guests find us.
"When people show up at our meeting, we offer to put them on our emailing list, whether they are a member or not. We find this is a useful way to attract new members and let them know more about the club. It doesn't cost us anything,
and encourages them to come back. It is also helpful for members who attend infrequently to know how things are going and to remind them that they are always welcome.
Our emails are mostly announcements listing who is speaking that week, and what roles are still open (our Vice President Education fills the speaker roles, but all other roles are filled by the Toastmaster of the Day through the email list). Occasionally we'll also have other related information, such as an announcement of a TV or radio appearance of one of our members saying what channel and time they will appear.
Email is great!" -- Gwen Acton
You may opt to receive the Yahoo!groups e-mail message by message, in a daily digest, or view it on the web, so I actually have three addresses associated with this group so that I can troubleshoot problems. Additionally, district officials are on the electronic mailing list so that the number of members on the mailing list exceed the actual membership count.
Just think how easy contest planning would be if clubs kept in contact with the Area Governor, Division Governor, and District Governor and vice versa!
Attracting guests by word of mouth works and so does the internet. Toastmasters @ MIT has members who excel. Mary Agnes Mullowney, a charter member, won this year's District 31 Speech Evaluation Contest and was written up in the campus newspaper. Ruth Levitsky has had columns appear in The Metro, a local free paper, and JobFind, on how to improve your interviewing skills. Public Relations is everyone's job: ask your members to tell just one other person how Toastmasters has helped them and you will have new guests. Make those guests feel welcome and you will have new members. |
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