Do you know someone who thinks they can do it all themselves, that they don’t need to ask for help? They don’t make a very good leader. They may be very good at getting things done, but they’re a loner, they aren’t helping anyone else learn, and what happens when that person isn’t around?
One of the hardest lessons to learn as a new leader is the need to delegate. Of course, that means you need someone to delegate to. Recruiting assistants has numerous benefits:
- Help spread the work out among more people, avoiding burnout — “many hands make light work”!
- Provide better service to the clubs and members, more resources to call upon and provide regular contact
- Fill in for when that one person, the Area Governor, is busy, or has two things at the same time
- Better practice leadership skills, now there is someone to lead!
- Provide potential successors the next year, who will already be familiar with the role
The Toastmasters District Leadership Handbook briefly mentions assistant Area and Division Governors as part of the area and division councils, but doesn’t describe their roles further. Typically, there are two assistants, one for marketing and one for education. Ideally, they attend the training and DEC meetings just like Area and Division Governors (though they have no vote at the DEC meetings).
The Assistant Area Governor Marketing focuses on helping clubs build and retain membership, and might also take a lead role in building a new club for the area. They can help a club put on an open house, put together a guest welcome packet, create a lively club web site, or brainstorm articles for the sponsoring company’s employee newsletter.
The Assistant Area Governor Education and Training helps clubs improve their educational program, encouraging completion of manual speeches and better evaluations, and quality speech contests. They can advise a club about running a Youth Leadership or Speechcraft program, improving contest participation, or how best to use meeting themes to increase excitement and attendance.
Division Governors have two assistants as well, doing the same sort of thing as at the area level, and helping their counterparts at the area level be effective.
By recruiting and using assistants, the Area Governor can improve service to the clubs as well as assure quality service after they leave office, enabling them to confidently answer YES to the question “Did you leave things better than you found them?”
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This is really good advice. When I went through AG training, assistants weren’t mentioned, and even the Area/Division council got very little discussion.
Mike, excellent posting!
Last year and again this year District 8 has encouraged the Area Governors to find assistants. In fact, at the July 2009 Area/Div. Gov. training, the AG’s were strongly encouraged to bring their assistants to the training. One AG brought both of his assistants, and as a result, all 3 of them received a special recognition/reward at the close of the training.
Not only did that recognition send a message that assistants were important, but sent another important message to the DEC–performance will be recognized and rewarded!
Dori Drummond, DTM
District 8 IPDG
Excellent comment. Learning to empower another person not only with a Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Realistic and Time-sensitive goal but also with the asked-for tools to achieve that SMART goal is a major part of successful leadership development.
Thank you Mike.
I haven’t seen any information regarding the roles of the Assistant Area Governor Marketing and the Assistant Area Governor Education and Training in the District Leadership Handbook, so it’s good to know what their roles are.
João Alexandre,
District 59, Area L3
Joao, you can find the assistant area governors in the current (2/13) District Leadership Handbook on pages 2 and 15-16, but agreed, the current edition doesn’t go into any details, just mentions them in passing.
Remember, a leader is supposed to have followers, a leader is not supposed to be doing all the work themselves. The assistants are an important part of the team, getting things done with oversight and mentoring from the leader.
I’m serving my first year as Area Governor. I opened up the inside front cover of the District Leadership Handbook and I saw something called an “Area Council” — I had never heard of an Area Council before–even though I’d technically been on one for five years.
So I think, “Hm… this area council thing seems cool” and we start meeting. I ask around and get three volunteers–two Area Assistant Governors and one Area Secretary. I also look at last year’s AG and say, “Hey, you’re the Immediate Past Area Governor” — we start rocking with area council meetings. Four of five clubs have experienced growth, one earned the Smedley award in one month, and all five clubs in the area should make President’s Distinguished this year.
Yeah, Assistant AGs are a great idea!
Paul, nicely done, keep it up!