Districts have full discretion over setting minimum requirements for club officer training, and there seems to be a wide range of standards. On the one hand, we have districts that appear to grant credit to all seven club officers when an AG attends a regular club meeting and talks for ten minutes. On the other hand, we have districts that require individual officers to attend a whole TLI (not just training for their office, but the whole 4-hour TLI). In between, we have districts with, shall we say, situational standards, and they become weaker and weaker as August 31 or Feb. 28 get closer, and other districts with a clear written standard.
There’s two ways to train club officers, through a Toastmasters Leadership Institute (TLI), which is club officer training plus other sessions, and then there’s plain Club Officer Training (COT), usually used as “make-up” for those who could not attend the TLI(s).
Some districts hold just one district-wide TLI (more commonly in geographically compact districts), some districts hold one in each division. I think nearly every district offers COT after TLIs in some way, but there is a range here as well — one district offers perhaps only one make-up COT after the TLIs, another may offer dozens of COT sessions, trying to train everyone possible.
But the end result is that officers attending the TLI or COT earn credit for the club’s Distinguished Club Program (DCP). Some officers attend out of a genuine interest to learn, some are more interested in networking or other personal goals, and some are attending out of a sense of duty, just for the DCP.
How are these standards (if any) enforced? Nominally, the LGET has responsibility for all this training (TLI or COT). But it appears that lately, World Headquarters (WHQ) allows division governors access to enter training on their web site as well, resulting in a loss of consistency.
Does this show up in the numbers? Yes. In D49 (Hawaii), we see training averages as high as 5.98 (out of 7 officers), which is remarkable (the previous year was just 4.8). At the opposite end, we have D31 (eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island) with just 2.7 officers trained. How can these be so very different?
What does a club officer have to do in your district to get DCP credit? Is it consistent throughout a training period? Is it consistent from year to year? Here’s a few questions to consider, aspects of club training that seem to vary from one district to another.
- Must the officer attend training specific to their office, or just to go a training event?
- Can a substitute replace the person who officially holds office?
- Do you check the sign-in sheet to see if the name matches the TI record for who holds office?
- Is photo ID required when signing in?
- Is signing-in done at a registration desk at the front of the event, or at the start of the office training session, or at the end of the training session?
- What is the minimum wall clock training time for their training?
- Can training be done for two offices together (e.g., VP-PR and VPM, or secretary and treasurer)?
- Can training be done for all seven offices together?
- If an officer has been trained for their office before, do they have to attend the same training as first-time officers, or can they get credit by doing something different?
- Are the TI-mandated materials used as the core of the training? (Note that a good trainer will enhance and build on what’s provided.)
As an example of what I think would be good standards, here’s what I used when I was the District 30 LGET:
- Training must be based on the TI materials.
- There must be breakouts for each office. General sessions are good for common materials, like working as a team or the DCP, but each office has unique responsibilities to cover.
- At least 50 minutes of wall clock time for each breakout session.
- No combining offices — there’s very little that the secretary responsibilities have with the treasurer.
- If someone held two different offices in two different clubs, they had to attend two training sessions (the breakout, not the whole TLI). If they attended an event with both of those offices at the same time, then they would have to attend another event for the other office.
- We did try to schedule offices that tend to be paired and held by the same person (like secretary and treasurer, or VPM and VPPR) to run at different times, back-to-back, to facilitate training for members who held two offices, but that can’t accommodate every possible combination.
- President and VPE training sessions at TLIs ran twice as long, since their duties are much more involved. This was waived for make-up COT.
- No substituting attendees; the person holding the office must attend and sign in at the breakout session (no sign-ins at the general session(s), if any). The sheets were generally passed around during the session; we never had issues with someone signing in and then leaving, but I believe the session facilitator would note anything like that happening in significant numbers.
- The district made no attempt to match up the sign-in name with the reported club officers; we took people on their word if they signed a form saying they held the office. If I thought there were an issue with that, I would probably change that, though it’s a lot of clerical work.
- Our district’s clubs are mostly annual officer terms, so mid-year (Dec/Jan/Feb) training was usually the second time around for most. We billed itas “advanced training”, and it was much more discussion oriented than the more lecture-oriented first round training.
- Where practical, we often had the DG lead president’s training, LGET lead VPE training, and LGM lead VPM training. This may not be practical in some districts, of course. Beyond that, we did require that a trainer must have held that office previously, so they would know what they’re talking about and be able to answer most questions.
- If someone served as trainer for an office that they held, they got credit for it. If you can teach it, you must know it. (If they held a different office, they’d have to attend that training, of course.)
- We never charged for a training event, that’s what the district budget is for. (Any food served, such as at a TLI, was charged for at cost.)
I’d love to see districts put down their requirements in writing for DEC approval, and then follow them transparently and conscientiously.
I’m in District 1. We have the TLI twice per year, with breakout sessions for each office. The VPE and President sessions are “two blocks” while the other offices are “single blocks” and then they can attend other toastmaster leadership workshops.
They repeaet this in the afternoon, so it does give officers in multiple roles the ability to attend sepearate training, but as a rule, if you have already served (and were trained) in a role previously, you can attend the double-length session that covers all 7 roles, but as a review, and you get credit, as I mentioned, only if you were previously trained in those roles (But it does allow you to get multiple roles credited if you meet that requirement)
As for make-up training, they hold sessions, or a current or former District officer can give individual training to officers with the minimum of 1 hour, and covering all the key points in the trainer manual.
A question that often came up was, “I am going to be out of town. Can I do the training over Skype?” and the answer is no – all training must take place in person.
That’s ONE place where WHQ still sets the rule — all COT for DCP credit must be done face-to-face, in person. EXCEPT for a pilot program in one or two districts that have been going on for several years now.
I didn’t realize that D31 was all the way on the low end. But I CAN say that our training could use some improvement.
First of all, we do not, as far as I am aware, offer any COT. You either attend a TLI or you attend another TLI or you forego training.
I am not working at the District level, but D31 has consistently offered venues and dates that are increasingly inaccessible to club officers. With many, many clubs in the Boston metro area, I was surprised that this summer, we had ONE venue that was public-transportation accessible (several officers in my club, Boston Toastmasters, rely on public transportation–as do other clubs’ officers, I presume).
The in-Boston venues always book out fast and the ones farther afield never seem to get attended. It seems to me that rather than strong-arming Boston clubs into finding a way to attend a TLI 1+ hours out of the city (I witnessed one club officer last Tuesday, desperately asking other clubs for a ride because she missed the in-city TLI), the District should work to offer more options that people can get to with the subway.
We had another venue last year in the city and it also quickly booked up, but this year it was missing. I cannot confirm but I suspect that the District has a hard time finding venues in the city that it can afford to book, though I have no idea if this is true.
Regardless of the cause, I think the lack of in-city TLI space and the lack of COTs (or at least widely-promoted COTs) are behind our low numbers.
Jesse, thanks for commenting. How many TLIs are there? It seems to ME like make-up training is essential, if there’s only one TLI within a reasonable travel distance. People simply aren’t going to want to rent a car or travel for hours to get to training.
You also mention that some venues book out fast — do you mean they actually turn people away who want to get trained — and then never hold a nearby alternate training either? No walk-ins?
This doesn’t seem like good service.
Mike,
There are 4 usually. Last year, they fell on a variety of days and there were Saturday morning TLIs as well as weekday evening TLIs. However, this year, they were all Tuesday or Thursday evening (our club meets on Tuesday evening), so our officers had to miss a meeting to attend. Luckily, 2 of our 6 were available to run the meeting, but I really don’t like to have to choose between an easy DCP point and taking care of my club!
And yes, they DO turn people away! They use Eventbrite to track registration ‘tickets’ (which are free). To their credit, they may have fire codes or other rules on capacity passed down from the venue owners, but it’s still tough for the clubs.
Last year, when the MIT venue sold out, we were simply told to try to attend another one of the TLIs.
Your only option would be to try to find someone with an unused ‘ticket’ and take their slot. Our club quickly learned to book venue seats early, even if we were not sure we could attend, just to have the option of going.
I could not believe that after our club spoke with the D31 LGET to express our frustration about the hardship of their inflexibility with TLIs, they actually REDUCED the options this year.
If I were interested in campaigning for a District officer position like LGET, I would certainly raise these issues in my platform. I’m sure there is another side to this story, but they are not transparent to their clubs about it.
I’m speaking as an outsider, and there may well have been good reasons for scheduling this as they did, but it sure seems like the district missed out on an opportunity to make sure everyone got trained who was interested.
I wonder if the district simply isn’t allocating enough budget to this even though TI says training should be the district’s first priority.
From the District Leadership Handbook: “In order of priority, district funds are used for district and club leader training, club growth and retention, supporting clubs in their membership growth efforts, the promotion of Toastmasters International educational programs within clubs, district communications, administrative materials, awards and recognition items, district leader travel, district meetings, and speech contests conducted by the district.”
We do have District Officer training, and Area Governors (or Division) training, not the same in our District. For DO you do not get points, but learn a lot and DG and AG and their assistants are attending in June and December.
In London, sometimes, for the club committees, the training is by Division, other time each AG holds separate training.
What is Toastmasters Leadership Institute (TLI), which is club officer training plus other sessions? Where can I find more information about it?
Julie, I think you’re mixing up Club Officer training (COT and TLI), and district officer training (for area and division governors, the DEC). There’s also district trio training, done at the August convention.
Check out the “Training Club Leaders” booklet here:
http://www.toastmasters.org/217_training.aspx
Basically, a TLI is COT *plus* other optional sessions.
Well, things have changed this year for District 1….
Now the Div Governors are going to the clubs and giving “10 minute” training sessions to each officer, and counting them as trained.
Things were SO much different when I was on the district council.
I think most all of us can agree that should not be permitted.
While I agree with most of the points made, I do disagree about combining training, particularly for the January TLI’s. Here in D58 most clubs meet twice a month; therefore, almost all club officers serve for a full year. If your officers attend the July training (as they should), repeating the same information in January, even with variations, makes for a less than valuable training session.
Combining training for Sec/Treas or VPM and VPPR in the January training allows for more cross-role collaboration and also helps to prepare for transitions in the next election cycle. This is the time of the year when “closing the loop” on the club’s strategic plan. If marketing and PR aren’t working hand-in-glove at this time and supporting each other, synergy is lost. Likewise, secretary and treasurer, while different roles, each keeps track of valuable information. I frequently see this as a combined role for smaller clubs so why shouldn’t we support these officers in how to combine the roles effectively.
I think someone serving as secretary/treasurer needs a minimum of 45-60 minutes of training for EACH of the offices held. When training is combined, what do all the secretaries do while the treasurer side is being covered, and vice versa? Combining them means they each get half the time, 20-30 minutes, and that’s simply not enough time to cover the materials for one office, even for SAA.
I have always thought that sometimes when an officer has attended over 2 times, the District would accept a member of the club who is not an officer, so they would be ready to take over a place on the board the following year.
It’s technically up to the district … but the minimal rules that WHQ provides would prohibit this.