Have you ever had a mentor?  Wasn’t it great to have someone to turn to when you had questions, to get guidance on how to do something?

Mentoring is an important part of the Toastmasters program.  There’s no paid instructor with all the answers, which is what helps make Toastmasters so cost-effective.  You learn from your peers, your fellow club members, and when it comes to technical details about the Toastmasters program, having an experienced member to turn to can avoid a lot of frustration or wrong turns.

Continue reading “Mentoring matters!” →

District rankings have historically been fairly important, as the top six earned “President’s Distinguished”, and the next six earned “Select Distinguished”.  But even after that, there is pride in being, for example, #17 instead of #53, even if both were distinguished.

How did districts do this year compared to last year?  Two districts moved from the very bottom, #81 and #82 (out of 82 districts last year) up to #20 and #21, up 61 places!  Who?  Districts 42 and 31 (Alberta, Saskatchewan, Canada, and Eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island).  Truly an awesome and inspiring turnaround!

Continue reading “Most improved districts?” →

Does serving as LGM and LGET make for a better District Governor?  Interestingly — the 2010-11 districts WITHOUT a regular progression do measurably better, an average of 6 places higher in the rankings, and 8 percentage points more of them are distinguished!

The list of districts are those that followed a progression — the DG had been LGM and LGET in the two immediately preceding years. That was the hard part (including dealing with name variations); getting a list of distinguished districts is relatively easy, TI publishes that list every year.

Continue reading “District leadership succession” →