{"id":878,"date":"2013-07-21T15:47:54","date_gmt":"2013-07-21T20:47:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/?p=878"},"modified":"2013-09-16T13:38:31","modified_gmt":"2013-09-16T18:38:31","slug":"minimum-requirements-for-club-officer-training","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/21\/minimum-requirements-for-club-officer-training\/","title":{"rendered":"Minimum requirements for club officer training"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"training\"<\/a>Districts have full discretion over setting minimum requirements for club officer training, and there seems to be a wide range of standards.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

Some districts hold just one district-wide TLI (more commonly in geographically compact districts), some districts hold one in each division.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

But the end result is that officers attending the TLI or COT earn credit for the club’s Distinguished Club Program (DCP).\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

How are these standards (if any) enforced?\u00a0 Nominally, the LGET has responsibility for all this training (TLI or COT).\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Does this show up in the numbers?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 At the opposite end, we have D31 (eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island) with just 2.7 officers trained.\u00a0 How can these be so very different?<\/p>\n

What does a club officer have to do in your district to get DCP credit?\u00a0 Is it consistent throughout a training period?\u00a0 Is it consistent from year to year?\u00a0 Here’s a few questions to consider, aspects of club training that seem to vary from one district to another.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Must the officer attend training specific to their office, or just to go a training event?<\/li>\n
  2. Can a substitute replace the person who officially holds office?<\/li>\n
  3. Do you check the sign-in sheet to see if the name matches the TI record for who holds office?<\/li>\n
  4. Is photo ID required when signing in?<\/li>\n
  5. 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?<\/li>\n
  6. What is the minimum wall clock training time for their training?<\/li>\n
  7. Can training be done for two offices together (e.g., VP-PR and VPM, or secretary and treasurer)?<\/li>\n
  8. Can training be done for all seven offices together?<\/li>\n
  9. 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?<\/li>\n
  10. Are the TI-mandated materials used as the core of the training?\u00a0 (Note that a good trainer will enhance and build on what’s provided.)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    As an example of what I think would be good standards, here’s what I used when I was the District 30 LGET:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Training must be based on the TI materials.<\/li>\n
    2. There must be breakouts for each office.\u00a0 General sessions are good for common materials, like working as a team or the DCP, but each office has unique responsibilities to cover.<\/li>\n
    3. At least 50 minutes of wall clock time for each breakout session.<\/li>\n
    4. No combining offices — there’s very little that the secretary responsibilities have with the treasurer.<\/li>\n
    5. If someone held two different offices in two different clubs, they had to attend two training sessions (the breakout, not the whole TLI).\u00a0 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.<\/li>\n
    6. 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.<\/li>\n
    7. President and VPE training sessions at TLIs ran twice as long, since their duties are much more involved.\u00a0 This was waived for make-up COT.<\/li>\n
    8. 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).\u00a0 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.<\/li>\n
    9. 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.\u00a0 If I thought there were an issue with that, I would probably change that, though it’s a lot of clerical work.<\/li>\n
    10. Our district’s clubs are mostly annual officer terms, so mid-year (Dec\/Jan\/Feb) training was usually the second time around for most.\u00a0 We billed itas “advanced training”, and it was much more discussion oriented than the more lecture-oriented first round training.<\/li>\n
    11. Where practical, we often had the DG lead president’s training, LGET lead VPE training, and LGM lead VPM training.\u00a0 This may not be practical in some districts, of course.\u00a0 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.<\/li>\n
    12. If someone served as trainer for an office that they held, they got credit for it.\u00a0 If you can teach it, you must know it.\u00a0 (If they held a different office, they’d have to attend that training, of course.)<\/li>\n
    13. We never charged for a training event, that’s what the district budget is for.\u00a0 (Any food served, such as at a TLI, was charged for at cost.)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      I’d love to see districts put down their requirements in writing for DEC approval, and then follow them transparently and conscientiously.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Districts have full discretion over setting minimum requirements for club officer training, and there seems to be a wide range of standards.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 On the other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous-toastmasters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=878"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":884,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878\/revisions\/884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}