Commitment to Membership

There is no global body of college toastmasters yet since college toastmasters are a fairly new entity in the 90+ years Toastmasters International have been in existence and there is no guarantee that a new club started in any particular campus will survive past its first five years.  There are many factors that run against that survival and that has more to do with commitment than any other single measure.   Poor financial discipline and poor marketing can contribute to demise, but the heart and soul of students to be involved over the long-haul is vital.

Like any other organization that is starting up or even finding itself again, it is the few who build for the many, so commitment to membership does not mean that every student is expected to play a leadership role, but the way a club is organized needs education to be the focal point and if education is what Toastmasters was mandated to be in its incorporation as a private membership body, then this is what must be leveraged.

A recent buzz by one of the founders of BeBee (written in Spanish) listed 9 things that founder thought were important to him.  I have since translated those 9 points and then played around with those ideas until I fashioned them into a 9 box grid.  My initial thoughts were presented on my Work Manjit Twitter account but I have since adapted this further as detailed below and in acknowledgement of original source of inspiration for this, I call this my Javier 9-Box Grid.  The twitter link also reminded me that my original twitter learning journey needs to be reactivated since it has been fairly dormant since LinkedIn and BeBee became primary focal points for my own learning journey.  Javier's last point in his list of 9 values has been positioned above now as "Leverage" and that sits at the middle of my Javier Box. 

I have further replaced CONFIDENCE with INSPIRATION and FUN with FLOW.  The four points in darker orange BEING-FOCUS-FLOW-ENERGY become a personal compass and leverage is connected to the the four corner points of membership.  Naturally I will now try to utilize this Javier Box in my own individual commitment to our membership at the club level, and that will further stimulate my own thinking.

Leverage is important because I do not want to become an educator who stands in front of a class and lectures members - instead the leverage for my role in the club is make education an engagement in the mind, spirit and body of each member.  Leverage here is the organization behind allowing inspiration, unity, challenge and capability of the group to be exercised. Practice and not theory is the chief order of the day for me and the members voice runs through the center of this grid, but that voice is the vision which is being exercised, and not simply reacting to day-to-day reactions.  The members voice informs the efficacy of our leadership as actions.

Like an executive board, the idea of one voice is the primary leverage which in turn flows into commitment with the membership and not simply to the membership.  We need all four corner points to be fully exercised to make leverage in the center that much more meaningful as "leadership".  So I will test this way of looking at our membership over the coming weeks, but that also is in the context that like BeBee, the club is a new formation in an environment that has largely does not know of our existence.

So we must find our collective voice as leverage in the college ecosystem, while I also remind myself that college students have their own nature and characteristics, which are different to employees in a corporate club and citizens in a community club.  The recognition that college toastmasters are a distinct form is a starting point, but like all other forms of membership, it is the quality and commitment of the membership that is central to how that informs the leadership of any college toastmasters.  Each member is responsible for their own education but the commitment to the club makes that responsibility a more intelligent decision for all.

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