For Members - Planning Your Roster

Planning Your Roster

What strategy do you use to sign up for meeting roles on the club roster?

A)      “When I get to it, I go down the roster selecting a different role each week, following some kind of pattern.”

B)      “I randomly select roles; just depending on what’s not already taken, maybe trying not to do the same role two weeks in a row.”

C)      “I wait until everyone else has picked roles, then I fill in the last remaining spot, if someone else doesn’t beat me to it.”

D)     “I wait for the Toastmaster of the meeting to email or call and tell me which role they need me to fill.”

E)      “I wait and volunteer at the meeting to fill whatever role is needed for the next week.”

F)      “I wait to see if I actually show up at the meeting and then volunteer to fill in if someone else is absent.”

G)     “I pull up the DARTS program, and sign up for whatever role it recommends for me.”

H)      “I carefully plan out when I need to give speeches for my CC or Advanced manuals, and when I need to fill other roles for the CL manual, and then I go through the rosters to sign up for the roles I need to complete my goals.”

I must admit that at one time or another I have personally used every one of these methods.  Unfortunately, methods A through G fail us in meeting our individual goals, and in helping the club to succeed.  Methods A, B and G help get the meeting schedules set in advance, but they do not work effectively towards meeting our goals to complete the Toastmaster manuals in an effective and efficient manner.  Methods C through F do a disservice to other club members, because they put more work on the Toastmaster of the meeting, and the Vice President of Education, to ensure that we have well planned meetings.

Ideally, everyone would adopt method H, so that we have well planned meetings, and members making progress through the Toastmasters programs, and achieving recognition for their success.

To help you down this road, I will share a couple suggestions.

It is important to establish some personal goals regarding what you want to accomplish.  The Toastmasters program is flexible enough for you to meet your goals, while achieving Toastmaster Awards.  Once you have your goals established, you can plan a schedule.

While the natural progression is to work through the Competent Communicator (CC) manual, and then move on to advanced manuals for the Advanced Communicator awards, many newer Toastmasters do not realize that they can repeat the CC manual every year.  Toastmasters will grant a CC Award for completing the CC manual once per year, for each club you are a member in.  This means that personally, I can complete two CC awards each year.

To do this, I worked out a calendar of speeches.  If I give one speech in each club approximately every five weeks, I will complete enough speeches for the CC in each club each year.  If I want to also work on Advanced Communicator speeches, I can schedule those in as well.  Realistically, I often find other opportunities to speak beyond every fifth week, and so can complete the manuals even faster.  The idea is to plan a calendar of speeches in advance, and then schedule yourself to speak in the meeting dates that you planned.

The same goes for the Competent Leader (CL) manual and award.  You can complete one CL per year for each club you belong to.  While the roles needed to be completed for the CL are more complex to figure out, you can take a look at the roles needed for each project, and schedule yourself in the roster to complete those roles.  If you want to work on Advanced Leader awards, you will want to schedule extra long speech times to complete some of the advanced project presentations.  Longer speeches are particularly important to schedule in advance, so the Toastmaster of the meeting can plan accordingly and make any necessary adjustments.

Among the projects in the CL manual, six can be partially fulfilled by serving as General Evaluator.  If you plan your schedule, and sign up as General Evaluator in one meeting every other month, you will partially complete those six projects.  Of course, most of those projects give you other options besides serving as General Evaluator to complete the project, but the point is that if you carefully plan your meeting roles, you can quickly complete most of the projects in the CL.

I encourage you, don’t fall into the habit of using one of methods A through G above, but instead get in the habit of using method H.  Careful planning does not require a considerable amount of time (and once you’ve planned it out for the year, you’ll find signing up for meeting roles goes much faster).  Careful planning helps the Toastmaster of each meeting to have a well planned meeting.  Careful planning helps the club succeed in meeting our club goals.

Jim Robison