Succession planning in your club

A date is looming! 30

June for the handover to your new committee and theirregistration with Toastmasters International. For most clubs, this is only 10 meetingsaway. Recommended practice is also to get the elections complete by the 30

Maygiving even less time.So who is going to lead your club next year? Some club have lots of people competingfor roles while others are wondering if anyone might volunteer. After all, how many of you joined Toastmasters wanting to help organise and lead a club? – I certainly did not –but as I’ve learned a lot I am now very glad I did!So what do you need to do to ensure your new committee will effectively lead the clubfor the next year?

Succession planning

1) Succession planning as an on-going process

Succession planning is your first priority through out the year. Assess your currentcommittee to see who might be ready to move to a bigger role. If someone is not doingtheir role, you need to find someone else to take over now, don’t gloss over the problemor do the work yourself. Even if your committee is working beautifully and smoothly,there are still special events that you can use to challenge and test out new members tosee if they have the potential to join the committee. Completing a small project willbuild their commitment and highlight their strengths.Any good committee breathes on new ideas and new people. If you are not replenishingcommittee members year-on-year, or if you make the committee a clique of establishedfriends, you are sowing the seeds of future problems. Remember you want your year onthe committee to be an enjoyable experience rather than becoming a slave to the restof the membership just because you find it hard to involve others or delegate.Finding willing, enthusiastic people and getting them to see the benefits of joining thecommittee is a leadership challenge in itself and one that Toastmasters helps us learn!

2) Finding future committee members

Nothing replaces one-to-one chats with people if you want to understand and influencethem. If you have a big club, it can be time consuming. Hence, you also needsomething to reach a wider audience and identify the people with ideas who areprepared to contribute. Sometimes you can find members who assume that they aren’tready to take on a committee role when in fact they are!Having committee members lead a discussion (possibly from an advanced manual) onthe committee roles and soliciting ideas and volunteers for next year can work very wellboth to identify people as well as keeping the entire club membership informed. If people express ideas for the club, they are likely to make motivated committeemembers who want to turn their ideas into a reality.

3) Keep the committee election process open and transparent

A priority is to keep the process of nominating and selecting a committee as open andtransparent as possible. If the selection process is opaque with people not

understanding or being able to put themselves forward for roles, you will losecommitment from members. Then you will soon find that only a few of you are runningthe club instead of obtaining wide participation and ownership of club issues.My club uses the Club Plan nomination/voting system, which certainly takes the strainout of much of the process. However, it is just an electronic system and does notreplace educating and persuading an appropriate group of people to take part.

4) Persuading people to stand for election to the committee

One needs to persuade a group of suitable members to put their name forward.Everyone reasons for taking on a committee role are likely to be different sounderstanding their motivations is critical. However, one of the key benefits of joiningthe committee is to experiment with your own leadership style in a low riskenvironment.Remember to sell the benefits! The advantage of having to lead within a committee of volunteers is that it is a real test of leadership, rather than the ability to give largebonuses. If your leadership style works, you will soon have a committed group sharingthe workload and a buzz of activity in your club. If you end up doing all the work, youneed to think about changing your leadership style and getting some feedback. Afterall, it is better to make your mistakes in a supportive, low risk Toastmaster environmentthan in a business where your reputation and large sums of money are at risk.

Is there a particular leadership style for a Toastmasters club?

So is there such a thing as the “correct leadership style” that you should be looking for?Everyone seems to have different opinions; possibly as so many different styles can beappropriate in different circumstances. Some of the key qualities I would like to see are:

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A commitment to Toastmasters

, i.e. regular attendance with a clearmotivation to continue. Possibly they are running a business, want to overcome theirnerves, make friends or achieve a promotion at work. Someone who has just joinedmight be hard to assess on this point, but it could be good to bring them in to getnew ideas so long as they are not in critical roles.

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Being open to learning and feedback?

Someone with no leadershipexperience at all may quickly become an excellent leader if they are activelyexperimenting and obtaining feedback on their performance. I would always go forsomeone with the correct aptitudes and who is willing to listen rather than someonewho just has experience.

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Honouring their commitments.

It they regularly drop out of meetings at thelast minute without finding a replacement they are unlikely to be able to take on theextra responsibility. To me, this is one of they key things you must look for, if theycannot keep their own commitments, they will never become a good leader.

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Personable without very obvious rough edges

(let us face it, we all havesome rough edges or cultural preferences). Listening to their speeches, are theyuplifting, positive, encouraging. How do they interact with people in the clubgenerally, not just you? If they have all the other three qualities, why not try themout? Taking on a leadership role will certainly help smooth those rough edges if theyare prepared to take the feedback and act on it.