Club Officer Training – 30 January 2023

As part of our on-going commitment to excellence our club officers attend two training sessions each year. These are held by the Area and Division Directors and include various topics as well as talks from experienced Toastmasters.

Our own Club President, Rob Partridge DTM, gave a talk at last nights training about running a quality meeting.

Agenda

The training was done online to accommodate the entire division and to give people from other divisions the chance to join us and train.

The Zoom meeting opened at 6.00pm and Toastmaster Mary Carr greeted everyone as they entered and made them feel welcome. A real quality skill of Toastmaster Carr and one that should be replicated by Sergeant at Arms at every club.

Toastmaster Jenny Doyle, the President of the Wests Awake club and Galway member, acted as the Zoom Master, keeping everyone safe online and ensuring the meeting ran smoothly.

Division Director Dolores Brady welcomed everyone and officially opened the training. She explained how the evening would go and what officers could expect. Her attention to detail in all aspects of Toastmasters is always something that gets noticed by anyone attending an event in her hands.

The first session was around running successful contests. As contests above club level are still taking place online this was a great refresh of how to do it. Toastmaster Paul Gannon talked officers through the role of Contest Chair while Pat Croke, a past Division Director who excelled in the role, took officers through how to be a Chief Judge. These are often two roles that are hard to fill and can be confusing to carry out online when members are used to in-person contests. A question and answer session followed each talk, which gave officers the chance to ask particular questions they may have had, or clear up anything they didn’t understand. Officers went away from this session feeling more confident in taking on the roles and assisting members who might wish to take them on.

Following on from this session the officers broke out into separate groups with each offer position coming together to discuss their role. Toastmasters Pat Coakley, Carmel Turley, Liam Egan, Sharon Dooley, Dolores Ryan, Charles Malone and Mary Carr took on the various roles and lead productive sessions. Following these people gave feedback to the all the attendees.

A break followed this session and while some officers went and grabbed a drink others stayed online and chatted. Toastmasters Sharon Dooley and Rob Partridge got very animated about arranging a night in Loughrea, Galway. at the local Karaoke bar and Area 9 Director Charles Malone promised to sing us a song, but warned us we might not be well after it.

Following on from the break Loughrea club President Rob Partridge gave a talk on running a quality meeting and touched on the three main components. Those being the people, the timing and the content. Officers asked questions after and Toastmaster Liam Egan gave the great suggestion of giving guests the Find Your Voice leaflet. This leaflet is available on the Toastmasters International website here and there is article about it on the Loughrea Toastmasters website too. You can find it here.

Division Director Brady and her team ran a great session, that was educational and suited the audience. Officers left feeling empower, inspired and educated.