This come to me when I last opened the Basecamp. From tomorrow, the certificate of Proficiency, earned as we finish a path, will have to be printed by us or one of the club Basecamp managers, we will no more be send a hard copy of it by mail as before.
As the path, as usual when we finish will disappears from the Active paths, go and fish it out from the Completed and print it from there.
5 key teachings from being a VPE
I’ve always enjoyed teaching, and I did it at University for a while. There’s nothing more rewarding than contributing to someone else’s growth. That’s mostly why I signed up for a Vice President Education role in my Toastmasters club.
Today I’m honoured to share with you the 5 main takeaways from my 2 years’ experience as VPE.
1) Education is a life journey
Before joining Toastmasters, I thought my educational journey had ended. I then discovered it was just the beginning of a new learning adventure.
At Toastmasters we strive for providing a high-quality education. To meet this goal, there are some essential elements a VPE must promote.
I’ll go into more details about the last two points later on within this post.
We don’t need the education system Roger Waters sang against in “Another Brick in The Wall”, but we desperately need a thought-provoking, embracing, inspiring education. And Toastmasters is no doubt the place where this is delivered.
2) The importance of finding the right path
Albert Einstein said: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
The most important thing in life is to find your purpose, your path, your way. Well, being part of Toastmasters let me embark into an educational journey which helped me develop my true self.
However, new members can be overwhelmed by the information overload at the beginning and might feel lost. VPE has to be the light illuminating the way along members will walk.
A call to all VPE (and not only them)! Speak up about the Pathways invaluable resource during regular meetings, via email, by phone.
If a member is not sure about which path to select, make them aware of the online assessment they can take. On top of that, it’s extremely helpful to know the different skills they will enhance for each of the 11 pathways available, therefore I’d suggest sharing the poster below with your club members. Doing so, a newbie will be in a better position to choose a more suitable pathway.
3) Ensure paths are walked upon
Great. All the members of the club have embarked on a pathway. Job done. Can relax now.
Sorry, but doesn’t work like that! Once the selection step has been ticked off, VPE will have to make sure each member moves along the chosen path.
Based on my personal experience, it’s good practice to deliver the ice breaker as soon as possible. Some people might be reluctant to take the first step, and VPE should be there to support them. Most of the times, once the ice is melted, a member will gain momentum and speed up on his/her pathway.
To keep track of everyone’s progress, go to the “Pathways” section of the TMI website, log on base camp as manager and go to “member progress” (see figure below).
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You can export data in excel and I’d recommend creating your own spreadsheet to be used as pathways tracker.
4) Feed the seed so that it grows
New members are like seeds which need to be fed nourishing evaluation to grow up. Feedback is a fundamental element for a member’s growth. The more feedback a member gets, the faster he/she will improve.
As mentioned by Dr. Assegid Habtewold, “If excellence is one of your values, not only you self-critic and evaluate your performance consistently, you beg others for honest feedback.”
It’s therefore paramount for VPEs to encourage all members to give constructive, thorough, empowering evaluations.
There are some strategies you can adopt when delivering an evaluation.
a) The Sandwich technique
This is one of The Toasted Sandwich club’s strength, of course. Essentially, you squeeze each suggestion for improvement (recommend) between two commends.
b) The CCRRC approach
An evaluation is nothing but a speech itself. As highlighted in the picture above, it has an enticing opening, a detailed main body and a positive ending.
As concerns the core of the evaluation, this method implies giving two commends, followed by two recommends and a final commend. At each stage the evaluator has to be specific, providing details about what, why, when a speaker has done something and how to improve it.
In summary, which are the key ingredients of an effective evaluation?
5) Brilliant speech writing leads to excellent speech delivery
Last but not least, speech writing. It does make the difference.
It might sound obvious, but most speakers focus solely on the oral delivery, neglecting the speech craft aspect. This often leads to a poor performance, even for experienced speakers.
One of the VPE’s duties should be to advise on how to structure and write an audience-captivating speech.
I’ve collated a series of tips to produce impactful contents within your speech:
I hope this post was useful for early stage VPEs (and perhaps more experienced too).
Keep up the good learning!
Learned a lot of new features in just a few minutes.
New direct access to Tutorials, even back to the profile. It is worth taking time to discover one by one, I just begun.
Where is the form for the 360 degree evaluation? I first looked in Evaluation Resources, but then went lower, and discovered it in Resources Documents.
Of course, before, we have to login to Toastmasters.org, then ask to go to Basecamp, then click on the grey UNDER the name Tutorials and Resources. And once we chosen click also on the langage you want.
The 360 degree evaluation is to be asked from superiors, collègues and those in your team, and it is 6 difficult pages evaluating mainly you, not easy to answer or even to read.
One can find it also in the Project, on Your Evaluation page, same from which the project can be found.
I did not got yet an award for it, just realised and asked one of my clubs if they want it, need it.
As you see I am in those clubs, member of many. Four of them born as online global clubs. The last one went online for the moment, mid March.
