Surely learning shouldn’t be fun, right?
When I was in school many, many, many years ago learning was about repetition, was about sacrificing your free time, was about fear that you might look silly if you didn’t get it right in the class.
Nothing about learning was fun for me.
Then I found Toastmasters, in particular Belfast Toastmasters and that all changed.
It became fun, yes there was repetition but with a goal in mind, there was no more sacrificing my free time, it was now investing my time in myself and now there was no way I was going to feel silly in the environment that had been created.
However, not all clubs are like this one. I know this as I have travelled to many clubs in my roles as president, area, division and club growth director.
Here are my top five tips for creating a growth environment:
1. Trust, trust that the club officers and members are free to make mistakes, free to take chances without judgement and free to enjoy the learning and social experiences that they pay for.
2. Supportiveness, so that when you fall, that you will get a round of applause and a beautifully delivered selection of feedback that will drive the members forward in their journey.
3. Ambition, that the club strive to become at the very least a distinguished club for each and every member to be proud to belong to. We as club officers owe this much to the paying members.
4. Putting the member first, every decision is a democratic one and each members thoughts and feelings are taken into consideration. Too often I hear of one or two people who “RUN” the club making all the decisions on behalf of the majority. We are a democratic organisation and who put our members first. Follow the Toastmasters methodology and you can’t go too far wrong. They have been doing it for over 100 years now.
5. And fun, if people aren’t having fun they will find somewhere else to have fun.
We are at Toastmasters for many reasons, some obvious and some not so, but we are all here to learn something, so why not create the environment of growth and fun.
These are the best practice of thousands of successful clubs, with hundreds of thousands of successful members. I am one for not reinventing the wheel, Occam’s Razor is explains it best – when faced with competing explanations of the same thing, you should prefer the simplest one.
Ralph Smedley said it best when he said:
“We learn best in times of enjoyment”.
Kevin O’Reilly
Program Quality Director
