Video transcripts for the Club Leadership: Success in your role: Club Sergeant-at-Arms training module.

Responsibilities

Hello everyone, I’m Liam your Sergeant at Arms and it is my pleasure to welcome you here today to the Toastmasters Club Officer Training. Congratulations on becoming your club’s Sergeant at Arms. This is a fantastic hands-on role that is absolutely vital and sets the feeling for each meeting.

As the Sergeant at Arms you’ll be present at most meetings. You’ll be the first person to meet the guests and members and even open each meeting. This means that you’ll be very much the face of the club and set the tone for each meeting.

What a great opportunity. The club constitution states the Sergeant at Arms is responsible for club property management, meeting room preparation and hospitality. The Sergeant at Arms chairs the Social and Reception Committee.

So let’s have a brief overview of what the Sergeant at Arms does. This can be broken down into two broad categories, the club meeting and outside the club meeting. So in the club meeting this is the bread and butter of the role.

You’ll be responsible for setting up the room or the online space, greeting members and guests, opening the meeting, taking ballots and tidying up the room. Outside the club meeting you’ll be in charge of organising the venue, looking after the materials, attending committee meetings and arranging space for committee meetings. So over the next few videos we’ll be taking a deep dive into what each one of these responsibilities entails and how you can make it your own.

Club Meetings

In this video we’re going to be zooming in and looking at just what each responsibility entails. In the first video we split everything up into two broad categories, the club meeting and outside the club meeting.

So first let’s have a look at the club meeting. The club meeting can be split up into five main responsibilities. The first is arriving early to set up the room or space.

You’ll be responsible for setting up the chairs and tables in the room, setting up signage and branding so people can find their way to the room, setting up a timekeeper equipment, putting out the agendas, setting up any equipment, laptops, projectors, if there’s going to be any powerpoint presentations. If you’re streaming the meeting you’ll want to set up the cameras and the microphones and if it’s purely an online meeting you’ll be choosing a suitable streaming service, setting it up and making sure that everything is working. The next responsibility is meeting and greeting guests and members.

As Sergeant-at-Arms you will often be the first person there and any guests that arrived early or members that arrived early you’ll be the friendly face to greet them, introducing yourself to them and introducing guests to other members. If you’re an online platform you maybe need to admit any latecomers during the meeting. As Sergeant-at-Arms you are in charge of opening the meeting and doing the important announcements.

This means you will start the meeting, introduce yourself and the club, important announcements, fire exits, photographs and anything else that you may need to announce and then you hand over to the Toastmaster. You’ll be responsible for taking ballots and feedback. There are different ways we can do this and it can be the paper forms or online and you will be in charge of counting the votes throughout the evening and after the meeting you’ll be responsible for tidying up the room and also mingling and socialising with guests and members alike and making sure they’re all happy with the service that they are getting.

Club Leadership

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The next main category is outside the meeting and this can be split into four main responsibilities. The first is organising the venue. So this would mean if you needed to find a venue you’re responsible for finding potential venues which could then go to the committee to be voted on.

You’ll be in charge of negotiating rates, if you’re going to have refreshments, negotiating that and then signing the contracts. The next main responsibility is looking after the club possessions. You’ll be responsible for looking after a club laptop, any streaming equipment, stationery and name tags, timekeeping equipment, the advertisement banner and ordering new materials if you need any.

You’ll also be responsible for arranging a space for committee meetings. This could be a physical space or an online meeting and finally you will be attending committee meetings. The committee meetings is where the whole committee meets and we talk about what’s going on in the club, maybe upcoming things that we’re doing and every committee member gets a vote.

It might be that there’s a competition coming up or new members joining, whatever it is. So you’ll be responsible for attending the club meetings, talking about your role and voting on club decisions. And that sums up the main responsibilities for this role.

Tips & Tricks

Welcome back, this is the third video of the Sergeant-at-Arms club officer training. This video is all about tips and tricks to help you in your role. So let’s have a look.

So we’ll start off with the club meeting. The first tip is to arrive early. I can’t stress this enough.

When I first started doing this role, I would arrive at half past six and the meeting would start at seven and I barely start getting the room ready and guests would start arriving and members would start arriving. And as the first officer there, I felt compelled to greet the guests and say hello and spend time with them. I didn’t want to leave the guests alone while I got on busy setting up the room.

And this kind of stressed me out because I wanted to talk to the guest but I also needed to set up the room. So what I did is I started coming earlier and I found that quarter past six was the perfect time. If I arrived at quarter past six, it allowed me 15 minutes to get the room ready and then any early comers I can spend time with, greet them and introduce them to other people.

The next tip is to ask for help. If you’re behind on getting the room ready and there’s other members or officers there, ask them to help. Maybe they can set the agendas out on the chairs, maybe they can set the sign up outside.

Whatever it is, don’t be afraid to ask for help. The next piece of advice is to introduce guests to members. If you are busy and a guest arrives, stop what you’re doing, introduce yourself, welcome them and then introduce them to another guest or member that they can talk to while you continue getting the room ready.

Check with the Toastmaster before starting. If you’ve been to a few meetings, you might know that things don’t always go to plan. Sometimes the first speaker might not be there or other role players may not have turned up and the Toastmaster may need a few more minutes to get everything prepared before you start the meeting.

So always make sure to check that the Toastmaster is ready before opening the meeting. Take advantage of the speaking slot. When I first started doing this role, I had the same introduction every meeting.

I’d welcome the guests and then I’d go on to the announcements, fire exits and photographs and whatnot and I was doing the same thing every time. But this is a golden opportunity. You have two speaking slots at every meeting to introduce the meeting and after the break and you can use this to experiment.

Maybe you want to try audience engagement. Maybe you want to try a new joke. Anything you can imagine, you can try it.

So make sure to take advantage of our speaking slot. And the next two are on feedback. First is that feedback can be digital.

At Sheffield, we use an app called Slido and the guests and members alike can log on to slido.com on the phone and then they leave feedback on the app and they also do all the voting on the app. This means that at the end of a session, all the feedback can be sent digitally to the speakers and it’s a lot nicer for the speaker and it makes for a smooth running of the evening. If you are using paper feedback, when I was visiting another club in York, one thing I really liked was they had the audience members hand their feedback slips to the speakers and when they handed them to the speakers, they’d tell the speaker what they liked and go through the feedback and I thought that was a really nice touch.

It saves the Sergeant-at-Arms time from having to collect the feedback and hand it out and it also gets the audience and the speakers communicating. Next, we’ll have a look outside the club meeting. What tips and tricks will help you in this role? So you can sign a contract for a year if the venue will allow.

So at our venue, every year, we renew the contracts and it saves having to be doing things every month and making sure that the dates are available. We sign it for a year and then we don’t have to worry about that. Ask the venue, if it’s an ongoing venue, ask them if you can store the possessions at the venue.

This saves you from having to take them home or store them in your car and be looking at them around. We have them in a little suitcase and they just stay at the venue. Can the venue print agendas? This is really handy if they can.

Our Vice President of Education, every week, emails the agendas over and the certificates and the club prints them all out. As Sergeant-at-Arms, it will be up to you to negotiate this with the venue. Keep possessions in a suitcase, especially handy if you can’t keep them in the venue and you do have to take them in and out of the venue each week.

Speak up at the club committee meetings. As a committee member, you have a vote in every big decision in the club and you can make suggestions for anything that you think would help improve the club. So make sure to speak up and give your feedback on what the other officers are talking about.

And that’s it. I hope you find these tips and tricks useful and that they will help you in your journey. I’m sure you will make a fantastic Sergeant-at-Arms and you will get just as much out of this year as I have.

Thank you.