The Area Governor
On June, 2008, I was elected Area Governor for the Toastmasters District 59. My theme for this fiscal year will be “Leaders Do!”.Toastmasters promotes public speaking and leadership, and I have seen the strong link between the two in my own experience as a volunteer and a professional. Toastmasters has inspired me to do more than just think and reflect. In becoming a leader, I got up and spoke and I became a doer to get things done and sharing my ideas and reflections. I hope more people in our Area will do the same.Area Governor is a District Officer role in Toastmasters. The volunteer-based hierarchy puts the member at the top of the organization chart. You may remember the book from the 1980’s by Jan Carlzon: “Moment of Truth”. At the Toastmasters it is like in a service organization. The leaders are there to serve the members and provide vision and mission. Important is to live it up and lead by doing. The line employees at the SAS are on the top of the service hierarchy and every time there is a customer contact with the line employee, it defines everything; the quality, the values what the organization stands for, the service quality; everything. Now, imagine checking-in in any chain hotel; and should the service be lousy the whole organization falls apart as it is defined by this “Moment of truth”. It is the same at Toastmasters meetings; when a guest visits a Toastmasters Meeting; it is a “Moment of Truth”. The success of this moment depends highly on the friendliness of the welcoming people and the climate of the meeting, and as we know, at Toastmasters the warm welcome is definitely one of the USPs. The whole organization of Toastmasters is based on the success of the individual members. Everything happens at the floor levels…Members belong to clubs, which have Club Officers. Area Governors support the Club Officers. Division Governors support the Area Governors. The Toastmasters District has several different officers, all of whom help the Area and Division Governors. Unlike most organization charts, the President of Toastmasters International is at the very bottom of the hierarchy (just like the hierarchy of SAS in the 1980’s as defined in the Jan Carlzon’s Moment of Truth), except in his or her role as Member, where he or she is at the very top. It is a pleasure to be in “middle-management” in such a great organization like Toastmasters International.My hope is to see all the leaders ”Do!” in Area D1. I hope that the four Presidents in our Area will lead by example and inspire those around them. I hope to see them inspire the Club Officers to lead by example and speak often, which will inspire all the Members to speak and perhaps serve as leaders next year. If “Leaders Do!” then I think the members will be served. I think we should all inspire each other to lead and grow by continuing to practice, even after we have gained experience as speakers and leaders. If we run the clubs and the meetings well, then we will all have plenty of time to speak — new members and experienced ones.Toastmasters District 59 includes the Continental Europe. Division D in District 59 includes Southern Bavaria, Czech Republic, Austria and Hungary.Area D1 includes Austria and Hungary.This week I had the opportunity to train nearly 20 leaders from our Area Clubs. Here are the slides of the training:
i5 - intuition, imagination, innovation, inspiration and ideas