Member Mentoring: What’s In It For You?

By Mary Carol Holbert, DTM, District 84 Governor

If you or your Club Officers have been to one of District 84’s “Rock Your Clubs Boot Camps”, you’ve heard that District 84 is focusing on Membership and Mentoring this year. We all know how our clubs are positively impacted by having strong member-ship, but why the focus on member mentoring? What’s in Member Mentoring for our clubs and our members? Great question! Let’s look at Member Mentoring and see how it benefits our new members, our experienced members, the men-tors themselves, and our clubs.

New Member Mentoring:

Thinking first of our new members, do you remember when you first joined Toastmasters? Can you recall hearing people in your club talking about something called a “CC” or a “CL”, and mentioning they were going to “TLI” or “K of K”? Did you feel almost like they were speaking a foreign language? Then, you were asked to take on a meeting role, and you weren’t sure exactly what you were supposed to do? Was your head swimming those first few weeks or months?

If you were in a club with a strong mentoring program, you had a club member who acted as your guide, shepherding you through those moments when you could have gotten lost. Ideally, that guide – your ‘mentor’ – was knowledgeable, patient, available when you needed him/her, interested in your goals and aspirations, and able to teach you about being a Toastmaster in your club.

Clubs with strong mentoring programs generally assign a mentor to every new member, usually shortly after the new member joins the club. Coming into any organization as a new member can be a little daunting, but clubs can make that transition a quality experience for the new member.

Make your New Member Feel Special: There are things a club can do to make the new member feel like he or she has made a great decision in joining a Toastmasters club. When we make our new members feel special, we affirm their choice to join our clubs.  

The question thus becomes: What can we do to make new members feel special? What if we hold an induction ceremony that includes a pledge from our existing members to support the new members? Wouldn’t that be a great way to start a Toastmaster journey?

We can have a qualified mentor assigned right away, and have the mentor stand with the new member at the induction ceremony. We can give the new member a pin or a name badge if we have sufficient revenues in our treasury to do so. Alternatively, we can provide a tent card or a plastic badge holder with printed name tag to our new members.  

We can give each new member a new member kit, with information they would benefit from having included, such as a list of commonly used acronyms, meeting role descriptions, educational track explanations, club history, club officer roles, etc. Whatever we can do to help the new member feel they have made a great decision to join our club, and to make our new members feel special, will help to create a positive club experience from the beginning.

What should our Mentors Teach our New Members? Once the new member is in the club, and a mentor is assigned to that member, there are certain bits of information we want that mentor to discuss with our new members right away. Some of the very first items we probably want our new members to understand include: 

•  How our particular club operates – how are meetings are organized and run, and how we communicate with our members about upcoming meetings, roles, and events
•  What is involved in performing each meeting role (may want to provide ‘go-by’ scripts for roles such as Toastmaster, General Evaluator, Table Topics Master, Ah Counter, Grammarian, & Timer)
•  A list of commonly used acronyms
•  Explanations of the Communication & Leadership Educational Tracks, and how the CC and CL manuals work. (I know I was in my club at least 4 months before I understood that I was sup-posed to be working through the CL manual, and that the roles I was performing at club meetings should be evaluated and counted toward completion of the various CL projects.)
• Discussion of the Ice Breaker speech (and copy of the ice breaker project)

As our new members gain Toastmasters experience, their mentors’ next steps might include:

•  Explaining how Toastmasters International is organized, including where the member’s club is located in terms of Area, Division, & District
•  Encouraging participation in contests at the club, area, division, and/or District level (as functionary or contestant)
•  Promoting participation in the Club Ambassador Program, to help our newer Toastmasters understand how much more than is to Toastmasters International than just the four walls of their own club, and also to see what other clubs are doing well so they can bring fresh ideas back to their clubs
•  Encouraging attendance at Conference – a fabulous venue to learn how much Toastmasters has to offer, to network and make friends with other Toastmasters, & to learn from some of the most talented speakers in Northern and Central Florida
• Recommending members take on Officer roles within their clubs to advance their Leadership skills
•  Explaining the path to becoming a Distinguished Toastmaster - many newer members want to understand this path once they have witnessed the ‘DTM Walk’ at conference! I know I did!
•  Introducing the new members to all the information, videos, documents, and tools available on the District 84 (toastmastersd84.org)  and Toastmasters International (toastmasters.org) websites

Wow! That’s a lot of information! Your particular club could have some other items that your mentor will want to discuss with your new members. So, who is in charge of making sure that all hap-pens, and how can we be certain that our mentors are performing those tasks?  

Technically, the Vice President Education is responsible for as-signing mentors, but the VPE is already so busy with organizing and assigning meeting roles, as well as handling contests, that he or she has little extra time to monitor or track the mentors/mentees.  

Overworked VPEs are why a number of clubs have decided to name a Mentor Chair, or even create a Vice President Mentorship position for their clubs. I would highly encourage every club to take that step, because having a quality mentoring program can mean the difference between having a member who is smoothly transitioned into our Toastmasters organization, or losing a new member who soon tires of struggling to understand either what is expected, or how to reach her/his goals.

Your club may want to use a checklist for member mentoring, to keep track of how the information transfer is progressing. For mentor and mentee checklists see the District 84 Website, Club Toolbox, Boot Camp, http://www.toastmastersd84.org/clubs.html

Experienced Member Mentoring:

Do Toastmaster’s goals change as time goes by? If you have been in Toastmasters for a year or longer, do you have the same goals you had when you first came into Toastmasters? For most of us, the answer is a resounding ‘no’. Our goals change constantly.  

However, it could turn out that there is no one in my home club who has those skills, or who has the time to mentor me. The good news is we have an entire District to draw from!  

Look to your Area, your Division, or your District for help for members who are looking for a specific skill you don’t have in your club. Maybe someone wants to put more humor into his or her speeches. Maybe someone wants to gain District Leadership experience. Maybe someone wants to be the next World Champion of Public Speaking. Let’s be sure we look not only inside our clubs, but also across club lines to find mentors for our experienced members who are seeking mentoring in specific skills.

What Is In It For The Mentor?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always learned more from teaching others than I’ve learned as a student. Being a Mentor for someone else provides not only a great personal learning opportunity, but also a chance to establish a close connection with another Toastmaster. Mentoring often satisfies one of our most basic human needs: to feel needed and appreciated. Additionally, in District 84, being a mentor will earn points toward admission into our District 84 League of Volunteers.

What Is In It For The Club?

Every year, across the country, volunteer organizations lose an average of 40-45% of their membership. Of that 40-45%, approximately 68% leave because the people they deal with are indifferent to their needs. We clearly don’t want our members to feel we are indifferent to their needs!

In clubs with strong mentoring programs, it is reasonable to believe that members would not experience that disconnect. Members would be far more likely to remain interested, active, and engaged, as either mentors or mentees, or both! They would recognize and understand the amazing depth of what their club and the greater Toastmasters International organization had to offer.

If a club can increase its retention rate, it can grow healthier and stronger, creating a higher quality membership experience for its members. A quality membership experience is what we want for all our District 84 Toastmasters.  

A strong Member Mentoring Program is one way our clubs can ensure our members get that quality experience, by ensuring their questions are answered, their connections to other Toastmasters are strengthened, and their individual needs are met.