The Toastmasters Area Community

When I was approached with the prospect of being our area director this year, I really didn't have a strong understanding of what that commitment meant. Previous area directors had been nearly invisible to me, except when I made it to an area contest, at which point, I knew them only as some sort of authority figure involved in putting on the contest. I had no concept of what our area encompassed, or what lay beyond that. Even though I had been in the club for a couple of years and served as a club officer for a year, the area director role wasn't one of the things that I'd been exposed to much.

At the time, Distinguished Toastmaster Maureen Zappala had recently written a helpful article in Toastmaster magazine, titled Shine as an Area Director. We got excellent training from our district leadership team as well. And I set out to hopefully demystify the position of area director a bit for the newer members in my area, by speaking to each of the clubs about the role during my fall visits.

Image by Michael Schwarzenberger from Pixabay

I can't say that I've been as successful as an area director as I would have liked this year. Sure, I managed to turn in all of my club visit reports in the fall, and I'm working on my spring club visit rounds (which need to be done this month). The area contest came together successfully, with a LOT of help -- and I sure learned a lot about asking for help. Fortunately I had many people step up when asked. We have some real stars in our midst.

If I could do it over again, and have more time to devote to it, I would have taken the advice of the district leadership team to create an area council early on, rather than trying to go it alone until it was time to pull together the contest. It may have been a challenge to pull together a group from our area, in which all of the clubs are struggling in various degrees to get up to solid membership levels, but there's that old saying, "If you don't ask, the answer is always no." And in retrospect, building up a leadership team amongst the area community would give the club leadership in the area more of a chance to communicate amongst themselves. Ideas on bringing in guests could spread. Challenges unique to maintaining a club in a smaller metropolitan area could be shared and worked on together. 

This will be my challenge to next year's area director: build an area community. If you need an example, talk to your division director. In our area, the incoming division director did a great job of building an area council. In fact, include her in the area community!

Toastmaster readers: what are your experiences with your Toastmasters area as a community?