How to President the RDG Way

1. What is the President?

"The president is either the hardest role, or the easiest, depending on your cabinet" an old Toastmaster mentor once told me. If you have a strong club with proactive officers, you have a lot less to worry about than a club that is doing just enough to get by and might be missing officers entirely. As president, the ultimate success or failure of your club is your responsibility. The measurement of that success is the Distinguished Club Program. As president, your abilities to proactively address challenges as well as engage your officers and members is key to making the program work.

2. President Roles & Responsibilities In-Depth

As president, you'll be playing a big role in coordinating others to assure the club's success. Here's a look at presidential duties.

• Setup monthly executive committee meetings
  
• Setup monthly one-on-one meetings with officers

Without ongoing communication with the other officers, their tasks tend to fall by the wayside and they feel uninspired. Confusion about who should be doing what by when spreads rapidly. Setup a calendar reminder for the top of the month to remind yourself to setup these important executive meetings. Make it clear that officers can come to you outside of these meetings for help and support, and let them know how.

• Coordinate with other officers to develop club goals
  
• VPE: Educational goals for each member
• VPM/PR: Membership building goals
• Treasurer: Budget
• Coordinate with each office to develop month-by-month plan to achieve Distinguished Club status
• Takes up or delegates absent roles/tasks 

Much of the month-by-month plans are already developed for you in this course, and the goals planning should be done at the start of the year with the club success plan. You should still review these plans and add or take away tasks as needed.

Note the last item: If officers aren't pulling their weight, their tasks fall to you. Maintain strong officers and committees so you don't get overwhelmed.

• Leads the club by promoting the Toastmasters values of Respect, Integrity, Service, & Excellence.
  
• Oversee plan to achieve Distinguished Club Program goals and ensure Club is a Distinguished Club. 

These tie into each other. Your activity (or lack thereof) can really set the tone for the club. One big example is as a presiding officer, if you open with energy and enthusiasm, you're going to have a vastly different meeting experience versus opening in a tired and non-committal way. If you're not engaging with your officers and your members and making it clear you expect them to engage in kind, expect the club to crumble.

• Encourage communication and leadership development through promotion of the educational awards (Pathways or otherwise).
  

If your club isn't having consistent advancement through the education program, your members are not getting the benefits of Toastmasters. Your VPE should be also championing this, but you should be recognizing progress every meeting.

• Ensures Club Officers meet Club Officer & Club Meeting standards.
  

If you have non-responsive officers, it's on you. If you have out of line officers, you need to act, and act quickly.

• Oversee administration & operation of Club in compliance with the Club Constitution and Bylaws.
  

Keep your club legit. Review your bylaws with your secretary online.

• Participates at District Council meetings. 
  
• Exercises vote at International Convention, or tenders proxy to District. 
  
• Attends the Area and District Council meetings. 

You have a say in higher level affairs of Toastmasters. Most of the time you'll file a proxy for the International Convention.

3. What's in it for Me?

The president role can be tough, but it offers many benefits, including the following:

• Delegation skills. Most tasks should be handed down to one of the officers (and their committees, where applicable), then followed up on, as needed.
• Coaching and mentoring skills. Ideally, the president has multiple years of experience that they can use to help other officers. 
• Outside speaking opportunities. I've been called on as a president to speak on a panel and elsewhere, because I was listed on our website. This was a fantastic experience!
• Speaking skills. While serving as president I was more motivated to elevate my speaking game.

4. Your Two Week Startup Plan

Don't forget to complete tasks in the All Officers section.

1. Work with the former president, former treasurer, and incoming treasurer to transfer ownership of your club's bank or credit union account. Get online access setup if available.
   
2. Study how to have effective one-on-ones and executive committee meetings.
3. Create a OneNote, EverNote, or other file for recording one-on-one and executive committee meeting notes.
4. Make sure other officers are completing their pre-term tasks. Check for roadblocks.
5. Make contact with the incoming and outgoing area directors to setup club visits and officer induction.

5. President Q&As

I have an officer that is under-performing. What do I do?

This is a very broad (but also common) issue. Poor officer performance is usually due to a failure of know-how (they don't know how to do something), a failure of motivation (often an emotional blockage), a failure of expectation (your expectations vs. their expectations are different), or a combination thereof. 

Failures of know-how can usually be solved by education, and you may find it useful to seek out or create materials that solve the issue going forward. Checklists, "cheat sheets", tutorials, and so on can be developed to help solve the issue now and in the future (several of those are available in the resources folders in this and other programs here). Sometimes failures of know-how are smokescreens for failures of motivation, however - if you have an officer that says they don't know how to do something when asked about a failure to perform, but hasn't spoken up about it, there may be a deeper issue.

Questions that can help get over failures of know-how include:

• "What exactly do you need to know?"  - Seems basic, but you want to make sure the problem is well defined.
  
• "How do you think you could find out about it?" - Creates the expectation that they need to put in some research time. It could also be phrased as "Where do you think you could learn more?"
• "When will you read that tutorial/take that course/engage with that learning opportunity?" - Creates the expectation that they'll be the one taking action. Set a deadline and follow up.
• "Will this get done in the future? What other questions do you have?"  - You want to confirm that the issue is just with know-how, and not something deeper.  

Motivation issues are varied. It could be simple procrastination, disinterest or burnout, or deeper issues. You may see this show up toward the end of a term. If you have an officer that knows what to do, but isn't doing it, you need to address it early. Here's a list of comm

How do I balance "taking up the slack" with delegating?

Especially for the impatient or driven, there can be a big struggle between wanting to get tasks done (especially the longer they linger), and getting the responsible officer to take care of the task. On one hand, if you have something you can take care of (and quickly), you might feel like you should just do it and get it out of the way. On the other, you end up denying the responsible officer a chance to learn and grow, and it often leads to a downward spiral where you take on more and more and they do less and less.

This is another broad question that depends on your specific situation. Here are some guideposts to guide your decision:

• Is the officer or their committee even available? If not, you need to pick up the slack (or find someone to do so).
• What is the impact of the task being undone? If there is an immediate effect, especially if it's impacting member or guest satisfaction, you will likely want to step in sooner rather than later. If there aren't more urgent problems, make more efforts to delegate. 
• How long has this been undone? The longer the task is undone, the more you may want to lean toward picking up the slack.
• Have you contacted the officer more than 3 times about the same issue? If you're getting no response, you may consider doing the task more, but try to vary your contact method (e.g. if e-mail isn't working, try text or a phone call).
• Does the task take less than five minutes to complete? You may just want to get it out of the way for small tasks, but follow up and let the officer know it was done.

In any event, if you decide to take up the slack, make sure you follow up with the officer to let them know about the performance gap.

One of my officers/members is driving me insane. What do I do?

For this scenario, I'm assuming they're doing something that it's only you they're bothering, and aren't a nuisance to the rest of the club. If you want an in-depth read on how to handle difficult conversations, try Crucial Conversations. This is going to be a quick and dirty, fairly generic response.

The first thing to do is determine if this is just a hang up of yours. If so, it may be something that needs to be re-evaluated.

Provided it's not, collect a few instances of the behavior, and how it made you feel. Maintain objectivity.

Ask to speak with the person privately and raise the concerns, along with the way . Be prepared for defensive behavior, but also give them the chance to explain themselves. Usually a candid discussion is enough to defuse immediate tensions, but you may likely need follow ups.

If this doesn't work, you may want to talk to your area director, your immediate past president, or other mentors to get advice on how to handle the situation.

A disruptive person rarely affects just one person in the club. If they won't live up to the Toastmasters values and coaching doesn't help, it may be for the best to have that person leave the club.