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Originally Posted by seeker5  What would be a great way to structure a Personal Development club that met once a week? It could be structured similarly to toastmasters, but tailored to personal development.
Any ideas? |
I've not done anything like this before (I do have some experience with meetings, though. I've been a member of two Toastmasters clubs for a year; President of one, Secretary [albeit not a very good one] of the other), but I think a clear focus is essential. You want people to be clear on why they're there at the club and what the goals of the club would be so people can decide whether or not the club is appropriate or not. If you're unclear, I think you'd get lots of conflicts of interest in that people would join the club but bring along agenda's that aren't congruent with the overall agenda of the club. And such a club would definitely have an agenda (regardless of how specific or general it is), so I think being very clear about it would be a helpful first step (kind of like choosing a niche is essential for a website... it helps you tailor your efforts to your audience and focus your marketing efforts).
For actual meeting structures, I think I'd borrow a lot from Toastmasters. Assign roles to people, have an agenda, and use things such as the round robin and other such tools that allow everyone to have the opportunity to participate.
As president of a Toastmasters club, I've been hosting club executive meetings for about a year now, and I found round robins and open discussion segments to be very helpful. It was just essential to be clear and give people an agenda (an actual paper agenda, although I also explained the specific agenda for--the purpose of--that meeting. E.g. One of the agendas was "getting more members").
I've found it's really important to have a chairman--someone to lead the meeting (although I think you could also have multiple chairmans if each chairman chaired a different segment of the meeting, kind of like a Toastmaster does for speeches [although I'm not sure if the way the Aussie Toastmaster works--i.e. the actual role of Toastmaster in a meeting--is different to the US Toastmaster]).
I also found it important to lead people into things. E.g. If you are going to discuss something in an open discussion format, I found it important to time the segment, and also to introduce the segment so everybody knew what we were talking about. If I extended an invitation for people to speak without giving them a clear idea of what we were talking about, people would talk about random stuff that wasn't even related (you'd think they wouldn't, and other people would kind of be like, "what? Why are they talking about that?"), but people still do it.
So yeah, in my experience, (1) leading is very important (otherwise your "invitation" is for randomness to come in, which can quickly derail a meeting), (2) as is a clear focus, and (3) clear boundaries (about what is expected and allowed--the constraints of a segment, just like speeches have constraints of timing, as well as topic constraints, etc). In other words, goals and outcomes.
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I know Steve's wanted to get something like this going for a long time (so have I!), but I don't think he's been ready to do it yet (nor have I). Maybe speak with him next time you see him (or something) and see what his ideas were for a PDSP, TLP-oriented club in terms of structure. You don't have to get Steve involved or anything (unless he wants to be), I just mean it might be helpful to hear his ideas.