Toastmasters International District 76 Japan(English Site)

Division A Second Club Officer Training   January 10, 2010 (Sunday)
Sendai City, AER Bldg 10:30 ~ 16:40  Reported by Div A Gov Daniel Ross

Introduction  (to Div A’s Bilingual 2nd training)
“It may be easier to build a road across a flat valley than to build one up and over the mountains. However, a road up and over the mountains is usually much more needed and useful.” (Chinese? Proverb)

Executive Summary
[“Why” and “How” and “What” we changed for our Second Training is outlined in greater detail on our Div A 2nd Club Officer Training website: http://tmctraining-sendai.blogspot.com/ ]

The “Team of 5” (Div A Gov and Area 11, 12, 13, 14 Governors: DAG Ross, A11G Kobayashi, A12G Kubota, A13G Brassard, A14G Ajioka) decided to try some new things for the Second Club Officer Training. We successfully “broke new ground” on several fronts.

Based on feedback from the 1st training (and some original and creative thoughts of our own as a Div A team [4 AGs and Div Gov])…
We made several positive changes for our 2nd training.

1. Truly bilingual throughout (with everyone, regardless of language, interacting together in one room the whole time)
2. Interactive sessions
   
   1. Many small group discussions [followed with large group Q&A discussions]
   2. Interactive training-style workshops [vs. “lectures,” “speeches,” “presentations”]
   3. Listening, learning and sharing directly with each other (officer to officer, club to club, member to member, person to person, heart to heart; across languages)
3. 10 minute breaks, deliberately scheduled into the day at very frequent intervals. [Contrast: 1st training had 30-40 min sessions back to back; non-stop]
4. Longer lunch break (1-1/2 hours=90 min) [Very specific reasons for this: socializing, and “Find Someone Who” activity: 「宝物探し」or「宝者探し」.  See below and Div A Training website for details.] [Contrast: 1st training had only 50 min. lunch break, with bentos catered in]
5. Session lengths (10, 20, 40, 50, 60 min sessions) and styles (Interactive, small groups, etc.) were deliberately mixed in for variety, and interest (planned randomness). [Contrast: 1st training basically had lecture sessions, only, at 30-40 min. each]
6. Sendai as a venue [new challenge to try a venue outside of the Tokyo area for variety, sightseeing, change of pace and fun; as well as to help balance the training preparation work load, more evenly, across the whole Div A Team during the year (directly involving all of the AGs and the DivGov, evenly)]
7. Overarching, interactive, socializing activity that ran throughout the whole day (see concluding notes below for explanation)

Training topics [for timing and schedule details, see our Div A 2nd Club Officer Training website: http://tmctraining-sendai.blogspot.com/ ]: How to Give Effective Evaluations (AG Marie-Josee Brassard, AG Shigeru Kobayashi, AG Isao Kubota, AG Yuko Ajioka)

• District Structure and Club Alignment (Alignment Committee member DTM Yoshio Hori)
• Motivating Members beyond Speech 5 & 6 (Main focus: Achieving DTM) (Bannerdale Pres. DTM Hiroyasu Tezuka)
• Keeping members interested & involved; keeping the club motivated (Go Beyond DCP) (LGET Seiko Matsumoto)
• How to Promote the Use of the CL Manual in Your Club (Sendai VPE Sayako Mori)
• How to Put on and Host Speech Contests (ICF Chiba, TM Michio Utsumi)
• Panel Discussion (with pre-questions from participants [solicited before the training event] and questions from the floor [that day; live]) (Moderator: DAG Daniel Ross; Panelists: Presenters listed above)

Concluding notes

Importance of Feedback, listening to participants, and using what was learned:
Due to the feedback from the 1st Training in June 2009, we knew that people wanted to get to know each other better and they wanted to interact with each other. They also wanted to share their own knowledge and their own perspectives and experiences (and troubleshoot their own club problems). So, we provided plenty of small group discussion to allow this to happen. Interaction and direct sharing is also mentioned in the adult learning theories explained in “From Speaker to Trainer” (Item Number 257).
[See TI catalog or TI website at www.toastmasters.org for “From Speaker to Trainer” (Item Number 257).  Also, see other resources below.]

Overarching, interactive, socializing activity (whole day)
The ongoing, overarching, interactive, socializing activity that ran throughout the whole day was a “Find Someone Who” activity, also called「宝物探し」or「宝者探し」

This was a simple single page with places to fill in the names and contact info of 5 (five) other officers in each column on the page. The rule was that the officers had to be from a club other than your own, who:

1. HAD served in your same officer position in the past
2. Is NOW serving in your same officer position

The reason for the frequent breaks (10 min. each) and the longer lunch was to deliberately allow time for this informal interaction.
The purpose of this "Find Someone Who" activity was to help officers meet other officers from other clubs who could serve as mentors or advisors during the rest of the year.

This “Find Someone Who” activity sheet will be posted, soon, on http://tmctraining-sendai.blogspot.com/ (our Div A Club Officer Training website).

FEEDBACK (and what we learned)
54 officers attended. With volunteer Toastmasters (non-officer staff who were welcomed to listen and learn, too) we had about 70 people in the room.
The training, overall, was rated as “Very Good” or “Good” by 100% of all participants who responded. (No one rated the overall training as “Normal” or “Needs Improvement.”)

Individual sessions received the following ratings (“Very Useful” or “Useful” categories combined): 92%, 83%, 74%, 52%, 84%, 83%, 93%.
[The next rating choice was “Normal.” This received, basically, all of the [few] remaining rating votes.] The last two choices were “Not very Useful” and “Totally useless” which received nil, or an extremely insignificant number of marks.

The sessions which were rated the highest were also the most interactive sessions, which included the following elements or style:

• Small Group discussions or activities followed by reports to the large group with Q&A to the session leaders; and between groups of participants, and between individuals, directly.
• Panel Discussion with questions and comments from the floor.

The sessions with the lower ratings were either informational (one way delivery) or speech/lecture style sessions.

The venue (AER building in Sendai) also received very enthusiastic remarks. (There was no rating for the venue, just a space for comments.) In fact, because the Sendai venue was so close to the station it was rated much higher and much more convenient than the first training which was held in Tokyo!

Another plus was that Sendai’s venue (AER Building) was surrounded by many, many restaurants with a lot of variety to choose from for food.

(The first training [July 2009] was held at Edogawa Green Palace which was rated as “inconvenient” on several of the responses. Reasons for this [hand-written by several participants] were: 1. Too far from the Shin-Koiwa station [bus or taxi or long walk to the venue needed], and 2. Lack of restaurants in the area surrounding the EDG-GP venue.)

COMPARISON OF 1st & 2nd TRAINING:

• For more info on deliberately adding “change-ups” into training sessions, please see the RESOURCES (listed below)
• For session topics and style, please see separate page.

RESOURCES
Several presenters, and all AGs, were encouraged to buy and study the following:

1. From Speaker to Trainer (Item No. 257). [See TI catalog or website.] Suggestion: Don’t buy a whole set for self-study. Only buy: one Coordinator’s Guidebook (257-A), one Participant’s Notebook (257-B), one PowerPoint CD (257-CD). Very highly recommended by Division A Governor Daniel Ross.
2. Facilitating Discussion (formerly: The Discussion Leader) (Advanced Speech Manual, Item 226-D). [See TI catalog or website.] Good info on leading a Panel Discussion; see project No. 3
3. Active Learning; 101 Strategies to Teach Any Subject (book by Mel Silberman) (Easy to read, excellent background on Adult Learning Theory in the Preface [pages ix~xiii] and in Chapters 1 & 2 [pages 1~33], with mention of “the Social Side of learning” and “collaborative learning.” Tips are bullet-listed or numbered for quick grasp of the concepts. Very accessible and understandable to the non-native English reader. The remainder of the book is a collection of various types of activities [strategies] to involve your audience [either “trainees” or “students”]. The activities/strategies can be used with any subject matter or content. Highly recommended book. Well grounded in Learning Theory and Educational Psychology along with the Social Psychology of Abraham Maslow, etc. as a base.)
   Additional resources for native speakers or high-level English proficient speakers-readers:
   (You can pick up good points and tips here and there throughout the following books, but not all of it may be relevant to your personal situation.)
4. How to Run Seminars & Workshops (book by Robert L. Jolles. Has a lot of very good information on Adult Learning Theory and how to run Training sessions. Applicable to all instructors and trainers. Mr. Jolles mentions the value of joining Toastmasters at one point in his book. There are also good tips on working with large audiences in Corporate Training situations with some good info on the sales process, too.)
5. Involving Your Audience: Making it Active (book by Karen Lawson [her mentor was Mel Silberman]. This book is good, but may be out of print. This book is endorsed and recommended by Toastmasters International in their “The Essence of Public Speaking Series.” Ms. Lawson also has good tips and points on speaking to or training larger groups and making it interactive. This book used to be available through the TI catalog and TI website. If not available through TI when you check, you may be able to find a used copy on Amazon.)