FINISH STRONG!

How to beat club officer burnout

By Maureen Zappala, DTM

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“It was 1997. The annual Cleveland Revco 10K race was days away. I thought, I’m going to enter. I think it will be fun! I’m not a runner, but how hard can it be? (If you’re a runner, you just rolled your eyes, right? You know where this is going.)

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The race-day weather was perfect, and the mood was electric. Thousands of runners crowded the starting line, eager to start the race. I was jazzed. The race started. I sprinted ahead with all the exuberance of a non-runner who had no clue how to pace herself. Halfway into the race, having fallen way behind, I thought I would die. This is the dumbest thing I ever did. I can’t finish.

Sometimes serving as a club officer is a lot like my first 10K race. You think you know what’s ahead, but you really don’t. You feel inspired, love the camaraderie and have a vision of success. You sprint at the start, excited to do well. But halfway through the year, you’re weary, frustrated and alone. You think: I can’t do this anymore. You are burned out. You want to quit.

Maybe you’re the vice president education and you had no idea how much work it would take, or you’re the sergeant at arms, and lugging and setting up supplies each week has become a thankless struggle. You could be the treasurer, tired of chasing members for dues renewal, or the club president who lacks member support for your DCP goals. Perhaps you’re the vice president membership, but visitors don’t join, or you’re the vice president public relations and creating a club communications plan becomes overwhelming. Maybe your club is small, and officers double up on duties. Your life outside of Toastmasters may be over-busy, or a conflict within your club is draining your energy. So many factors feed into officer burnout. It’s no wonder that a number of leaders fizzle midyear and contemplate quitting.

But if you’re one of these people, think about what could happen if you don’t quit.

I finished that 10K race and I’m so glad I did. That day, as I crossed the finish line, I didn’t care that my time was abysmally slow. I was thrilled that I finished. It may sound trite, but finishing your officer year strong will give you a valuable perspective on your abilities, your influence and your inner strength that will come no other way. Author Napoleon Hill said, “Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.” The reward comes with staying in the race.

How Stressed Are You?

Volunteer burnout is just like work burnout. Although Toastmasters is a volunteer organization, the work can be just as stressful as in a job. Stress exists in a continuum. At one end is burnout, exhibited by severe symptoms such as lethargy, crankiness, insomnia and feelings of worthlessness. Near the other end is the less severe but more common relative—“brownout.” People who feel this are anxious, disengaged and disillusioned and often unaware of the value of their work. It’s a cognitive and emotional malady, one that affects relationships and attitude.

The U.S. coaching firm Corporate Balance Concepts polled 1,000 executives about job stress. They estimated that while a small percentage suffered from true burnout, closer to 40 percent suffered from brownout. It makes sense to assume a similar pattern exists in the volunteer world, even among Toastmasters club officers. That’s a lot of unhappy officers!

What Causes Burnout and Brownout in Toastmasters?

Many stress factors cause club officers to toy with the idea of quitting before their term is up. Do any of these resonate with you?

• With no tangible pay compensation, it’s hard to see the intangible rewards of serving, especially as the year progresses. If an officer does not see the significance of the role, or the clear link between the role and the bigger picture of Toastmasters, it’s easy to let apathy creep in.
• Some roles are more time consuming than others, such as the vice president education. That can be draining.
  – Some roles, such as sergeant at arms or treasurer, are less visible, and don’t elicit a lot of recognition. If members in those roles long for recognition for a job well done, they may not get it as often as they’d like.
• Club culture can create stress. Conflict between members is no fun. Lack of support from other officers, or little enthusiasm
  from club members, will cause an officer’s fervor to diminish. Poor communication within the officer team or unrealistic team goals almost guarantee burnout.
• The personality of the individual officer can contribute to burnout. They may have a hard time saying no, or may overestimate their time-management ability. They may struggle with delegation or be hesitant to ask for help. They may be perfectionists or have overextended themselves in areas outside of Toastmasters.

Why Push Through?

In spite of these factors, the rewards of finishing your officer year strong are many. No matter what club officer position you hold, or what the frustrations may be, if you push through to the end of June, you will…”

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The current issue is available for viewing only by Toastmasters members.If you are a member, CLICK HERE to login. You must enter your user name and password to view this month’s issue. (If you’ve never accessed it this way, your user name is the same as your member number, which is easily found on your Toastmasters magazine label.) If you would like to join and get access to the rest of this article and so much more, contact our Vice President of Membership.

Watch the presentation below, “Help More, Stress Less™ for Volunteer Managers,” presented by Dr. ck Andrade. The presentation begins officially at the 3:13 mark:

Meeting Theme: Motivation

Motivation: What Puts People In High Gear?

It may not be what you think

Meeting Theme: Motivation

A company hired a writer to boost its online visibility, but no one there had ever worked with a writer before. On the writer’s first day, his manager pointed to a work station and said, in effect, “Go to it.”

Without instructions or deadlines, the writer was free to add articles to the company’s website. He chose all his own topics and photos and made his own decisions on story length, tone, headlines and subjects to interview.

The result? In a year, the website’s readership went from zero to half a million. In the next six months, the website rose to the number one position in its field as the result of an online search on the web.

Later, a law firm made him an offer to double his salary. He took the job, but soon came to realize the new firm’s methods allowed much less creative freedom. Whenever the writer penned an article, one of the law partners would pull up a chair next to his and go over the copy, line by line, dictating things like paragraph length and photo selection. After two days at the firm, the writer quit and asked for his old job back.

What forces brought the first website to the top of its industry? And what forces drove the writer away from the law firm with its fat paycheck? If money doesn’t float everyone’s boat, then what is it that motivates people to do their best?

READ MORE

New Year, New Tune

Reach your 2016 goals one step at a time

By Maureen Zappala, DTM

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“Ginger Taddeo glows as she tells me about her son, an aspiring jazz musician. The young man wanted badly to be a standout entertainer, but he was turned down by several music schools—including his dream choice, the prestigious New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City.

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He applied there a second time but still wasn’t accepted. “We were so discouraged,” says Taddeo, a recent member of the Crossroads Toastmasters club in Strongsville, Ohio.

Then her son made a radical decision: He committed to practicing 10 hours a day for 40 straight days. After this intense period, he auditioned for the New School a third time—and was accepted. “I couldn’t believe the difference!,” boasts his mom. “He was phenomenal.”

Setting goals, and working hard to achieve them, is something many Toastmasters can relate to, especially as we start the new year. Many of us have goals for 2016—to earn a Competent Communicator award, perhaps, or run for a different club officer position. When it comes to meeting goals, few members are better examples than Fran Okeson, DTM, from Staten Island, New York. You probably know members who have earned their Distinguished Toastmaster award. You may even know someone who has done it twice. Well, Okeson is working on her 19th DTM award.

In fact, she has made it a goal to complete 20. Despite physical setbacks and obstacles, including a car accident and a stroke, she bubbles with enthusiasm. “My body may be broken, but my brain’s not!” says Okeson, a member since 1988. “I’m an officer in six clubs. Every Sunday night, I plan out all my roles and speeches for the week. I’m determined to get to 20.

”I’m sure she will.”

Goal-Setting Fuels Success

Setting goals works. It drives behavior and boosts performance. Successful corporations like Nike and Intel set goals. At a personal level, your goals can create an exhilarating script for your life. J.C. Penney Jr., the American businessman and entrepreneur who founded the JCPenney stores in 1902, said, “Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I’ll give you a man who will make history. Give me a man with no goals and I’ll give you a stock clerk.”

In her research on goal-setting, Gail Matthews, a psychology professor at Dominican University in California, found that people who write down their goals, create action plans and track their progress accomplish significantly more goals than people who just think of them. She says there are three elements to productive goal-setting: accountability, commitment and writing down goals.

The Toastmasters program embraces all three of these elements, so why not use your club involvement to harness the value of setting goals? Why not use it to become a “Goal Master”?

SMART Goals

You may be familiar with the phrase “Good goals are SMART.” Here’s what this acronym stands for (and there are many variations as well):

S= Specific: Define your goals clearly. Don’t be vague.
M= Measurable: Develop a tangible measure of progress. You cannot measure “kindness.” You can measure “I will compliment every sales clerk I meet this week.”
A= Attainable: Your goals must be manageable. They must align with your skills and resources. It’s too ambitious to write a book in a month if you haven’t researched for it.
R= Relevant: Is your goal relevant to your life’s principles or some bigger picture? The best goals…”

LOGIN HERE TO READ
THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE

The current issue is available for viewing only by Toastmasters members.If you are a member, CLICK HERE to login. You must enter your user name and password to view this month’s issue. (If you’ve never accessed it this way, your user name is the same as your member number, which is easily found on your Toastmasters magazine label.) If you would like to join and get access to the rest of this article and so much more, contact our Vice President of Membership, Regina Edwards.

Watch the below to see a clip from The Dave Ramsey Show, where Dave explains how to set realistic and measurable goals in 5 steps: