Page 8 - July 2020
P. 8
COVER STORY
very good at delegating. Unfortunately, that face-to-face personal contact.
is a lesson that I keep learning over and over. I On the other hand, we are seeing that
am constantly amazed at how willing people “borders” don’t matter as much when we meet
are to volunteer, so I don’t know why I can’t get online, so it will be interesting to see what
it through my head that all I have to do is ask! happens when we resume in-person meetings
and some of our members live halfway around
What is your vision for the District as the the world.
District Director during 2020-2021? I think the Pathways challenge is mostly about
My vision for the District is to enable our attitudes. Many of our strongest advocates were
members to grow and be successful. If we do resistant at first, but they now embrace Pathways
that, Clubs will grow, and it all rolls up to the as the future of Toastmasters. I was around when
District being successful. the Competent Toastmaster (CTM) manual was
I see two major challenges for us this year – replaced by the Competent Communicator (CC)
dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic and helping manual, and the Competent Leader (CL) manual
members make the transition from the legacy was introduced. I heard plenty of complaints
program to Pathways. We are becoming quite about the CL manual, and ironically, people
proficient at holding regular meetings, business are now complaining that the CL manual has
meetings, and even speech contests online. gone away and the leadership concepts are
However, we all know that turnover is a constant “buried” in Pathways. Pathways has evolved
issue in Toastmasters, and it is more challenging since it was first introduced, based on feedback
to recruit new members when you don’t have the from our members. If you are frustrated by the
change to Pathways, I encourage
you to “speak up” rather than
“give up”, because Toastmasters
International does listen to your
feedback.
Part of this transition involves
educating members on how to
access and use Pathways. Even
though it was first introduced
in our District in September,
2017, many members wanted to
complete their DTM journey in
the legacy program. Switching
to Pathways now is a completely
new experience for them. To help
them, as well as our new members,
8 ONE COMMUNITY
