Success Masters

In February the offshoot Saturday club was initiated and over the last seven weeks a core group of people have begun to attend regularly though it is only a handful.  What is important is that this core group are all new members and the Saturday group has not cannibalized turnout i.e. Monday attendees now becoming Saturday attendees - and if anything those that first heard of the Saturday group have preferred to join the Monday group, so there has been a net gain for our flagship meeting.  In the meantime I have created the Saturday group to be complimentary rather than an alternative to the Monday group.  Some students who could not make the Monday meeting because of classes, will eventually be attending both meetings.  By the end of May we should have a base of about 10 students but we can make the Saturday program run with 5 people in attendance, so right now it is about creating a foundation and new purpose for this event.

This week I realized that my original focus of Weekend Warriors (which honoured members who are also deeply committed to physical fitness) does not represent the actual diversity of the new members who have chosen Saturday.  So the first change has been to shift from a Weekend Warriors focus to a new Success Masters focus.

Weekend Warriors  https://www.bebee.com/producer/@cityvp/weekend-warriors

Success here does not mean "successful personal branding" but whole system success, which incorporates the relationship of success to failure, rejection, endurance, tenacity, adversity.   If we are to create a safe space for our members to develop in that space is not one that will entertain the phony ego of image.  The introduction of a new role "The Improv Master" means the philosophy of improv is more important in practice than the philosophy of showmanship. 

In Improv I found a form of collaboration that isn't about selling an image, indeed it needs us to shed our own image in order to make scenes work and the way the Improv Master works, it is only 10 minutes of the meeting, so it is a great way to enhance the beginning of the meeting, adding a different energy for the speaking and evaluating portions of the meeting.  This bringing Improv to the front was courtesy of an existing member Valerie, because I was originally going to make Improv a special event section for extended sessions i.e. a 2nd optional hour.

                                                    Basics of Improv 

https://www.facebook.com/toastmastersHMC/ which means that someone at Facebook gets what we are doing and that is an element of success, it is not an element of approval - we are not trying to seek Facebook's approval but a part of success is watching the flow of choices, responses, learnings and continous improvement.  In that regard, the original Hunter Thompson motif still applies, we still aim to be a highly adaptive club on Saturdays and continue the yin-yang relationship with the Monday meeting which is about order and familiar structure. 

It also continues the objective that Monday represents the beginning of the week and Saturday represents a review point for members learning and the week that just happened and in that light, the role of Success Master will be included also, but that is a role that requires us to see how things flow and develop over the coming weeks, so it is an intelligent addition, but the identification of the Saturday group with Success Masters creates a new baseline for the club culture to emerge.

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