I knew the North Division Governor, Rhonda Craven, far more than the other Division Governors that year because she was in Toastmasters the longest and I’ve worked with her in countless events.  Prior to the 2006 Fall North Division Contest, Rhonda was in need for help in various roles, one of which was the Target Speaker for the Evaluation Contest.  Since it was customary to have the North and Northwest Divisions to swap Target Speakers for their Evaluation contests, she wanted someone in the Northwest Division for that role.  And since I belong in that division I offered to find someone for her, which she greatly appreciated.

Since none of my Area clubs were strong and had very little interest in trekking outside of their clubs for any Toastmasters activity, I was looking at other clubs in the Northwest Division to find a Target Speaker.  One club that was increasingly involved in District 30 was the AT&T Chicagoland club that met at their Hoffman Estates campus.  Their Table Topics contestant last Spring won the District 30 contest with two dozen from that club cheering him on, their Club President made the trip to Washington, DC  for the 2006 International Convention and wrote her take on it in the October 2006 District 30 newsletter.  I keep hearing how the club was increasing and mentoring their membership and filling their agendas to the point where it could take months to get a speaking slot.  So this was by far the best club to supply a Target Speaker for the North Evaluation Contest and I called and left a message with the Club President asking for help.

Well AT&T was the home club of the Northwest Division Governor and a couple of days later during a phone conversation, I added that I gave the club president a call asking for a Target Speaker for the North Evaluation Contest.  What I heard from him was shocking – he ripped me for several reasons.  First he claimed that AT&T is a bad club to find a Target Speaker because they do not conform to Toastmasters International customs and rules, which he did not specify.  Second he claimed that I went behind his back and I should have talked to him or the Area Governor for that club (who was also an AT&T club member), implying that they both had authority over their club president on club matters.  He also mentioned that he heard many complaints about the way I did things in Toastmasters, which he also did not specify.

This was very demoralizing for me – I went out of my way to help many in District 30 succeed, attended many events because I knew my assistance was needed.  Plenty of people appreciated my help and leadership, one kept writing in her e-mail messages to me “thank you for all you’ve done in District 30″.  I never did this for my personal or political gain, I did it because I love Toastmasters and want to see everyone in the organization succeed.  It may have been one reason I was named the 2005 District 30 Toastmaster of the Year.  And now there seemed to be a backlash against me.  Or so this guy said…

I talked to the Area Governor for AT&T about this encounter with the Northwest Division Governor.  He mentioned that the Division Governor had problems with the club president and others.  The Area Governor did not find anything wrong with my actions.  It appeared the Division Governor just did not want the club to get any further credit for their accomplishments, apparently more for his personal issues than anything else.  Anyway, the Club President did find someone from the club to be the Target Speaker for the North Division Evaluation Contest.  Don’t remember if anyone credited me or thanked me for getting this done, if so I didn’t want to hear a word about it.

Whether what I did was noble or intrusive is up to you.  But I did it as a favor for a close Toastmaster friend, not for my own benefit.  I had no intention of undermining anyone or making a person look bad.  The Northwest Division Governor wanted to paint me the opposite.  I started asking myself what was the point of getting involved in Toastmasters if I had to deal with such crap.  It was one major reason why after this term as Area Governor ended, my involvement in District 30 “ceased to exist”.  It was the primary reason why I got into a big mess with this person as mentioned in a December 2008 blog entry.

I came to the conclusion that he just did not respect what I did as it did not match his view of the world.  And I was not alone.  The following year, my successor as Area Governor endured the same wrath due to the same club!  My successor was invited by the AT&T club to attend their club contest and was encouraged to let her own club know.  So she sent a broadcast e-mail to her club members about this.  The Northwest Division Governor, serving his second consecutive term, was at that time a member of her club as he was their club coach previously.  And he went on the same diatribe just like he had at me regarding how bad the AT&T club was and that she was going behind his and the AT&T Area Governor’s back.

That Northwest Division Governor is now the District 30 Lt. Governor of Education & Training.  As you may know he had his nomination for District 30 Governor rejected by the Nominating Committee.  While I am not a voting member of the District 30 Council, I saw the packet for the council members to be considered at the District 30 Council Meeting on May 22nd.  There was a letter mentioning why his nomination was rejected, among the reasons include  “Demonstrated disrespectful behavior to others in meetings, in person, or via phone.”  Not sure if he did something similar to what was mentioned above with both myself and my successor, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that was part of such reason.

Even though it is apparent that the LGET is not liked at all by many in District 30, he still has some friends and allies who would nominate him off the floor for District 30 Governor.  I’m not convinced he has learned from his past.  Therefore he needs to be stopped before more damage takes place that could turn more people off from Toastmasters.

Many in Toastmasters are willing to take their time and energy to help the organization, to help the clubs they belong to, to help those in the organization that they hold dearly.  Why?  Because they love Toastmasters, what it stands for and the people in the organization.  And each has their own way of helping, another way to embrace the diversity of this organization.  It should be a win-win situation for everyone involved, from the member to the District Governor to the rest of Toastmasters International.

But if you berate and criticize, telling those who help that they’re doing things they are not supposed to do, not because they violated some rule but because you simply don’t like what they do or who they help, people would think twice before getting further involved in Toastmasters.  They may no longer get involved in the local district.  They may not want to be a club officer or stop attending their club meetings.  They could even leave Toastmasters outright.  As a result, you could lose a future District officer, a future conference chair, a future TLI Dean.  You could miss all the new people those members could bring to Toastmasters, the new club opportunities they could come up with.  You want a Distinguished District/Division/Area/Club?  Forget it, some you offend may even go as far as sabotaging those efforts if that is all you are concerned with because you may be so hung up in your legacy and glory.  It can be a huge lose-lose situation!

District 30 cannot afford this type of leadership.  It is important for those who are eligible to vote to either be at the District 30 Council Meeting on May 22nd at the Elk Grove Village Holiday Inn starting at 9:30am, or find someone in the club who can go.  When I was a District 30 officer, I mentioned when it came to the Spring District Council Meeting that “the future of District 30 is in your hands!”  None more so than this one.

However, I also mentioned to my friend that I don’t think Dietmar is going to win, in fact it would not surprise me if he lost big in the 3rd VP race.  Why would I say that about someone from District 30?  Someone who I think highly of?  Someone who made great contributions to District 30 and to Toastmasters?  The person who named me District 30 Toastmaster of the Year?

It has nothing to do with Dietmar.  It has nothing to do with Ralph Wallace, the other nominated candidate for 3rd VP.  It has to do with John Lau and the way the nomination process was handled by Toastmasters International.

John Lau wanted to run again for 3rd Vice President for the 2009-2010 year.  This past winter, Toastmasters International sent out the International Officer Candidate Survey for the Board of
Directors, past Board members for the last two years, Past International Presidents, current District
Governors, and Immediate Past District Governors.  The respondents list preferences for each of the four International offices, with the 3rd VP position being the lowest and the most contested.  John Lau reportedly received more than 70% of the votes for 3rd VP, the next candidate received less than half of that vote.  Dietmar Wagenknecht came in 4th place with less than a third of John Lau’s votes.  Ralph Wallace, based on a blog that has since shut down, came in 6th, though Past International Director Jenny Pagano claimed that he was not campaigning for the office when the survey took place.  And John Lau was not nominated, neither the 2nd vote-getter Margaret Wan nor 3rd vote-getter Kathy Miles.  It was Dietmar the 4th place candidate and Ralph the 6th place candidate.

Nobody outside of the Toastmasters International Nominating Committee knows why they made these selections.  And virtually everyone outside of District 30 and 23 (Ralph Wallace’s district) finds this hard to comprehend.  How come someone who nearly won the 3rd VP race last year and received overwhelming support from past and current Board and District officers not get nominated this year?  With the Nominating Committee prohibited from unveiling the decisions behind the nominations, we can only speculate.  Jenny Pagano thinks race and gender played a part in the process.  She also wrote a letter recently that mentioned some past indiscretions supposedly made by the committee.

Understandably there is an uproar over the selections.  What is the point of these surveys if Toastmasters International seems to ignore them?  Are they listening to the will of the members or are they only care about their own interests?

Well John Lau is running from the floor for 3rd VP.  And among those who were surveyed and give John 70% of the vote are current District Governors who will be carrying most of the votes for their districts.  While John won’t be part of the candidate program distributed at the International Convention, he will have his own candidate table and take part of candidate interviews.  And since most of the current District Governors were at last year’s convention in Calgary, especially as they were part of Top 3 training that TI started that year for International Conventions, they already are familiar with John Lau’s candidacy when he came close to winning that year.

One other thing to consider and it may be the pivotal factor in the 3rd VP race is Proposal A, especially with the International Leadership Committee.  The ILC is basically expanding the nomination process of the Top 4 International Officers to International Directors.  Many, including myself, fear that the supposed bungling of the 3rd VP nomination process this year could be compounded if similar situations take place with International Director races, perhaps several in one year.  With many prominent Toastmasters opposed to Proposal A, those who will be delegates next Friday can send a huge “eff you” (thank you Bill Simmons of ESPN.com) message to Toastmasters International by voting for John Lau and disregarding the nominated candidates because TI disregarded their views and wishes, in addition to voting down Proposal A which can cause further disenfranchisement.

As a District 30 member and a good friend to Dietmar Wagenknecht and his wife Heidi, it would be great to see him get elected 3rd Vice President of Toastmasters International.  But if I was one of the more than 70% who was surveyed that preferred John Lau for 3rd VP, I’d be steamed as well and take it out on the ballot box.  It would be impossible for me to keep an open mind if my opinion and with those of the huge majority are ignored.

Susan Ellsworth, one of the loudest critics of the proposed changes, recently put in her website a letter from Jenny Pagano, a Past International Director, expressing her concerns and stated her opposition to many of the changes:  http://www.pequodsystems.com/toastmasters/pagano.pdf.

I already notified a few District 30 officers I’ve contacted on a regular basis and ask them to forward this link to others.  Unfortunately this is going to fall on deaf ears on the Top 3 and the Immediate Past District Governor as the letter mentioned her take on the nomination process for 3rd Vice President and may give an unfavorable view of Dietmar Wagenknecht as someone who benefited from what was considered a poorly handled process.  The Top 3 and the IPDG have had a tendency to avoid controversial and challenging issues and would rather not hear such concerns or anything that they consider unfavorable.  Too bad for them they cannot prevent District 30 members from accessing such information online.  I’d go as far as to say that Dietmar will be far more receptive to Jenny’s concerns than the current District 30 leadership as he’s been willing to listen and address many controversial and challenging issues over the years.

I have my own concerns regarding the proposed changes, which I may present later on before the International Convention.  I may not agree with everything that Jenny wrote but I think everyone in the leadership part of Toastmasters needs to know what is going on with Toastmasters International and hear all views and from all sides.

A few years ago, I was told by a past District 30 Governor that a club in another district had a problem with a member who had Tourette Syndrome and his behavior turned off most of the members. However the club never voted him in, so when they voted to kick him out, he took the entire Toastmasters organization to court and won his lawsuit. Well you may think your club has the same chance of that ever happening as pigs fly or the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series, so I’ll tell you an actual incident involving one of my clubs that I believe has a greater chance of occurring – underage members.

In the summer of 2006, the Arlington Heights/Rolling Meadows club (as it was called then as we were in Rolling Meadows at the time) signed up a young female member who was very enthusiastic about giving speeches to the point where the day she submitted her application, she gave her Icebreaker. She then asked me as Club President if there are other clubs nearby in which she can give speeches during the summer, which I happily mentioned that there are plenty of speaking opportunities as attendance in many clubs are low during that time of the year. The next meeting, she gave her second speech and even gave an evaluation! She also mentioned that she was scheduled to speak in a couple of other clubs within the next couple of weeks, plus she signed up for another speech at our next club meeting!

I became somewhat suspicious of her, not only wondering what her motivation was to give speeches at every opportunity, but also whether she was at least 18 years old. I mentioned to some of the other club members about my suspicions which they seem to agree but I also felt uncomfortable asking her about her age as I remember taking heat many years ago at my previous job about asking female co-workers how old they were. Plus she did sign her membership application that acknowledged among other things that she was at least 18 years old (for those not in Toastmasters, you have to be at least 18 to join).

The day after she gave her 2nd speech, I received a phone call from the president of a corporate club about her inquiring about giving speeches there, a club that was further from those she was scheduled to speak and one that I didn’t mention to her as a place to give speeches. The president there was wondering what was with her, I mentioned that I’m wondering that myself so I actually called her. I first asked her what her goals in Toastmasters were, which she replied that she wants to be a DTM someday. I then asked her if she was over 18, which she did answer yes to then I explained that I had some concern about it. She then brought up her concern about the evaluation she got for her previous speech, which was a thought-provoking speech about her battles with anorexia and bulimia. During that conversation I brought up that we have the honor system in doing things, i.e. we don’t grade people on their speeches to where if they did a bad job they had to repeat, it was up to the speaker to decide if redoing the speech is necessary. A few minutes after our call, she called me to ask me what my address is so she can mail something to me. I started asking myself what in the world is going on! Did I say something that offended her?

The next day, I got an e-mail from someone in a club she was suppose to speak at in which she pulled out because she was “unqualified to participate in Toastmasters International”. I called her and left her a message but there was no return call. The day after I got a letter from her – she admitted that she was at that time 15 years old!

She mentioned during the letter she wanted her explanation to be heard so I’ll give an excerpt of it:

I recently recovered from anorexia and bulimia this past spring. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. I live in Rolling Meadows and have been afraid of judgment, hard work, and independence all my life. After the eating disorder I learned something that I have found essential for living. That is called courage, to do the thing that you are most afraid of. For me that was public speaking. So I did it.

Another reason that particularly like Toastmasters was the environment. I do not feel connected with students my age because of their immaturity about the truth and their fear of doing what’s right. I personally do not understand how some people could continue living the way they do in a fake sense of security. Toastmasters was like a breath of fresh air, where I could converse with my equals. People like yourselves that contain intelligence, maturity, and insight. But it wasn’t all that I had expected. I learned a lot about how the adult mind works, no doubt.

So even if we mentioned that there is Youth Leadership for people her age to participate, she would not be interested. My guess was that someone in her household overheard our phone conversation, particularly with her age, and told her to fess up which was probably why she called me right after that to obtain my address. Perhaps by hearing about the honor system she felt she needed to stop living a lie.

We were fortunate that she decided not to go further along with Toastmasters; otherwise we would have to deal with possible legal action if we kicked her out. The Arlington Heights club didn’t vote in members prior to this letter, since then we are doing it – no one in the club has ever questioned why.

If there is one other advice I could share with you, it is don’t be afraid to ask someone in Toastmasters their age if you are suspicious that the person is younger than 18.

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