CL Problems
Project 8 is a problem
The Competent Leader Manual has 10 projects. Project 8 deals with Motivating People. Members are required to do three of five roles, at least one of which has to be from the first two roles named. These two roles both require the member to conduct campaigns or chair a contest.
Problem 1
Chairing a speech contest is not an eligible activity. This is the text of the relevant role
“Membership campaign or contest chairman. Your club conducts several membership-building campaigns or contests each year. With the approval of your club’s vice president membership, organise and conduct a membership building contest, motivating members to participate and helping the club grow.”
This makes no reference to speech contests. It is quite different. Unfortunately the wording of the first role is ambiguous until the explanatory paragraph is read. Either members and club officers don’t bother to read the explanatory material or they know of the problem and ignore it.
Problem 2
Strong, successful clubs have very great difficulty in providing opportunities for more than two or three members genuinely to complete either of the first two roles. How many membership contests or public relations campaigns can reasonably be run in a given year? This is particularly a problem for clubs with effective websites which attract the bulk of their new members. I know of several such clubs in WA which have this problem. It might sound incredible, but such clubs don’t run traditional member recruitment campaigns because they already have more than enough new members being recruited from the website.
Project 8 is a bottleneck for strong, successful clubs with many members working on the CL award and needing it to progress to the ALB award and finally to DTM. I am sure many such members are currently guilty or victims of Problem 3 below.
Problem 3
Members and club officials in most clubs are wrongly claiming credit for successfully completing Project 8. They are using the chairing of club, area and division speech contests as fulfilling the requirement. It doesn’t, as is perfectly obvious from Project 6 which lists chairing a club speech contest as a separate role from the two chairing roles in Project 8. Have a look at Project 6 and see what I mean.
What can be done about this problem?
I don’t know. A new version of the CL Manual has recently been published. It contains the same role requirements as the original Manual. World Headquarters are not going to publish a revised edition for quite a while which recognises the problem I identify above, even if they agree with me.
Members and clubs which wish to promote the successful completion of the CL award will either have to turn a blind eye to the problem and use speech contests as an acceptable substitute or to find creative ways to conduct membership contests or public relations campaigns. But read the manual. Taking part in such campaigns or contests is not adequate – organising them and motivating other members to take part is the requirement.
What do you think about this problem?
Do you agree with my analysis? Have you any creative suggestions for getting around the bottleneck?
Add your comment.
David Nicholas DTM
Member 318284
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