After receiving input on the members currently working towards educational awards, I was ready to submit my first Area Director's Club Visit Report.
Remember how I said that an Area Director needs to be prepared for anything? That's not only true when you show up to a club meeting or event, but all of the time between as well.
When I logged into the Toastmasters International website, I was unable to find the online form for submitting the club visit report. Ultimately, I realized I hadn't been given access to the required District Central systems to do so. Alarmed, I wrote to my Division Director and asked him to help me pursue proper account access. I received a call from the District Director that night and he assured me he would work on it in the morning. Further, this situation led to the revelation that other Area Directors were also missing access. On Monday morning, a series of messages and calls involving our Division Director, Program Quality Director, and District Director, and representatives at World Headquarters led to the restoration of access for us all. Fortunately, it was a minor account issue with the website that was easily fixed with the prompt communication and support of our District leaders.
Submitting the report online was not too difficult. I had already taken notes in the digital PDF version of the report, so it was mostly copying and pasting from that document into the web form. Take note that every single box must have information in it for the form to be submitted. That means you may need to put something like "NA" for the things which you do not have information for. For instance, a club may not have identified the quantity of members working towards and award that is shown in the form. In this case, I just use a name of "NA" and set an end date of June 30 (the end of the Toastmasters year). Once submitted, the report gets emailed to several people, including the District leaders, Division Director, the club President, and yourself.
Intriguingly, a day after submitting my first report, I received an unhappy email from the club President. This was a strange reaction to me, because I did not say anything negative or suggest that the club doesn't do certain things at all in my report. What I did do was logged my observations in an objective way and stated straightforward areas for improvement based on information from Toastmasters International. Furthermore, I even highlighted many positive aspects I witnessed at the meeting.
One of the leadership lessons for me is that we choose the values we want to live by. An Area Director should follow the Toastmasters International values of Integrity, Respect, Service, and Excellence. In particular, the value of Integrity comes into play when an Area Director discovers ways in which a club can be improved. Hiding areas for improvement to appease someone, such as a club President, would be a failure of Integrity. It certainly wouldn't speak well to the other values, or support the quality of the club, either. Therefore, I choose to act with Integrity, Respect, Service, and Excellence.
Yet, just because you live by a certain set of values doesn't mean that others also live by those values. It also doesn't mean that people will react appropriately to your reports, even when they were written in propriety.
Remember: An Area Director needs to be prepared for anything.