By Steven Timmons, DTM
Have you struggled with how to get new members into your club? Pathways can help. It is a great program and a great tool for recruiting. You can attract people to join Toastmasters whether they are a guest in your club or people you meet on the street.
We will break it down into three simple steps that require a little thought on your part but when you get it down are actually very easy.
Step 1: Determine the Goals (of your guest)
Step 2: Break It Down
Step 3: Identify A Win
Pathways is not a one size fits all exercise like the Competent Communicator but can be tailored. You are about to deliver a custom solution, which is the exciting part.
Let’s jump into these 3 steps.
Step 1: Determine Goals
When you visit the doctor’s office, they ask you questions in order to diagnose and prescribe the best solution. In this step, you will put on your stethoscope and start your diagnosis.
When you meet someone, get to know them and then focus on two key questions.
First, simply ask them what their goals are related to communication, networking, and leadership. THEN LISTEN!
You are looking to see where they want to go in the areas of public speaking, people skills, leadership skills, and management skills. Be sure to listen to their response and be careful not to editorialize.
Second, ask them to rank their desire to develop those four key areas public speaking, people skills, leadership skills, and management skills. If they do not have an interest in an area, let them just leave it out.
With the answers to those two questions, you are now ready to move to step number 2.
Step 2: Break It Down
In this step, you will apply what you learned in Step 1 to break it down for your prospect.
The Five Core Competencies of Pathways include:
- Public Speaking
- Interpersonal Communication (people skills)
- Strategic Leadership (leadership skills)
- Management (skills)
- Confidence
All 11 Pathways paths work towards developing the 1–Public Speaking and 5–Confidence competencies. Note that confidence is not taught but gained by active participation in Pathways.
If your recruit’s key goal is to become a better public speaker then we have two ideal paths; Presentation Mastery (of course) and Engaging Humor.
The remaining nine paths add competency 2–Interpersonal Communication into the mix. The key difference is how this competency gets mixed in with focuses of competencies 3–Strategic Leadership and 4–Management. Let’s explore.
If your recruit would like to develop management skills or better manage a team then the best paths would be Innovative Planning or Team Collaboration.
Alternatively, their goal could be to build leadership skills to make them better business owners, entrepreneurs, or community leaders. Again, you have the silver bullets with the Persuasive Influence or the Visionary Communication paths.
Wow, do you see how you are cooking with gas by now???
The remaining five paths all center around better people skills. If they have the goal of better people skills with a secondary management focus, then their best choices would be Effective Coaching or Leadership Development paths.
The last three all have a focus on interpersonal communication skills with a secondary focus on better leadership skills or strategic leadership.
If they deal with environments that have a lot of conflicts, then Dynamic Leadership would be the path to choose. If they want to be a better networkers within their circle of influence, then Strategic Relationships would be the path to go with them. Finally, if you determine that they simply want to be able to motivate people better in today’s modern world then Motivation Strategies is the winner.
Ultimately, the Pathways assessment would give them more insights into the best choices for each individual. However, do you see how you can break down the possibilities whether they are a guest at your local Toastmasters club or standing next to them in line to checkout?
Step 3: Identify A Win
Given the information you learned in Step 1 and your diagnosis based on Step 2, you are now ready to prescribe your recommendation. Try to keep your recommendation to one path but certainly not more than two paths. A confused mind will never buy and giving them too many choices will hurt your chances of recruiting them into your club.
Build excitement for the path that you feel is the be fit for them and ask them to imagine how that would look on a resume when they have completed the recommended path.
Lastly, be sure to let them know how to get started today for only $20 for the path and invite them to join. You have provided a custom recommendation that will be very attractive to your guest based on the information you have gathered from them.
Study this material and practice it in your club with fellow Toastmasters to get the process down.
Then you, my friend, will be a lean, mean, recruiting machine.
Happy Recruiting!
Check Out This Document for More Details on Pathways paths and competencies.
