Introduction

Sierk's High Performance leadership Project (HPL)

Your second question, the one right after what is an HPL project? will be "Why?" As far as I can tell there are two good reasons for doing an HPL: first, it is a requirement towards the achievement of the coveted Toastmasters Distinguished Toastmasters (DTM) award; and second it is a great opportunity for personal growth and leadership development. If you are reading this and have no idea what an HPL is all about, Frank Storey created an excellent pocket guide: High Performance Leadership Pocket Guide.

The reason I am blogging this is simple.  As I started my second stab at completing my HPL I thought to check for some sample projects on-line to see what and how other people have done it, in particular I was hoping to find a completed plan and how the author of that plan went about executing it.  Although there is a lot of discussion about HPL's on the world wide web, I could not find any examples of projects.  Therefore it is my intent to blog my progress and demonstrate all the steps so that someone else, presumably another Toastmaster, can see how this is done, and what they would need to do. I hope you get something out of this and that you too may be inspired to do your own HPL (assuming that you are a Toastmaster.)  As a secondary benefit it will allow my guidance committee to keep tabs on my project.

So what am I doing for my project?  As some of you will know I am president of our club from July 2013 through June 2014.  It is my intent to lead the clubs executive committee into energizing the club to a new level especially when it comes to the club's leadership.  Our least exiting meeting every year has to be our officer election meeting.  Some years it feels like we have to bribe people to take on leadership roles.  This lack of energy and enthusiasm in the club's leadership is of course contagious (in a very negative sort of way) and you can feel it in the meetings.

I feel that this lack of enthusiasm, the feeling that club leadership is a major chore, one that no-one wants to undertake, is one of the primary reasons for our challenges with membership retention.  In the past 8 years we have averaged and annual membership of around 20 to 22 people.  And though this is good it is not great.  Furthermore we usually manage to get about 4+ new members each year, yet we still remain at a membership of about 20 or 22.  And if that is not enough, our club has only about 12 active members, members who attend most of the meetings.

So as you can see there is room for improvement, and I intend to make my HPL the vehicle to demonstrate how you can revitalize a club