Bill SituClub President The need for leaders to be knowledgeable isn't a contemporary idea — in fact, such an understanding has origins from a time period as far back as in Ancient Greece. Plato, a renowned philosopher from that civilization, even once famously wrote about this subject. The Philosopher KingIn 375 BC, Plato authored a publication known as Republic, which continues to be widely read and studied to this day. In fact, this was a text on the reading list in a political science course that I did during university. Like many of Plato's works, Republic was written in the form of a Socratic dialogue, where Socrates has discussions with others on a particular subject. This particular work centres around the subject of a utopian state, and covers topics related to governance. "Philosopher king" is an important term that Plato coins in this dialogue. In essence, a philosopher king is a ruler who possesses a love for wisdom and knowledge. Plato further describes the philosopher king as the person fit to captain a "Ship of State". Leader = ExpertImmediate Past District 21 Director Shawn Gold running a club officer training session for Richmond Friendly in August 2018 The "Ship of State" analogy that Plato described in his text suggests that an effective leader (of any organization) is somebody who is knowledgeable. After all, a captain who doesn't have the proper knowledge and skill in navigation can't properly steer a ship. Another way to understand Plato's idea is that leaders are experts in whatever they may be leading their followers in accomplishing. Leaders are the ones that followers will by default go to if they ever have questions, problems, or concerns. As such, an effective leader is someone who readily has answers and solutions available. It is for this very reason that club officers need to attend accredited training sessions upon election into their position. For club officers who have previously held an appointment in their current position, attending training is a way to upgrade knowledge. Learning From the Ground UpHolding online meetings was something I had to put in the time to learn recently You may recall reading in a previous post that my first term as a club officer was in July 2018 as VP Education. Taking on this club officer role really required me to learn from the ground up.
My first term as VP Education was also when the Pathways education program came out. One of the biggest challenges that I had to figure out was how the program even worked. I had to learn from square one about how to navigate Pathways as a member and how to be a Basecamp Manager. Because Pathways was a brand new program at the time, there weren't many Toastmasters who were particularly knowledgeable about it, which made it fairly difficult for me to get ready assistance. Still, I was the club VP Education. I was the one responsible for keeping track of my club members' progress. This meant that I had to become familiar with how Pathways worked. My fellow club members were counting on me to answer questions about Pathways. As such, I took it upon myself to make sense of Pathways. It was challenging without a doubt and I definitely made mistakes along the way, but I eventually pieced together how the program worked. Since then, I have oriented a number of new Toastmasters with the Pathways program and have even instructed other VP Eds in how to be a Basecamp Manager. A more recent example of me learning from the ground up was figuring out how to hold online meetings. The transition to online meetings definitely caught me off guard, as it probably did for many other Toastmasters. As the club president, I had to figure out the specifics of online meetings. Having never used Zoom in the past, I had to learn that as the first step! Despite the initial challenges, our club has been successfully holding online meetings since. In closing, being a leader may often mean that you have plenty to learn, and learning isn't always fun to do. I won't lie — I personally found this to be tedious at times. Still, being knowledgeable is a must if you're a leader. Of course, no one expects you to know absolutely everything, but this doesn't give you an excuse for not making the effort to learn.
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August 2020
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