[From the Ontario District's newsletter, The Trillium, issue 61-02, April - June, 2007 , Waldo Redekop, editor.]

Chapter Support and Leadership needs you

By Digger MacDougall, V.P. Chapter Support & Leadership Training

I need you to work with me. I want you to get involved. If you think you are a leader or if someone else has ever made a remark to you about any of the following, then there is a great possibility that you are a leader.

• How mature you are.
• Your leadership ability.
• Your ability to look ahead.
• Your ability to read people.
• Your interest in change.
• Your ability to communicate.

I would like you to participate in a location close to your home in a focus group to address some of the issues like the following that our Society, our districts and our chapters are facing.

• Increasing opportunities for training and development.
• Providing a more diverse platform for program development and delivery.
• Reducing costs to the member (both dollars and time).
• Reaching the 45 percent of membership that attend no BHS training or education.
• Reducing the training costs to the Society.
• Getting the Society to direct all energy and resources to relevant goals and objectives.
• Getting the Society to focus on the real needs of the members; on youth; on chapter types, on building alliances with other a cappella communities, and so on.

By getting involved I mean coming to a focus group where all minds are focused on solutions; not barbershop stories, not what has happened, not why we are in bad shape,  but SOLUTIONS.

If you have an idea or a recommendation to make on what follows, I want to hear from you.

Here are some Society-wide CSLT actions planned for 2007/2008.

• Expand the Society-Wide Instructor cohort.
• Replace LEADERSHIP FORUM in the short run with modules offered at current. (Annual conference, 2008 spring planning and/or mid-year) meetings.
• Program VP be reinstated at chapter board level.
• 2007 district training plans.
• Improve image and understanding of the CSLT roles and responsibilities.
• Work with staff to develop recommendations regarding future use of technology for training.

Our Society is looking for COTS instructors. You receive training on content. You get travel and expenses paid to get to a training location and to COTS in North America and get to work with and meet great Barbershoppers.

LET’S TALK! Please contact me at digger.macdougall @ sympatico.ca 613-836-9558     k