The role of club president: what the role will give you in 1 year
Active listening, feedback, delegation, and measuring your own progress — four skills that the role of club president trains in real-world operations. Here's how one president turned it into a training plan instead of a to-do list.
Most people think of a club position as extra work. Agendas, meetings, emails, keeping track of deadlines. Someone has to do it.
With this expectation, the majority will enter the leadership role — and that's exactly where the role becomes ineffective. Mária, who led the club as president, summed it up in one sentence:
Role ≠ list of responsibilities.
The role of treasurer brought her the first shift: she stopped seeing the position as a set of things that had to be done. The role of president then taught her to ask questions differently — not „"what do I have to do here"“, but What do I need and what can I learn from it?.
It sounds selfish. It's not. You grow as a person, and that's exactly what attracts others. That's how the function becomes a playground.
This article is about what can be specifically trained on that field. (If you are not familiar with Toastmasters, you should start an overview of how the entire system works.)
1. Active listening: one skill, four situations
The role of president has a quality that other roles don't have: it puts you in four different conversations in one month.
- 1:1 with a committee member — how he is doing in his position and what he needs
- Consultation — seven people, seven ideas, one deadline
- Conflict — two people, two interpretations of the same situation
- Delegation — hand in the task so that it is actually done
Four interview genres. All based on one skill: active listening. Mária trained it as a sequence that she could keep in her head even during the interview:
question → paraphrase → verification → summary → only then solution
In practice, this means three habits:
- In a 1:1 setting, ask questions rather than give advice. The advice that comes in the third minute solves the problem you guessed.
- In conflict, investigate specific behavior, not impressions. „"He is unreliable" cannot be addressed. "He failed to deliver the agenda by Wednesday twice" can.
- When delegating, verify understanding. Not "is that clear?" — but to have the task retold.
This is not a soft skill. It is a process with a sequence of steps, and you can be better or worse at it. The difference is that in the club you get to try it without a mistake costing you a job or a relationship.
2. Feedback: "Me first."„
The second thing the role brought was a habit around feedback. It has two parts, and both can be quoted verbatim.
Me first.
You went for feedback first — at each other, not away from each other. Not „I’ll tell you what you’re doing wrong,“ but „tell me how I do it.“ In a club where no one has formal authority and no one has to do anything, that’s the only way to set the standard. People ask for feedback when they see someone else receiving it.
Am I being specific?
The second part is a follow-up question for each rating she gave. It's what separates "it was great" from actionable information: specific feedback can be given tomorrow, general feedback can only be heard.
The president continues to be a speaker — speech and performance He continues to train, only a second layer is added: evaluating others so that they can work with it.
3. Measurement: a scale that lasts a year
Most personal development fails because it can't be measured. Maria tackled it in a primitive way, and that's why it worked:
How did I do, 1–10? What moves my number up one?
Two questions. After consultation, after 1:1, after conflict. No system, no app. The number fluctuated over the year.
Why it works: the second question doesn't ask "how to improve", but the smallest possible step. From a seven to an eight. That can be accomplished by next week — "being a better leader" cannot.
The same logic applies to the tool GROW, which she used in interviews:
- Goal — what do I want?
- Reality — where am I now?
- Options — what can I try?
- Future — what specifically will I do and when?
On the last point, most conversations in everyday life end prematurely. Without a date, it's a wish.
4. Critical minimum: what must work and what must not
The role of president is never done — there's always more to be done. That's why you learn the fastest things most people don't do at work: separate the critical from the important.
Three questions are enough:
- What must function to make the meeting happen at all?
- What will I personally provide and what I delegate?
- What do I know? simplify?
And then break it down by person: treasurer — paid memberships. SAA — agreed place and date. VPE — agenda. VPM — welcoming guests. Secretary — who/what checklist.
President — what?
This question is exactly the point. When the critical minimum is divided among others, the president is left with no performance. He is left with leading people. An unpleasant discovery and at the same time the most valuable thing the role gives.
This also applies to the selection of people for leadership. Instead of the question of "who will do it", another one comes up:
TASK = What can I learn from this?
When you offer a role like this, you're not looking for a volunteer. You're offering training. That's a different conversation and has a different success rate.
5. Where will it be used outside the club?
The club is the playground. The value will be shown elsewhere:
- At the interview — a question rather than an answer.
- At the meeting — paraphrase instead of jumping into the conversation.
- When leading people — verifying understanding instead of assuming.
- At home — identifying specific behavior instead of blaming.
Maria summarized that the same sequence works for her in an interview, in a meeting, and at home. It’s no coincidence—it’s one skill in three settings. The difference is that you can mess it up in a club and try again next time. This is the part that will be most evident in career growth.
This is exactly what the workshop was built on. „"From responsibilities to opportunities"“ (COT 2026), from which this knowledge comes. In it, participants named one skill, a place where they would practice it, and a way to find out if they were improving, via a worksheet.
What the role is not
To be clear: the role of president costs time. Real hours, every month, all year long. It's not a résumé decoration or a thing for everyone at every stage of life.
And it doesn't work automatically. If you go into it with a to-do list, that's exactly what you get — a list that you pass on a year later. Everything in this article is based on one decision you made at the beginning: choose one skill that I am going to consciously practice, and have a way to know if I'm moving forward in it.
That decision takes ten minutes. The rest is a year of practice.
The first visit to the club is free and the guest doesn't have to say a word — they can just observe the whole evening. Find a club in your city or read, How Toastmasters trains leadership.