The Toastmasters Pathways learning experience will include a streamlined version of the High Performance Leadership (HPL) program.
The revised HPL is one of nearly 60 learning projects featured in Pathways, the new education program launching next year. In the current education program, members complete the HPL by working in a 70-page manual and doing a personal project. In Pathways, you will work in an online HPL learning project and carry out a personal project.
In revising the current HPL, the Pathways development team simplified some of the language in the manual and condensed the content while still -maintaining the essence of the program. The Pathways HPL features worksheets to help with planning your project (with such categories as “budget” and “key deliverables”), marking your progress and holding team meetings with members of your guidance committee.
Marlon Shaw, ACS, ALB, who reviewed the new HPL last year as part of the Pathways content pilot, says it is more relevant to what people do in the workplace. “The content is not much different, but what I liked about it is the forms that are available for recording and tracking your work,” says Shaw, a speaking coach in Pickering, Ontario, Canada. “It matches what executives in the professional world expect team leaders to do in terms of tracking their work.”
Shaw completed his HPL project last year, helping teenagers at his church develop communication and leadership skills.
Seema Sureshkumar, DTM, says she, too, is impressed with the tools that the revised HPL provides for members, noting that she had to create many of her own worksheets for her HPL project. “I found it more streamlined, and it has more questionnaires and forms and evaluation notes that might really help members,” says Sureshkumar, who reviewed the new HPL as part of the content pilot.
An administrator at Syracuse University in New York, she also teaches classical Indian dance to youngsters between 5 and 10, and her HPL project consisted of helping her dance students develop -public speaking skills that they use in performance.
