Similarities and Differences

This past weekend, I attended the Junior Warden's Retreat in Newport Beach. This is a training retreat put on by the Grand Lodge of California for all the men who will be serving as Master of their Lodge in 2013, the counterparts to my girls, put on by my Grand Lodge counterpart, whose title is actually Senior Grand Warden because the Grand Lodge Line has an extra officer, which does introduce a certain level of confusion because next year, he will be the Deputy Grand Master and all his guys will be Senior Wardens, but then in 2013, they will catch up with each other when he is Grand Master and they are all Masters of their respective Lodges. Whew!

I understand that the Grand Lodge has been doing retreats for the Junior and Senior Wardens for about twenty years now. They have a leadership team that includes paid staff and volunteers and enough people to put on two days of seminars, with separate sessions on Saturday for the ladies apart from the men, and eight rooms for group exercises. A lot of great material was presented with power point slides and various hand outs.

I went because I am trying to improve leadership training for California Eastern Star and I hate reinventing the wheel. But translating over the materials presents some interesting challenges.

The top stumbling block that I see is, as it often is, money. As I understand it, the Grand Lodge, through its Foundation, subsidizes these retreats and the participants, while paying a high price, are not paying what it actually costs for the whole thing. I didn't see the price for this one, but I think that it was in the range of $350-$400, including the hotel room for two nights, the meals, the binder of materials and all activities. I could be wrong on that, but I think that I am in the ball park. Knowing hotels as I do, and these retreats are held at very nice hotels, the actual cost, all in, was probably closer to $550, so that is a fairly substantial subsidy. You could probably get the cost down to closer to what the attendees actually paid if you moved it to a much less expensive hotel, but then you are not going to get the same level of amenities either, with two ballrooms and eight break out rooms available for two and a half days at one property. I also understand that a lot of Lodges reimburse some or all of these expenses for their line officers. Of course, with average lodge dues around $100 a member, this sort of thing is probably a little easier to budget.

So we are starting smaller, with less expensive hotels, and sometimes using Masonic Centers and volunteer help to prepare meals. Where we are concentrating our efforts is in the program content and I think that we are doing a fine job of providing a very high level of quality in our training programs, with excellent facilitators and presenters. On the quality of experience side, we are already in good standing. We may not be able to afford the fancy stuff, but at least we are giving wonderful value for what we do charge, with presenters and materials that would cost three times what we charge if a person was trying to get the same level of training in the private sector.

However, our other challenge is establishing a "tradition of training". I am sure that Grand Lodge had the same situation twenty years ago when they started, but we have it now, in that we are still trying to get the idea that line officers attend training sessions to be "what we do" so that people who serve as line officers naturally expect to have and attend leadership and management training sessions. We need to start thinking about standardizing when we hold these sessions and maybe some of the materials we present and which year we present them. I have often told my girls that I cannot teach them the answer to every question or problem they will face, but I can try to teach them how to find the answers and how to work the problems. Now we have to think about doing that for everyone so that our Chapters have good and strong leaders every year moving forward.

Next weekend, I will be in Fairfield.