Setting the World on Fire

This past weekend was our first leadership workshop for this year with a theme of firing up our membership.  There were a number of modules presented on communication, membership and event planning.

The materials presented in each module were interesting, but what was even more fun were the break out groups where small groups of people get to try out what they've been hearing with a series of exercises designed to apply the principles just taught.  The first break out was a sort of ice breaker/how to get to know people exercise.  My group had something called Common Ground where we are supposed to find things that everyone in the group had in common.  Since we were in a group of about a dozen, that was a little trickier than it sounds and the most basic things, like all belonging to the same fraternal order, were declared off limits by the rules.  At first, we just tried to brainstorm about things we might all have in common, like whether we were all born in California or if we all owned pets.  Sometimes one idea that didn't work led to one that did.  For example, it turned out that not all of us were born in California, but we were all born in the US.  We didn't all own pets right now, but we all had owned pets in our lives.  We weren't all wearing black shoes, because two pairs turned out to be navy, but we were all wearing dark shoes.  This exercise not only got us talking but also showed how you can build on an idea when maybe the original idea doesn't work, but it inspires another idea that does.

Another group had a beach ball and the beach ball had questions written all over it with a Sharpie marker.  That group had to toss the ball around and each person who caught it had to answer the question that was under their hand where they touched the ball.  That looked like fun too and was good for getting to know each other without anyone asking a pointed question specifically to another person.

One of the other break out exercises required us to plan an event including setting a goal and a date.  That was tricky because it was hard to figure out how to set the goal.  Our group was supposed to set a goal to participate in a project at a certain level (money contributed and boxes filled).  We did the exercise, but we mostly set the goal by going with a WAG (ask me in person if you are not familiar with the acronym :-) because we had no data on which to base any sort of goal.  It reminded me that the first time you do anything, you don't really know how it will turn out.  You should still have a goal, but you should not be disappointed if you don't meet it.  Instead, you can use the first time out to come up with a more realistic goal the next time, hopefully set just a little higher than the first time's actual performance and then try to meet that and raise that every year.  I think sometimes that people do things for the first time and get discouraged when nothing is ever perfect the first year out of the gate - you have to build up to big and wonderful.

The overall program was great and had lots of great information in it.  I hope lots of people get to participate in the remaining sessions later this year.

This weekend I am home working on Districts and Masonic Family information to distribute on Monday.