Many may only see collegiate Greek life as a cultural group who hides their partying behind community service hours and charitable donations. However, I wish to challenge that stereotype by emphasizing the professional development and self-improvement opportunity that's presented to Greek life members - especially people who hold leadership positions. Currently, I serve my one-hundred member sorority as chapter president and use other officers to maintain a well-balanced, structured, and involved organization.
Fraternities and sororities must operate as a company first, and a socialite second in τηλεοραση order to be successful. I want to point out some key concepts that show the relation between Greek organizations and businesses.
Greek organizations:
• Divide officers into teams to work with specific regions of the chapter
• Must operate on a strict budget, fueled solely from member's dues
• Must market themselves well in order to continue steadily to recruit new members
• Have mission statements and values to hold their members to and gear their brand
• Must follow rules from, and report to, their national headquarters
• Have insurance to cover their organization and its members, along with many policies and procedures in place for holding events
They're just a couple points that show how Greek organizations are ran as the best business, combining friendship with professionalism and offering members a great opportunity for personal development.
As president, I see all sides of owning a Greek organization and must help every officer no matter what team her position is a part of. My days are full of constantly making decisions and weighing the consequences. I discovered to produce fair decisions that benefit the more good, while remaining unbiased in the process. I also reply to everyone's questions and concerns while problem solving when an unplanned event takes place. For instance, we had a tiny crisis with flyers that were made to market an event we were having. Once they came in, we noticed the contact email on the flyers was spelled wrong. After some deliberation, we chose to utilize the flyers we had and made a new email address with the typo included.
An enormous section of owning a successful organization is effective and professional communication. Our main forum of communication between officers and the advisory board is emailing. I have discovered just how to properly send and answer emails in an expert manner. My communication skills have improved substantially since being truly a leader of my chapter. I have discovered to communicate concisely and format information in the top way. I have found providing information in bullet lists is the greatest way to obtain members to read messages fully. All of our officers must hold team meetings and get reports of progress in the various areas on their team. Officers are accountable for organizing their particular meetings and taking minutes to record what was discussed. Greek organizations teach members to effectively and professionally communicate through emailing, holding meetings, and working together with others.
One of the very valuable traits that I am still learning through my presidency, is ways to get more comfortable with hard conversations. I work closely with your Director of Standards and Ethics to make sure our members are holding themselves to the high ideals and values. When someone is falling behind, it is our job to own conversations together about why this is happening and what we can do to make sure it generally does not happen again. These tough conversations become even tougher when remembering that the members of our chapter are also our friends and sisters. As a leader of a Greek organization, I am learning to have these hard conversations while remaining in control of myself and the conversation.
Greek life has a lot more to provide compared to social aspect of the corporation, and can truly prepare young adults to become listed on the professional world. Through developing members personally, and developing officers professionally, Greek organizations can provide life-changing collegiate experiences that can't be found elsewhere.