Greek Life Leaders: Running the Ultimate Company

[LynnPowers]

Many may only see collegiate Greek life as a social group who hides their partying behind community service hours and charitable donations. However, I wish to challenge that stereotype by focusing on the professional development and self-improvement opportunity that is presented to Greek life members - especially people who hold leadership positions. Currently, I serve my one-hundred member sorority as chapter president and work with other officers to steadfastly keep up a well-balanced, structured, and involved organization.

Fraternities and sororities must operate as a business first, and a socialite second in order τηλεορασηto be successful. I would really like to point out some key concepts that report the relation between Greek organizations and businesses.

Greek organizations:
• Divide officers into teams to work on specific aspects 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 put up 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, in addition to many policies and procedures in place for holding events

These are just a few points that show how Greek organizations are ran as the best business, combining friendship with professionalism and offering members a great opportunity for private development.

As president, I see all sides of running a Greek organization and must help every officer no real matter what team her position is a part of. My days are filled up with constantly making decisions and weighing the consequences. I have learned to produce fair decisions that benefit the greater 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. As an example, we'd a small crisis with flyers that were made to advertise an event we were having. When they came in, we noticed the contact email on the flyers was spelled wrong. After some deliberation, we decided to utilize the flyers we had and made a fresh email address with the typo included.

A massive section of managing a successful organization works well and professional communication. Our main forum of communication between officers and the advisory board is emailing. I discovered how exactly to properly send and answer emails in a specialist manner. My communication skills have improved substantially since being a leader of my chapter. I have learned to communicate concisely and format information in the very best 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 the team. Officers are responsible for organizing their particular meetings and taking minutes to record that which was discussed. Greek organizations teach members to effectively and professionally communicate through emailing, holding meetings, and dealing with others.

One of the most valuable traits that I am still learning through my presidency, is getting comfortable with hard conversations. I work closely with your Director of Standards and Ethics to be sure our members are holding themselves to our high ideals and values. If someone is falling behind, it is our job to possess conversations with them about why this really is happening and what we are able to do to ensure it does not happen again. These tough conversations become even tougher when remembering that the members of our chapter will also be our friends and sisters. As a leader of a Greek organization, I'm understanding how to have these hard conversations while staying in control of myself and the conversation.

Greek life has much more to supply compared to the social part of the corporation, and can truly prepare young adults to join the professional world. Through developing members personally, and developing officers professionally, Greek organizations will offer life-changing collegiate experiences that can't be found elsewhere.