Greek Living Leaders: Running the Supreme Organization

[MikePaine]

Many may only see collegiate Greek life as a social group who hides their partying behind community service hours and charitable donations. However, I would like to challenge that stereotype by emphasizing the professional development and self-improvement opportunity that's presented to Greek life members - especially those who hold leadership positions. Currently, I serve my one-hundred member sorority as chapter president and assist other officers to maintain a well-balanced, structured, and involved organization.

Fraternities and sororities must operate as a small business first, and a Η Ελλάδα σπάζοντας νέα σήμερα socialite second to be able 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 aspects of the chapter 

• Must operate on a strict budget, fueled solely from member's dues 

• Must market themselves well to be able to continue steadily to recruit new members 

• Have mission statements and values to keep 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 area for holding events

They're just a few points that report 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 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 higher good, while remaining unbiased in the process. I also answer to everyone's questions and concerns while problem solving when an unplanned event takes place. For example, we'd a tiny crisis with flyers that were made to market an event we were having. When they came in, we noticed the contact email on the flyers was spelled wrong. After some deliberation, we made a decision to utilize the flyers we had and made a fresh email address with the typo included.

A massive element of owning a successful organization is beneficial and professional communication. Our main forum of communication between officers and the advisory board is emailing. I have discovered how to properly send and react to emails in a specialist manner. My communication skills have improved substantially since being fully a leader of my chapter. I have learned to communicate concisely and format information in the utmost effective way. I have discovered providing information in bullet lists is the better way to obtain members to read messages fully. Our officers must hold team meetings and get reports of progress in the various areas on their team. Officers are in charge of organizing their particular meetings and taking minutes to record the thing that was discussed. Greek organizations teach members to effectively and professionally communicate through emailing, holding meetings, and dealing with others.

One of the very valuable traits that I am still learning through my presidency, is how to get confident with hard conversations. I work closely with our Director of Standards and Ethics to ensure our members are holding themselves to our high ideals and values. If someone is falling behind, it's our job to possess conversations using them about why that is happening and what we are able to do to ensure it doesn't 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 am learning how to have these hard conversations while residing in control of myself and the conversation.

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