Greek Living Leaders: Working the Supreme Company

[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 want to challenge that stereotype by concentrating on 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 use other officers to steadfastly keep up a well-balanced, structured, and involved organization.

Fraternities and sororities must operate as a company first, and a celebrity νεα socialite second in order to be successful. I would like to indicate some key concepts that report 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 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 place for holding events

They're just a couple of points that report how Greek organizations are ran as the greatest business, combining friendship with professionalism and offering members a good 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 just a part of. My days are filled with constantly making decisions and weighing the consequences. I have learned to make fair decisions that benefit the more 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 had a small crisis with flyers that were made to promote an event we were having. When they came in, we noticed the contact email on the flyers was spelled wrong. After some deliberation, we chose to utilize the flyers we'd and made a new email address with the typo included.

A massive element of managing a successful organization works well and professional communication. Our main forum of communication between officers and the advisory board is emailing. I have learned just how to properly send and respond to emails in an expert manner. My communication skills have improved substantially since being a leader of my chapter. I discovered to communicate concisely and format information in the top 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 different areas on the team. Officers are accountable for organizing their very own meetings and taking minutes to record what was discussed. Greek organizations teach members to effectively and professionally communicate through emailing, holding meetings, and working with others.

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

Greek life has much more to offer than 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 can offer life-changing collegiate experiences that can't be found elsewhere.