Second Day

Saturday Morning we had a keynote speaker who talked about Branding and how we need to recruit based on why we are here and not what we do. We need to promote our inner reasons and motives rather then just stating 'oh we throw the best parties on campus'. I followed up the key note speaker with my second RBC (Recruitment Boot Camp) session with David from Campus speak. He talked to us about Branding as well. David stated that there are 5 parts of successful branding; 1.Message, 2.Simplicity, 3.Consistancy, 4.Repetition, 5.Integrity.. David also talked about how we need to advertise our why rather than our what or how. We discussed how everyone in the organization know what we do, some in the organization know how we do it, but few actually know why we do it. One quote that I took away from this session with David is that "The goal is not to do business with those who need what you have but rather those who share why you do it." I found this strong because this essentially went back to the key note speaker who said we need to recruit on our values. Essentially our values are why we do what we do. David also mentioned how we can advertise with facebook ads and how easy it actually is. Overall a wide variety of interesting facts about how to brand and how to establish that brand exactly catered to the target market. I followed up my branding session with a session called the anatomy of power, where we basically explained different types of power and importance of every aspect in a leader. He broke down Power into 4 steps. Mental power; To know what we are talking about, Be able to admit you're always learning and not always right. Emotional Power; Approachable and relatable, beliefs in one's mission, compassion.Physical Power, demeanor and physically taking care of one's self. and Spiritual Power; Beliefs, morals, values, perseverance. After this I attended a session called Money, Money, Money which was all about collecting Dues and creative steps to follow when fundraising.

My Final Blog Post

What a long strange trip its been.

I never would have guessed on Thursday at 1PM just how weird our group of Greeks was capable of being. That being said, I wouldn't have had it go any other way. The whole BSU delegation was great, and I'm really glad we were all able to get along and share the experience together. I especially want to thank Maribeth for being our fearless leader, as well as the always supportive BSU community, and everyone at NGLA who worked to put together a great program.
      Before I went to NGLA I considered myself to be more of a quiet, reserved leader who led by example, but now I feel I have a better idea of when to speak up. I normally prefer to sit back and listen to problems before I set to work with a written action plan, but my experiences this weekend have really opened my eyes to the fact that people within my chapter often look to me for answers, so I need to be more proactive and act before any problems arise.
     I was able to attend a multitude of educational sessions on topics ranging from alumni relations to officer training. I'm still in the process of refining my many pages of notes into organized packets for all of my brothers to study and learn from, but everyone already seems excited about the new ideas coming their way. NGLA has inspired me to push my brothers to levels they never thought they were capable of reaching. I may have been the Kappa Delta Phi delegate, but to me that only means its my responsibility to transfer knowledge to them.
      What I'm most excited for now that I'm back in Bridgewater is working with our eight new pledges. Each one of them has expressed interest in becoming more involved on campus and eventually taking leadership positions. Their pledge process is really going to pick up some steam this week, and I want Kappa Delta Phi to exceed their expectations of what a brotherhood is. In the next four weeks they'll be bonding together as a pledge class, and learning how our chapter operates. Our pledge counselor has done a great job of communicating with them, and putting together the educational programs, but some of the sessions and speakers at NGLA made me realize that the entire fraternity should really be more involved in pledging. I think that by the time the pledges are initiated they feel comfortable with every brother. If they are familiar with the entire fraternity, and see us acting out our values on a daily basis it will prove to them that they made the right choice in joining Kappa Delta Phi.
     Four days of fun and learning experiences away from school was awesome, but now its time to become grounded in reality again. I've got a messy room to clean, midterms to study for, events to plan, and of course new initiatives to put forth within my chapter. It's been real NGLA, but I'm signing off of the blog for the last time. Once again, thanks to Maribeth, and everyone involved for making the best of a good situation, and congratulations to my friend and tour guide buddy Jesslyn Lowell on her Greek Leader of Distinction award.

Goodbye NGLA blog

Dylan (The Dragon Slayer) Curtis
AKA DC
AKA The Comic
AKA PT

NGLA: The Big Picture

NGLA: The Big Picture

This morning as we got on Route 84, I could not help but reflect on how disappointed I was that the NGLA 2013 conference was over. NGLA was the best experience that I honesetly could have imagined.

For three days, over 900 Greeks across the Northeast gathered and talked about way the could make their Greek communities better. We talked about how us as Greeks could adhere to our values and uphold the visions of our founder. I learned something informative from every interaction and presentation that I was fortunate to have throughout the weekend. This conference sparked my ideas and drive to bring the information back to our community and make it even better than we already are. These past couple of days also reminded me of the gift we have been given; the gift of fraternity and sorority life. It is a gift. I know that I can honestly look back and say that it was the best decision that I have ever made. I know that I would not have half of the relationships and accomplishments that I do if I have chosen not to accept my bid to Gamma Phi Beta. After attending NGLA, I learned that it is the Student Leaders and members of the community who are responsible for caring for the gift that we have been giving so that we can continue to share it with those who come after us.

I undoubtedly would reccommend attending NGLA or a conference similar to it for those who are affiliated with Greek Life. It doesn't matter if you are a new member, an upcoming leader, or are an established leader. NGLA is great opportunity to connect with people who share the same belief and love for Greek Life that you do. Although I am sad that the weekend is over, I am extremely grateful for have been able to have and share this experience with everyone who attended from BSU.

I would also like to thank everyone who supported BSU being able to attend the NGLA conference this weekend. I would like to thank BSU faculty and administrators, students, and everyone who participated in the Greek Bowling Night  fundraiser which funded us being able to attend. I would also like to send a special shout out to our Greek Advisor Maribeth Johnson- Flakes who is the reason that any of us were there in the first place. It is because of here genuine belief in our community and in our student leaders that we were able to attend this weekend. Please be sure to give her a special shout out when you see her too!

Lastly, I would like to end my post with a quote that I heard this weekend which really impacted me.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens could change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

NGLA 2013: The Staff Side

Hi Friends!
I am so excited to be able to blog about my 2013 NGLA experience! This year I was given the oppurtunity to attend NGLA as a Student Staff Volunteer. I applied for the job back in Fall and I can not believe it is over. These past 5 days have been some of the most amazing/ eye-opening/ and rewarding days of my life :)
The weekend began when I arrived to Hartford on Wednesday afternoon. I was immediately introduced to my roommate Michele and we immediately started sharing our Greek Life stories and experiences. As the rest of our roommates began to arrive we all started bonding! We eventually were introduced to the rest of the staff, and I can honestly say that the rest of the staff were some of the most amazing people I have ever met. It was awesome to be able to get to know people who were both Undergraduate and Graduate College students who were all interested in Greek Life and all wanted to help better our schools, Greek Communities, Chapters, and ourselves as leaders. I think the whole groupd bonded when we were stuffing over 800 envelopes with Conference information, and we all got a lot of paper cuts :(
As the weekend continued we went through training, and Greeks from all of the Northeast began to arrive. I may have suffered from even more papercuts on Thursday when we were organizing all of the envelopes by school and by conference participant but it was worth it when all of conference attendees began to arrive. I was so excited when the BSU delegation arrived and got to see me in my spiffy vest :) The conference officially kicked off Thursday night with a presentation from Phired Up! I love seeing them present because they are a reminder of the importance of recruitment and everything that comes along with it :)
On Friday the rest of the keynote speakers began as well as the breakout sessions. I was excited because not only was I given the oppurtunities to introduce the session speakers and see speakers I was interested in, but I also got to see sessions that I otherwise would not have. Through the breakout sessions I learned a lot about multicultural organizations, which I previously knew nothing about. It was an eyeopening oppurtunity to see how even though these organizations may be different than what I know they are amazing organizations and bring something amazing to the Greek world.
Friday night was really fun because I got to go to dinner with BSU and there were plenty of laughs and bonding had by all! I'm just saying though, it's really cold in downtown Hartford at night!
Saturday kicked off the beginning of the end of NGLA 2013. The day was begun at roughly 1:00 AM when my alarm went off after my 1 hour nap for duty. After duty was over I got another few hours of sleep, and then the day was spent attending more keynote speakers, breakout sessions, and eventually the Awards Banquet. BSU was lucky enough to be recognized for as a Honorable Mention for Service and Philanthropy and our very own Jesslyn recieved the Greek Leader of Distinction Award!
This morning we had our goodbye brunch, and it was pretty hard to say goodbye to the people who became my family this past weekend. We bonded over our similarities, our differences, and all became better people and leaders together. I am so thankful to have met the NGLA 2013 staff and for all of our experiences these past few days. Also, thank you to everyone who has supported me through this experience, especially Maribeth and the rest of the BSU delegation :)

Greek Love,
Sadie

"If you don't listen you'll never advance." NGLA Reflection

While arriving back to the Bridgewater State campus it really hit me about how amazing our Greek Community is. After spending a weekend with representatives from every organization I was able to hear about their values and their thoughts about this weekend. The general consensus was that NGLA is awesome and the majority of us would love to go back. The special thing about being selected to go to NGLA is that we had the opportunity to learn different leadership strategies and information to bring back to our chapter. This is extremely important because I know that the individuals that Maribeth and other Greek life members picked, chose us because they knew that we will most bring all of these amazing tools back to our organizations. It is so important to take advantage of every opportunity you can get in your life, and this is definitely one of the best opportunities I have been given. As a new president for my organization I have learned so many things that I believe will work for my chapter. While I was transitioned I think that hearing different perspectives from student leaders on other campuses really helped me think of all the positive things my chapter does and how we can definitely keep improving. A few sessions really stood out to me. 

The first one was Be an ACTion hero. I blogged about this a few nights ago but I keep replaying one quote in my mind. This quote is "What is your excuse for not having a win win situation." This quote is so important because why waste your day thinking about all of the things that could go wrong instead of thinking how amazing your life is and how everyday is just another day to change your life or even someone else's. As chapter president I think its almost easier to pinpoint the bad things about the chapter but if I just focus on all of the amazing things my chapter has done over a timespan of three years I can't wait to see what it may be in ten years. As a member of the Beta Class I have already seen such a growth but I know we're still learning. Being able to see Gamma Phi Beta and Phi Sigma Sigma get honorable mention for philanthropy projects really motivated me to get my chapter to be in that position, where were coming up with ideas and having events that are recognized by Greek life all over the Northeast. This is my win win situation because while I could think about how were new and why we maybe shouldn't win something WHY CAN'T WE come up with a great idea.Why can't we be that organization or individual that gets up and accept and award. I think as leaders you often have to motivate the other members of your organization.

 This brings me to a few points I learned in another session titled Inspire Integrity. This session was all about how your truly have to live your life with optimism. A quote that stood out in my mind from this session was when the speaker talked about the definition of hustle. The definition of hustle is to try harder than you are currently trying. While I maintain a good grade point average here I understand it could always be better, there are so many things I could try harder in but I find myself content with what I am doing. After this session it made me start to think of how would trying harder in my life make me a better student, leader, and sister. In a sorority most girls have a core group of friends but instead of sitting with those same people everyday what if you tried harder to be friends with everyone. I understand that this may be a hard task but even learning about their backgrounds, why they joined your organization, even something as simple as their favorite color can build a better relationship. Even though it is a little late in the game my resolution for this year is to try harder. Try harder in every aspect of my life, because if you don't try harder we will never get the raise or that higher up position and after all, we are student leaders so we are already better than we were when we first started at BSU. 

I also think that it finally hit me this weekend that I have been a member of Delta Phi Epsilon for 3 years now and next year will be my final year. All of the amazing experiences I have had here at BSU would not have happened if I didn't take a chance in greek life and I can truly say "because I knew you I have been changed for good."

Caroline

The End and The Begining

As I sit here in my dorm doing my laundry from the weekend, I can't help but contemplate on the weekend. It feels so strange blogging from the dorm and not in the Starbucks lobby with my delegation.

There is no amount of words for me to express my gratitude for Bridgewater State University, Panhellenic and Maribeth for picking me to attend NGLA.

While my time at NGLA is over, I am thrilled to begin to improve my chapter using the new tools I have learned. The memories that we made are ones that can never be forgotten. I am going to encourage my sister to apply to future NGLA gatherings and other similar leadership experiences. I hope that in the future our school and organizations will be able to implement the ideas that we have learned at the conference.

I am now not focusing not on what my chapter does badly but what we do right. By focusing on the positive things that we exemplify we can improve our organizations much better than when we fixate on the negative issues. Instead of asking people to join a bunch of people who wear letter look for people who want to join a group of people who share the same values, “lead with your values not your letters”. I am looking forward to meeting with my Leadership Team and my Membership Development Team, to give an update about my weekend and how I think we could start to implement what I learned.  I am so glad to return to campus to start sharing what I learned. I am going to be a rockstar in my chapter and the Greek community by making us organizations to be looked up too. Greek Life shouldn’t be disconnected and a separate entity to the campus community, Fraternity and Sorority members should be helping to enrich the campus community and other organizations.  

Thank you once more to everyone who helped me to attend NGLA, you have given me a gift that will never be forgotten. I love Greek Life, you love Greek Life, we love Greek Life. GREEK LIFE ROCKS!!

NGLA Wrap Up: The things I have learned :)

Now that NGLA has finally come to an end, we were all asked to sit down and think about all of the things that we have learned during our time here. I want to take some time to share with you all some of the greatest lessons I have learned in the last few days. To be honest, there are so many things that I want to share but I feel like there are a few things that particularly stood out to me. I am hoping that the entire Bridgewater Greek Life Community can benefit from these small but incredibly valuable pieces of information. After a lot of thought, I am going to try and explain this all as best as I can! So here it goes!! :)

1. The first thing I learned has to do with recruitment. The presenter gave us all a challenge. Yes, a challenge! She said that while recruiting new members, "We need to stop selling what we do. Instead, we need to sell who we are." At first, I couldn’t really see the difference between the two. Isn’t what we do a huge part of who we are? The answer is yes but I think we often get caught up on which part is really important. I never really noticed the difference until it was explained during the session. During our recruitments, we tend to recruit new members by telling them all of the things that we do. We try to impress them with things like our commitment to community service, our pride in our organization, our close bonds with one another and the social events we host but although those things are all important, they are all things that other Greek organizations do as well. I do not know of a single Greek organization that does not hold those same values. Those are all things that are expected from a Greek organization. That is their purpose. We need to find the things that set us apart from everyone else and what makes us unique. We need to stop selling what we do and find a way to sell who we are. Everyone expects us to tell them about things like community service and in all honesty, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that we are social. We are called SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS!!! Yes, we need to inform them about these types of things but more importantly we need to focus on what is really important and on what makes each one of our organizations unique. That is what we need to stress during recruitment. It would help us recruit a unique group of members that truly embody our values and not just someone who is interested in community service or attending socials. (They can get that no matter what Greek organization they join) After attending this session, I will now look at recruitment in a different light and try to figure out what makes people want to join OUR Greek organization and not simply a Greek organization.

2. The other piece of information that I learned is equally as important and it pertains to how we manage problems within our Greek Community. The presenter led a conversation about how we need to hold ourselves accountable for the issues that our community faces every single day. These are not just issues within our individual chapters, but issues that Greek life faces as a whole. Some of these issues include things like alcohol abuse and hazing within our chapters. Now before I go on, I just want to say that I personally feel that Bridgewater Greek Life has done an amazing job when it comes to fighting off these stereotypes. But no matter how great we are, we must realize that we are currently part of a culture that still has a long way to go. Issues like hazing and alcohol abuse may not seem like a large issue for Greek life on our campus, but unfortunately this is not true for Greek life across the board. Unfortunately for many chapters across the country, these activities are actually incredibly common on campus.  And what is even more unfortunate is the fact those are the types of activities that people choose to remember. Before NGLA, I did not realize how many Greek organizations still took part in activities like hazing and alcohol abuse and I personally found it sickening when I learned just how many Greeks do not yet see the problem. I always thought that Greek Life as a whole was constantly trying to fight the stereotypes and it saddens me to think that many members are not willing to change their negative behaviors. In the end, those behaviors affect us all whether we like it or not. No matter how much we try to fight against the issues, we are still only as strong as our weakest link. We continuously blame others for these problems and often say that the issues are simply stereotypes that other people use to label us. We tell ourselves that we are looked at in this way because others do not understand us. In reality, we use the term stereotype as a way to place the blame on others so that we simply do not have to confront the situation. This is because we do not really consider it to be our problem. We must admit that even if it is not a huge problem on our campus, it is still a problem that the Greek community faces. That alone makes it our problem. As a member of this Greek community, we have a responsibility to recognize that we are a part of this negative image. That also makes us a part of the solution. Everything we do is a choice. Everything we do is a choice that can either make us or break us. At the end of the day these are the decisions that will determine the future of Greek life.

3. The presenter then went on and talked about how we can deal with problems like these. Her explanation sounded a little bit like this. She explained that some people think that in order to fix a problem, they have to step back and redefine the situation. In the beginning, this approach sounded reasonable to me. It made sense that if a problem was found within the organization, one must locate the source of the problem, eradicate it and rebuild. The presenter said that many people in our society feel that Greek life must be redefined in order to get rid of the issues that are imbedded within it. In other words, some sort of radical change must occur. Up until this moment, I completely agreed with everything. If there was a problem within our chapters, shouldn’t we attempt to make radical changes? It made sense to me and it seemed like a more than reasonable way to respond. Then she told us why radical change was completely unnecessary and would do nothing but waste our time. She explained that there was no reason to redefine our system in order to create change. It is not a problem within our organizations themselves. It is a problem with our members. She then used a quote that finally made it all make sense. She said, "Organizations do not change but rather people change. Everything we need to be successful has already been written out for us. Our founders outlined the solution to these problems for us when they created our organizations because if we constantly embodied the values that we swore to uphold, these problems would fail to exist." I feel that within our own chapters, we often feel that in order to fix problems within our organizations, we have to redefine them or come up with some new policy that will make magically make everything better.  Sure it might work for a semester or two, but changing the organization is not the long term solution. We must change our own attitudes and simply remember the goals and values of the organizations that we committed to during initiation.

These are just a few of the lessons that I learned throughout my time spent at NGLA. I hope that we will be able to use some of these lessons to improve Greek life on our campus.  Spending the weekend at NGLA was an incredible experience and I am so happy to have been given such an awesome opportunity. Thanks NGLA!!! J

Goodbye NGLA, Hello BSU!

Today was the final day of NGLA 2013.  The day began after a quick trip to starbucks with keynote speaker, Rick Barnes. He talked about the best possible ways for our organizations to flourish and how to combat the negative stereotypes. The message that made the largest impression with me was about drinking. He reinforced that when we do have a drink, we should not drink in order to get drunk and anyone and everyone who are consuming alcoholic beverages are only those over the age of 21. He then went on to talk about the importance of the rituals we have and how they may all be difference but they all share similar ideas and they all promote and remind their members of they beliefs and values. 

The three sessions that I attended today were: Understanding Your LGBQ Brothers & Sisters, Dynamic Recruitment for Sororities and “Yeah, But…” Explaining our Actions and Perceptions. While each of these focus on different main topics they all carried the same underlying message of tolerance and thinking about putting yourself in another shoes. In the LGBQ session, we talked about tolerance of others in organizations that are attracted to others of the same gender. It was interesting to talk with the group about what we can do to make those members feel more included. There are simple ways to do that, some of which as a heterosexual female I would not have considered before like the gender specific wording in guidelines for visitors and event guests. The second session was about how to make friends and be tolerant about others feelings on Greek Life. The focus of the session was to recruit by making gradual friendships and instead of telling people to go out for recruitment, show them why they should. The goal was to be tolerant of their decision not to join Greek Life and make them want to join through your friendships, interactions and depictions of your organization’s values. The third was about tolerance of peoples opinions and they way they reached those decisions. Everyone has different backgrounds and personal experiences that influence their opinions of the world and the choices we make and how we need to take the time to look at where we are coming from and where they are coming from and respecting them.

The affiliation lunch was so exciting. I loved meeting other sisters and talking about our chapters and what we have in common and what we do differently. I was able to exchange numbers and emails with a few of my sisters so in the future we can collaborate. I also met our membership manager, Maria, it was really cool to be able to add a face to a name I had seen on our website numerous amounts of time.

I also attended the Saturday showcase, Be a Dream Maker: Your Role in Making Fraternity and Sorority Life Great. During the showcase, speaker Michelle talked about her own experience in Greek Life as a member who was hazed and hazed others. Because of her experiences she was able to put a personal spin on what the damage of hazing does to not only the people who become dream killers to the organizations which become endangered because they are loosing the amount of potential new members. She really focuses on how to build your organizations and its members, by realistically talking about the negative impacts that a large social group has the potential to create and also how to avoid those negative things that promotes negativity and fuels the stereotype.

We ended our day with the Awards Ceremony where the BSU community took home an honorable mention for our philanthropic work and Jesslyn took home an award for being a distinguished leader. J It was an amazing night filled with laughter and picture taking. I as I reflect on the weekend, I am so grateful I chose to apply to become a BSU/DPhiE representative here at NGLA. Not only have I received tools to bring back to improve my chapter but I have also found ways to better myself as a person. I am looking forward to going home but I will be departing NGLA with a heavy heart. I am thrilled to return to campus with the knowledge I have received here but also with more friends and networking connection. As I am preparing to return to the busy days of school, work, friends and Greek Life, I know I will be returning with a fresh mind and the tools I have collected to make improvements. Tomorrow I will climb into the van with chauffer, Mb, and my Greek family to brave the to BSU weather (hopefully it will not being snowing).  Everyday is a great day to be a bear!

NGLA Day 1

Today I had the pleasure of listening to some extremely inspiring speakers at NGLA. In the morning we heard from keynote speaker Kim Novak. Kim's presentation delivered a strong message on how Greeks must go about representing their Values Based Organizations and how we must own and combat the stereotypes we face. Our organizations are supposed must work to dispel these stereotypes by avoiding risky behavior like the plague and emphasizing the positive in what we do as Greeks. We have to take a good hard look at what our values are and how our actions reflect those values. Greeks have to then utilize these values to transcend the expectations society has set for us. Later during our group sessions our facilitators worked with us on identifying, prioritizing, and discussing the issues that face our individual communities. Issues over scholarship emerged in our group sessions as a major  difficulty for many of chapters and communities. Together we shared a number of ideas for improving scholarship in a community, namely stronger systems of rewards for successful students, stricter repercussions for failing to meet academic standards and greater community support for scholarship through the organized facilitation of community study hours. In my next session Buy In or Get Out, David Stollman, a Campus Speak presenter echoed the words of Kim Novak in his challenge for Greeks to identify the changes that need to be made in our organizations and possessing the strength to make them realities. He emphasized that the oaths sworn  by Greek men and women are the only true traditions that should ever be upheld by our organizations as details in how our organizations must change as necessity demands but our oaths are the essential core of our organizations which we need to embody or leave our organizations altogether. David stated that we earn our letters when we live up to them and the ideals they stand for. Our organizations need to earn back the respect they once held and eliminate the behaviors that leave us labeled as partiers and hazers. Next I attended Flip Your Organization, a workshop focused on getting apathetic members of our organizations more involved in our work and as a result increasing the productivity and efficacy of our time as actives within our organizations. The main ways in which the presenter suggested that Greeks accomplished these goals were to establish small, quantifiable goals through which members can work towards accomplishing overarching major goals, to establish connections between these goals and our mission statements, and to give measures of responsibility to members with underwhelming involvement while encouraging their involvement through praise and direct engagement from chapter leadership in a one on one basis. The final session I attended was one focused on developing alumni contacts as mentors for junior and senior active members in their preparation for entrance into the workforce. This type of program would pair actives with alumni in the career field of interest to help guide them in their efforts to break into a particular field. The presenter suggested that actives work on developing alumni databases and work with their school's career services offices to find and professionally access alumni resources. Throughout the day I learned a lot about how to confront and fix various issues that face not only my own organization but the community as a whole, especially when it comes to apathy and indifference.

Day Two NGLA13

I started out the day Friday with RBC (Recruitment Boot Camp) 10 Push ups; 10 steps to successful recruitment. This was an interesting session because they started out by establishing there are 3 groups of potential markets on every campus. 10-20% are always joiners and will seek out Greek life and try to pledge with little to no effort put forth by the fraternity, there is 10-20% never joiners who despite what you offer or preach to them they will never go Greek, and then there is 60-80% maybe joiners. This maybe joiners is where we need to use our resources. Maybe-people are the average run of the mill person with their struggles and challenges and when they learn the truth about Greek they will warm up to Greek life and potentially become joiners. RBC went on to explain the differences between Rush and Recruitment and they stated that when recruiting you must build a relationship first and your chapter second. They broke it down to 5 easy steps for successful recruitment; 1. Meet them, 2. Make them your friend, 3. Introduce them to your friends, 4. Introduce them to your organization, 5. Ask them to join your organization. This may sound lengthy but my notes went on to another page from this session alone, really informational and helpful with building a better recruitment process. The second session I went to on Friday was put on by Rise Partnerships and was focused on motivation. They started out by having us list our own jobs duties and then think about how different things would be if you were to delegate out all your responsibilities. From there they bridged they gap and reminded us that to motivate people you have to give them tasks to succeed with and that delegation of your duties isn't a bad thing. The Rise Partnership team went on to explain the differences between Theory X(People are heritable lazy and...) and Theory Y(People are inheritable good and seek responsibility and...). They said that the first step of motivating members is to know both their strengths and their struggles. Once you know those you can use them to give responsibilities and motivate individuals based on their unique characteristics. Keeping with the theme of the day of motivation, the session after my tuna fish sandwich lunch(its a Friday in lent) was entitled Motivating the Middle. This session followed the PIKE I theory, where there is 3 groups of individuals in your organization. The top third; always motivated, hardworking, often taking on as many responsibilities as possible, the middle third; these members care about balance and relationships, and dislike drama and negativity and then there is the bottom third; the group who when they show up, do nothing but argue, these members do not like rules or authority. This sessions went on and broke up ways to specifically motivate each group and stated that to cause change you must motivate the middle third. After a long informative day, we headed to Black-Bear-Saloon where we were thoroughly harassed by a washed up radio DJ who was working as a bubble hockey commentator; a prime example of why you should stay in school. Jen and I split some spin-dip then I got a veggie burger(once again Friday in Lent). Dylan picked up the tab and we went outside. The night was cold, so cold that.. Saddie sat on the ground, and I may or may have not suggested that a group cuddle may keep us warm. Came back to the hotel put off my blog, rode a bull, dominated catch phrase and went to bed a proud BEAR.

It's not Sunday?

Hey there party (to quote MB)

Bright and early, I boarded the struggle bus. Leanne, Judith and I were all late getting downstairs and late getting up because we were all so tired. We all decided in the elevator that it was going to be one of those days.

The first speaker was really cool. He talked about what Greek life is now and how to improve it. My favorite parts were when he talked about our rituals and how every member should study them and know them because that's where our values lie. We should also stop trying to sell what we do and start selling why we're here! Seriously. Wicked legit.

The first session I went to was accountability and commitment. I learned a lot in this session. Commitment implies passion, intensity and duration. Commitment and accountability! Commitment is more having the motivation to get things done and the difference between attending and being present. You need commitment in order to hold yourself accountable. What inspires both is motivation. In order to help your chapters with commitment and accountability, you need to motivate them to be present. One of the big problems I noticed the other Greek organizations had were seniors not listening and not committing because they have already done their time. When you are in a fraternity or sorority, you continually prove that you are supposed to be there. There is no day when you can stop putting in effort because you've been apart of the organization for a while. If this was the case, Greek life would have died out a long time ago. Accountability has recently been a problem with my chapter. How I learned to fix that was motivating my members and lead by example. No member should ever think "okay, you're yelling me at this now, but you did the same thing last week..." If you're on E-board or even the president you should always hold yourself accountable for your actions because if you don't, no one will. The last thing he briefly talked about was members not going to events/chapter/service. He said (and I really agree) that homework is not an excuse for missing chapter or service. You're a college student and have probably known about the assignment for a while and you should really learn how to manage their time. You also know  the exact time every week you have chapter and, therefore, should plan around that. There have been times where I've saved homework for the last minute, but I still went to chapter because I've made that commitment. I just did the homework afterwards. Think of it this way: if you walked into a business meeting unprepared and told your boss you were unprepared because you had other things to do, you'd be fired. Also, missing chapter and service for homework, but going to social events and such is really unacceptable. If you have time to go to social events, you most definitely have time to go to chapter and service hours.

The second session I went to was about being a powerful person. He talked about being the bystander and helping a brother/sister/anyone who you are worried about. If they have an eating disorder, drink too much, are in an abusive relationship, etc. there are easy steps you can take to bring it up to the person to express your concern about what is going on in a positive way. I left the worksheet in my room, but if you want to know I can email you the steps. 0:)

The last one I went to was for IFC. Let me just tell you, when I walked into that meeting in my red dress and sat down, I was given the weirdest looks from the men in the room. It was clear they thought I walked into the wrong session. I felt crazy awkward and wanted to stand up and yell "JUST AN FYI SINCE YOU ARE INCAPABLE OF ASKING, I'M IN A CO-ED FRATERNITY AND WAS JUST ELECTED IFC VP SO BUGGER OFF!!!!" ... I didn't though because the stares made me feel too awkward. Anyways! This session focused on advocacy with the IFC. They centered it around practicing what you preach. If you tell everyone you are committed to service, but haven't had a service event in months, people aren't going to believe in the IFC. You need to create a plan with your mission and values in it and then start living up to them. Then, students, faculty, the dean, alumni, and parents will see that you're a respectable organization. One person in my session talked about a book his campus made with all the fraternities in it with their values,  number of members, their average GPA, and a list of other organizations their members are involved in. They sent this to parents and faculty and such to prove to them that they were making a positive contribution to their campus. (I really liked this!!)

I went to lunch before the IFC session and I sat with a couple other local Greeks, but I was awkward child and didn't really talk to them...

I walked into my final group session to close the day late and I walked into Dylan's first by accident. This meeting really tied it all together for me. I condensed my best notes during the session and wrote a list of everything I wanted to talk about at chapter. Look out Phi Pis! I have awesome activities for you! Get Psyched! Again, if you want to see my wonderful list of improvements and such, email me and I will be more than happy to send them to you.
The best one on the list that everyone should do right now is write a thank you note!

I went back to the room and called Liz to tell her I wanted to hand out a worksheet and stuff and to warn her of my craziness for chapter and she said it was all good(Thank God!). I have one for the current members and the new members! XD and I have stuff for my IFC meeting tomorrow. Wicked pumped.

Dinner time! We were at an award ceremony where Steve and Kyle were basically taking turns insulting me, but they are just meanie pants. Then Steve made a snarky comment to MB and I hit him on the back of the head so that made up for it. :) It was a girl code thing to do. Dinner was nom of course and then they started giving out awards. JESSLYNN WON LEADERSHIP AWARD AND PHI SIGMA WON AN HONORABLE MENTION FOR PHILANTHROPY! YAY TO ALL!

I'm so tired though and it's midnight and this bear needs to hibernate.
If you want my good notes email me! jdrisko@student.bridgew.edu

Delta Love,
Jen

NGLA Day 3

NGLA Day 3

The morning began with a keynote speaker titled "Living the Dream of our Founders" presented by Rick Barnes. Rick touched upon several ways that we need to realign our actions to more accurately reflect what the vision of our founders were. He also mentioned how we often say " We are sick of the Stereotypes" or "They don't accurately represent Greek Life." I know that I have been guilty of this as well in the past. However, we need to stop using these excuses and recognize that there is some truth behind them. For example, there have been campus' that have too much alcohol consumption within Greek Life and there are Greek chapters who have been closed for hazing. That is a fact. Instead of hiding behind the statement "these are unrealistic stereotypes" we need to recognize that this does happen and we need to start the move to change this negative perception. This change can only happen however if you regonize the problem you need to change.

My favorite session of the day was titled "6 ways to Chapter Enema". I can summarize this session in three words- Buy in or Get Out. Yes, at first it sounds very harsh, but the message is that we need to start holding our members accountable. Members need to either recognize the values we stand for or ultimately revaluate why they are here in the first place. A large portion of this comes from Chapters being able to hold people accountable. Yes we all have some type of standing rules and by laws, but what do they actually mean if Chapter Leadership isn't willing to enforce it? If accountability is not there, then the rules really mean nothing.

When I first heard this idea, I recgonized that this is the part of being a leader that is hard. It isn't fun and nobody wants to be the bad guy. Today I learned that your not the bad guy. When you have to take action to discipline a chapter member, it is appropriate to ask why they are putting you, there sister and brother, in to this uncomfortable position of having to discipline them. Interesting idea isn't it? We need to realize that holding members accountable is our job but we are not the bad guy when we do it. Discipline is not the fun part for any leader but adhearing to our standard rules and by laws is a must. If we want to be able to return to our Chapters as alum and see our chapter thriving then we need to adhere to our standards and values. If we choose not to, no one can guarantee that your chapter will still be there.I found this message really inspiring as a Chapter President. Leaders have an obligation to their chapter and making sure that our members are meeting the standards of membership fall under this. It's not always fun but it's necessary.

My last session of the day was titled "The Mighty Mouse Effect". Ideally the session was geared towards smaller organizations  but had a central idea around what an ideal chapter looks like. which appealed to me. The cool thing about this organization in perticular was that I got to talk to several leaders of culturally based FSL Leaders. Since we do not have these organizations on campus, I took the opportunity to learn more about their organizations. Although they are much smaller in size, some with only three active members, they have many of the same standards and values that our chapters do at BSU.  Their ideal chapter would also include actively involved members, high academic standards, an emphasis on community service, and a strong chapter as whole.At BSU, we all our in different chapters but have similar values. I realized that there is no reason why we can't be pushing members of our community to uphold the values that we all have. Overall, I learned that regardless of the letters we where we DO have alot in common. We all stand for same values and I feel sometimes that reality gets lost in translation.

Today I learned from numerous Fraternity and Sorority Leaders ideas that I can not wait to bring back to our campus. We are an amazing Greek Community but there is always ways we can strive to be better. Today I heard Greek Life described as a heart monitor. For example, you never want a heart monitor to be a flat line because that means your dead, right? Greek life is kinda the same way. Sure, we can be at a constant flat line and be content with where we are at but in the end we're going to die. We need the little hiccups and bups in the road in order to show that were alive and are always working to get better. This analogy really hit home for me. I hope that this idea makes you think about our community your individual chapter. Is your chapter flatlined or are you striving to always be better?

Advisor post- wicked proud

Its hard to believe it is already Saturday night! It's even harder not to jump right to the awesome part. So I won't... Tonight at the Awards BSU Greek Life was recognized with an honorable mention for Philanthropy & Service and our very own Jesslyn Lowell, Chapter President of Gamma Phi Beta was recognized with a Greek Leader of Distinction Award! I am beaming with pride. We have some amazing leaders in Greek Life and I'm super lucky to get to work with them.

I had a great presentation yesterday with my pals Courtney (Quinnipiac) Adam (MIT) and Laurel (CAMPUSPEAK ). #tweet2congruence is still a relavant topic and the participation was great from people in our audience both IRL and in cyberspace.

Each year I feel like I migrate to certain sessions, this year NPC extension was one but the hazing sessions also spoke to me, mostly because I wish I could just fix it, I wish I could just roll in with my solution and make it all go away. Hazing isn't what we're about and I would hate for it to define us they way it seems to nationally.

I also had the opportunity to meet with a number of other FSA's I work with in my volunteer role which was great. It's so helpful to put a face to a name and see fraternity and sorority life through different lenses.

I love sitting in this Starbucks with my cherubs writing these blogs. We could never recreate this on campus. I'm just soaking it all in.

One thing I am kind of psyched about is this new campaign of sorts I came up with, I was meeting with a Zeta Tau Alpha advisor and thought... I don't have any Zeta friends so this will be great! Then I thought, hmm maybe I should make a list of the friends I have in each of the 26 NPC member organizations, and then I thought no.. How about I take a picture with a woman from all 26 groups under the title #26panhellenicsisters. People got excited about it and I next thing you know people were introducing me to women to help me connect. And then I thought... THIS is NPC sisterhood! We could make a huge impact if we always took to time to help our members make new connections
 with other women. We could do crazy big things in this crazy big world. I'm excited to see this project through.

Ok night ya'll!

Organizations Don't Change, People Change- Day 3

Day Three

While I am super upset that NGLA is over I am excited to reflect on the second day of this conference. It is crazy to think that over a time span of two days I have learned so much. This morning started with a short line at Starbucks and a great caramel macchiato. When we sat down at the keynote speaker, Rick Barns, this morning I wasn’t really sure what to think, but I learned so much about how to handle certain risk management problems!

After the keynote I went to my first session. This session was titled Inspire Integrity. The speaker was able to explain to the group that if you don’t live your values your motto is truly just a bunch of words on a piece of paper. This stood out to me because if we don’t work to become better members of our organization than nothing will improve. If you are totally enjoying what you’re doing than your quality of life will definitely be better. A quote the speaker said was that there are no shortcuts on any path worth taking. Whether it is getting your dream job or just getting a good grade on a test there is truly no reason not to try hard, because when you think about it every ounce of effort we put into something will have a positive reflection on who we are as individuals and chapter.

The next session I went to was called Six Steps to a Chapter Enema. This session was all about how to motivate your chapter and to get rid of any problems. The six steps to a chapter enema are to build a coalition, tighten the language, review performance, enforce penalties, raise the stakes, and recruit new blood. The steps are extremely important when trying to change something in a chapter because just by forming a coalition you have the ability to change anything you may want to change. With just one person you can affect an entire chapter.

After these two sessions I was able to enjoy an affiliation lunch with my sisters of Delta Phi Epsilon from other schools. This was awesome because we had four tables and I was able to talk to other chapter presidents and leadership teams. I also got a chance to meet with my membership manager and discuss things about my chapter. This was an awesome opportunity because I was able to talk to her face to face rather than via email or phone.

After lunch I went to a couple more sessions, one being about alternative breaks for members of Greek life. Since coming back from Belize I thought it was awesome to hear about another school that also does Greek Life Alternative Break trips. I enjoyed this session a lot because it was interactive and I was able to hear all different perspectives on different school’s alternative break programs.

At the end of the day we got to back to our group sessions where we talked about how to bring back everything we learned to our chapters. We analyzed a quote that states, “Organizations Don’t Change, People Change” An important idea to take from this quote is that we have values that have been set for 96 years, while these have not changed the people behind in the organizations have. Our main focus should be to recruit people with the values that our founders have set for us. As leaders we should be setting an example for the rest of the chapter. Since people lead by example it is important for us to act as the role models for our chapter. Also an important thing to remember is DWYSYWD, which stands for Do what you said you would do. I think that often times as leaders we have a hard time saying no to a task but the next time you are asked about something you truly don’t want to do you should remember that it is okay to say no. You won’t be penalized for it and it will give another member of your chapter a chance to have a job to do. When I go back to my chapter after this weekend I know that I will try to delegate more and try not to take on as many things, because if you have too much to do you won’t be able to do anything to your fullest potential.

The last part of our day was the banquet dinner. At the dinner two members of our delegation one awards which was awesome! Congrats to Jesslyn and Phi Sigma Sigma & Gamma Phi Beta! After today I cannot wait to go back and tell my chapter about all of the amazing things I learned this weekend.

“ At the end of the day will you have said more than you’ve done or done more than you say? ”

Caroline 

Just thought I Would Share This Picture Leanne Drew of us Arriving Here on Thurday

This is the end

     The conference here in Hartford is officially over, but the bears are staying one more night. I had a pretty solid day highlighted by a seminar on transitioning and training new officers. I was drawn to the program based on the title "More than a Binder". When I was initiated into Kappa Delta Phi in March 2011 I was immediately voted in as the new philanthropy chairman. That was really exciting until I was given my completely unorganized binder, and no direction whatsoever. Luckily I figured it out, but as my chapter moves forward the time has come for me to help transition incoming brothers to their new chairman positions. I had some ideas of my own on how to organize the binder both digitally, and in print, but the seminar really showed me how to train people for the jobs ahead of them. I now feel that I'm prepared to help not only the philanthropy chairman, but every new brother.
     A Recruitment Boot Camp session on chapter branding highlighted the differences in advertisements and chapter branding. We reviewed the ways in which iconic brands such as Coca-Cola and Disney have used branding through specific fonts and images, and what this means for branding individual chapters. One of the key details I took note of is the presenter's focus on not using fraternity crests in advertisements. there is just too much happening in the crest, and the meanings behind each part only come into focus and have meaning once someone has joined. What's truly important is creating an image that is easily recognizable and always makes the viewer think of the fraternity. For Kappa Delta Phi it would be far more advantageous to use our mascot, Ernie T. Krow, in our advertisements. The branding seminar also taught us valuable lessons about why people buy consumer products, and buy into groups like fraternities. The golden circle starts from the outside with what, and works inside to how, and why. Most people start with what they do, which sounds the same to everybody: "We have high GPAs, we do community service, we have socials, etc...". The how circle is not much better, but explains to people how they do each event. Why is what really brings recruits into an organizations. Our presenter compared this to how Apple does its advertisements. They are a simple computer company like Dell or HP, but they use advertisement to tell consumers why their product is necessary. When it comes to recruitment I have to let potential brothers know exactly why Kappa Delta Phi is right for them.
     Our affiliation lunch was pretty interesting. I met two brothers from Southern New Hampshire, and talked to our formal national director, Steve Simo. I wasn't at our national convention last year, and missed our summer conference, so this was the first time in a while that I interacted with brothers outside of my own chapter. Steve no longer works for our national group, but was happy to hear that Alpha chapter is a live and happy.
     After lunch I attended a fundraising session called "money money money" that was not all that helpful for me. Most of the session was focused on paying dues, and collecting from those who owe money in a timely manner. Within my chapter the bigger issue is not paying national dues, but paying local dues and putting on fundraisers to add spending money. I feel that with the right amount collected in local dues, we have the capacity to put money into fundraisers that can potentially double or triple the initial investment. Hopefully I can change the attitude of the brothers towards some of my ideas, and produce a bigger budget for everyone next year.
     Our banquet and awards dinner was awesome. Everyone enjoyed some good food, and two awards are coming back to Bridgewater. BSU Greek Life was awarded honorable mention for last spring's Walk a Mile in Her Shoes event, and Jesslyn Lowell won an award for being an outstanding leader for her work as Gamma Phi Beta President. Definitely a great way to end the conference for the bears. I'm glad I got to come down here to Connecticut and experience the whole conference. It was an enlightening couple days for everybody here, and I should be able to bring back and implement a lot of new plans for my chapter.

Goodbye for now,

DC

Last Day :-(

So today was/is our last day at the conference. We will be leaving tomorrow morning to head back to BSU. Leaving is bittersweet. I want to stay and keep learning, but I need to go home to BSU. I cannot really suck up any more information. It is tiring to listen to these presentations that keep your brain working from 9am until you go to bed at like 12:30. So it is good to go home now. There were five sessions that I attended today including the Keynote that everyone saw. There was Keynote: Living The Dream of Our Founders, Team Phi Kap: A Fraternities Quest for Success, The Anatomy of Power, Be A Dream Maker: Your Role in Making Fraternity and Sorority Life Great, and I'm not doing that silly junk, I'm a MAN.

The Keynote was amazing today. He had great funny stories which really complimented the session well.
Some main points that he hit on was:

• Stop Selling what we do and
• START selling WHY we are here.
• You have to expect the same things from your active members, that you expect from your Associate Members. Make everyone accountable for the same ideals.
• When he was talking about hazing in recruitment he said, take a video of your recruitment classes, would you send it to your Nationals, your University President, your Parents,...Next years recruits? Without sitting there with them to explain why things are happening, justifying your actions. If you wouldn't do that, you really need to reevaluate your strategies. 
• He also gave two rules for risk management, that you will only need those two rules. All the others will be obsolete.

1. You have to be 21 to drink alcohol!
2. And; Just Don't Get DRUNK! You can drink, just don't get drunk out of control.

The next seminar that I went to was about Phi Kappa Theta and our founder chapter and how they were almost at extinction, and then how they got back from that and the strategy they used. 

• They used the SWOT technique: Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats.
• Additionally, they used a Team Plan. Setting up a plan for getting their fraternity back on the right track after almost being kicked off campus.

After that, was The Anatomy of Power with the same presenter as the Keynote, who killed it the first time around. One of his many stories involved a heart monitor machine, the kind you will see at a hospital where it records in bumps how your heart is beating. Anyway, he used an analogy with the machine. Leaders are always getting better or worse, we are never stopped. If you are not getting better or worse, you are flat lining and you will fail as a leader. We are Constantly needing to improve. The bar is always being set higher for what we need to achieve in order to be considered excellent. 

       He went over some amazing things that seem to be obvious, but we hardly ever understand or live by them as leaders:

• Leadership isn't about you! It is about everyone else, the followers. We are doing it for them, not for us. They believe in us and trust us to lead them in the right direction. 
• Then he asked us, Is leadership Made, or Born? 
• And we are influenced, by the people around us. If we are surrounded by awful people, we might not be a great person or embody great values.

1. He gave us an assignment that we can do, but we don't need to. It just might be helpful. Make a list of the top 10 people that you hang out with/spend the most time with. Now rank them on a scale of 1-5, 5 being an extremely harmful person to be around and one that you should probably reevaluate. And a 1 being someone that you need to surround yourself with because they are a great role model. 

• Now to go along with the Leadership Made or Born thing. It's called the Evolution of Leadership, and most people who are avid leaders embody this. 
• We start out with Joining an organization, but that isn't good enough for us, so we get more Involved, people notice our enthusiasm and Appoint you to a position, you get so good at this appointed position that you decide to run for an Elected position and you get it. And finally you become a Post Leader and you help the new aspiring leaders in that organization and start the whole process over again and again in other organizations. 
• Then we moved on to personalities. And a main point he said was "Whether you are an Introvert or an Extrovert by nature, as a leader you need to be able to be one or the other when the time arrives. 
• Now he spoke specifically to the people in the room and what he believes motivates us.

1. We like to be recognized and seen for the awesome things that we do.
2. And we like/need to be right. That doesn't always make us well liked, but it is how we are.

One of the most powerful things we discussed in this was the 4 Things We Have To Show To Have Power/Leadership.

1. Mental Power
2. Emotional Power
3. Physical Power (we need to take care of ourselves, often we sacrifice our health for our members. And where are we supposed to go to unload our baggage when everyone comes to us with theirs?)
4. Spiritual Power

Now the final thing that we touched on was improvement. Where do we rank our organizations on a scale from 1-10. 10 being you have nothing else that you need to do, you're just that amazing. And a 1 being you probably shouldn't be an organization. Now we don't need to go from being a 5 all the way to a 10, we just need to Improve. If you think that you are just too damn good to go any higher, then you are going to flat line. 

The next seminar that I went to was Be a Dream Maker. Now this lady was hilarious. She was completely comfortable with who she was and what she had done as a Greek Member. She asked us all, what would the world be like, without Greek Organizations? 

And she challenged us to be better than the people who came before us, and the people after us, to be better than we were. 

She told us to go to non-Greek stuff in order to get more involved and well known. And for crying out loud, share the awesome things that you do so you can get credit and be in the news for a good reason!!!!

     We also need to do UIFI and start the Order of Omega on our campus!!

She asked us, What Role Do We Play in our Organization? 

• Are we the Greek Rockstar?
• The Shirt-Wearer? 
• Or the Team-Player?

Now the final seminar that I attended was the I Am A Man one.

• We have to better ourselves, before we can better others. Start with ourselves and then go to the new guys, they are willing to be whatever.
• If you have 'Prisoners' re-recruit them. And if that doesn't work then open the door and set them free, maybe they are better as just a friend.
• We have to be able to match up our brothers with other brothers with the same interests.

This is all I've got guys. If anyone has any questions PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ask me! That is why I am here. To learn for you all. I want to educate every person possible about the incredible things that I have learned here. It has changed my life and I will honestly never be the same.

In MB terms, "We made Memories Bear's!"

Exciting Day Two (Part 2)

So the blog wouldn't let me go down any farther so here is my blog continued

Be Empowering

• Everyone wants to have their best year ever! But do you really want to have the best year that you will ever have? What will next year be if this is your best year ever? The answer is not, even better, we tried that. 
• If our organizations haven't gotten any better after we've left, we didn't lead well.
• We need to Empower, others to take our place after we are gone.
• And in order to empower someone else, we need to metaphorically or literally, give up the microphone, and let someone else take the lead.
• And something that he said that made sense, when you leave your position after your term, you should be there as an advisor, for the person who succeeds you! It isn't all about a good transition period, there always should be an open line of communication. 

Be Rational

• Know your members!
• Know their strengths and weaknesses. Don't put the really social kid in the back of the room where he doesn't get time to talk to anyone. You will piss people off that way.
• There are two questions that you should know about everyone in the organization.

1. Why did you join our organization in the first place?
2. What does a successful experience look like to you?

• And catch your members doing something right! Instead of always calling them out when they do stupid shit, let them know they appreciate the good things they do, or they won't be motivated to do those good things anymore!
• Are you willing to fight for what you believe?

Be Optimistic 

• There was a story that he told us about a Captain of a ship. His ship was about to be overrun by pirates and the captain told his first mate, grab me my sword and my red shirt. The first mate did so and the Captain fought valiantly and warded off the pirates with his crew. Later on when they were all celebrating their victory then men said "captain, we understand why you wanted your sword, but why the red shirt?" The captain replied with "I wore the red shirt, in case I was wounded during the battle, no one would see the blood stains and be discouraged. You would all keep fighting as if nothing was wrong, because as far as you knew, there was nothing wrong." The men all thought this was an amazing thing for him to do and that even when they were about to be overrun, the captain had to keep up, even if it was an illusion, the optimism so that his crew would follow. The story goes on to be more inappropriate, but I'll end it there.
• He also went over briefly the ADKAR system. I even have to look it up because we didn't go in depth. But they go as follows:

1. Awareness
2. Desire
3. Knowledge
4. Ability 
5. Reinforcement

This man, was one of the best motivational leadership speakers I have ever seen. And I want anyone who reads this, to personally hold me accountable to bringing him to campus. I legitimately will not stop until this man comes to our campus. He literally changed my life, in one hour.


Side Note!
There was a Carnival at the end of the night and I have the record for BSU on the mechanical bull at staying on for 36 seconds!

Day two was exhausting, but so much fun. I cannot wait to go back to BSU and do all of these things that have changed my life, and hopefully will change yours.  

Lead with your Values not just your Letters

Had a great as well as early start to the day today, with our keynote speaker, Kim Novak. The title of the keynote was “Let’s REALLY Talk Values!”, Novak focused on how to explain your Risk Management Plan to the chapter without harping on the “don’t list”. Its about looking at your organizations and what your values look like, not just explaining that scholarship is getting above a 2.5 GPA, but it is having a overall GPA average higher than the All Women’s Average. It is about embracing our values that we are based on and how we implement them in today’s world. An interesting point that Novak made was that we should think about our founders and their vision for our communities and look at how we can live them, the words “what would the founders think”, should not be used to show disappointment but to appreciate the growth and development that our organizations have gone through and how they are constantly evolving and becoming better.

After the keynote speaker we were separated into NGLA Institute groups, I was in Group 1. There we discussed what each individual in the room’s goals were for their own organization. We were given workbooks that asked us to look at the reality of our organization, what we want our organization to be and what stands in our way. I cannot draw so I opted to list my thoughts in the charts. There were many common reoccurring themes throughout the room when we discussed our thoughts. One of them was apathy, and the tendency to lead with our letters not our values. It was interesting to hear about how other chapters and organizations dealt with lack of attendance and enthusiasm for events. Many said they were looking for way to rely less on a reward system and more on a community bond.  A great thought that a chapter from Pennsylvania uses is that they pair their sisters in randomized groups and each group as to attend certain events. They do this in hopes that the sisters in the randomized group will bring other sisters along with them to the meeting, creating a larger amount of sisters in attendance.

After the NGLA Institute groups we began our sessions, the three sessions I attended were; 10 Push ups: A sample of the renowned Recruitment Boot Camp system, Sorority Women Are Having a Global Impact on Girl’s Education, and Building Blocks: Creating a Transformative New Member Experience. I relly enjoyed all three of the sessions the 10 tips from the recruitment session are ones that I can carry back to my chapter. One idea I really took from the session is just to meet a friend and just continually hang out with them, introduce them to my sisters and through those interactions make them feel that they want to join my sorority, instead of focusing on telling people that I know nothing about to go out for recruitment.

The second session I attended was about Circles for Sisterhood, a philanthropic project that is trying to teach college educated women about the hardships impoverished women face because of their lack of education. It was so mind-blowing to think how there are people in the world today, who think of going to school as a luxury. Here is a link to the video that the speakers showed us about the movement, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muPsjiWhVQg.

My final and favorite session was about how to develop the new member process. As the New Member Educator of Delta Phi Epsilon, I was able to take a lot from the program. It was interesting to hear speaker, Dan Wrona, show what key points needed to be stressed in the new member process, such as the chapter’s operations and history and less on personal values and morals. He gave us a workbook with different charts for the new member educators to create lesson plans while building or reconfiguring the process. He also gave us 4 key points that needed to be centered on in the meetings and to build upon them they were; Build a Bond, Learn the Basic Information, Values in Descision Making and Operations and Leadership. I am looking forward to returning to school and meeting with my Vice President of Membership Development and Co-New Member Coordinator on how we can effectively use the building block formula into our process for next semester.

The day ended with dinner, a carnival with a t-shirt swap and the theme party: pajama jammy jam. It was a very successful day and I am looking forward to tomorrow as well as dreading my 7:15am alarm and the wait to starbucks.