Final Day of Sessions.

Now yesterday was intense, though today may have given it a run for it's money. This morning started with a trip to Dunkin Donuts, where as Nick and I were standing waiting for our breakfasts, a man came up to us and asked why we were so well dressed for a morning like this; and asked what company we worked for. We then told him that we were actually representing greek life at a conference, and he was so taken aback. He wished us to have a great time at our conference and to keep working toward what we are doing. It's good to see that Kevin was able to see through the stereotype of "oh you're in a frat, you must get hammered all the time", and see the "oh, you guys are fraternity men, you must be very fine, upstanding citizens, keep on being productive."

Once back on site, we started today off with our keynote speaker, Ginny Carroll. Her speech today was more about the aspects of greek life that we all know; our ritual, what that means to us and where that is going.

Marc Wayshak and I after I broke the board.

My first session today was Marc Wayshak's Outstanding Leadership in an Ever Changing World seminar. When he introduced himself, I found out that we have a few commonalities, such as local places we both frequent. He then began talking about his experience in sky diving with the 300 ways to die skydiving video and his jumper crazy Jason.

He stepped out of his comfort zone to go skydive, and that is definitely the first step. I quote Marc in saying "people usually don't take those first few steps, unwilling to step out of your comfort zone". We were then introduced to the '6 year old mindset', because 6 year olds are absolutely fearless. Two forms of the model are strategy: find someone you can emulate and copy the technique of, and mindset: as there is not one skill you can't learn from a book.



My parnter and I after
 breaking our boards

 The three mindsets that we were told of were of the Three P's, those of which being: Pay no attention to the negative voices, Picture yourself breaking through, and Persist absoluetly. To demonstrate that, he taught us how to break a board with our hand. That said, he had us write what our inFEARation was on the front of it. For example, mine is fear that I won't accomplish my goal of writing the entirety of my screenplay. I broke through my board first try. (picture left)

One of the quotes that really stood out to me in his session was "The most successful people fail the most." It's a concept that many people don't tend to realize, is that success only comes from failure. Very rarely does someone succeed at doing something the very first time.

The next session I attended was Grow a Backbone, by our keynote speaker Ginny Carroll, and we had two 'math' problems. Starting out the equation: competence+confidence=influence, and one equation I'll get to later. We defined qualities that make a positive and negative qualities in leaders.

We then went over the tips to build influence, which list as: get eyes wise, associate on purpose, be a quick study, ask good questions, be open to new insights, build your network, be present, know your values and mind your manners.

Some of these are more easy to recognize than others, like knowing your values, be a quick study, ask good questions and minding your manners, though just looking at the list I had no idea about what get eyes wide meant. It actually means to know the significance of the eye, look for sparklers and not dim bulbs, and beware of dishonest intentions. Association on purpose is to hang around people you learn from, and beware of CAVES or Creeping meatballs. A CAVE is a citizen against virtually everyone. Being present means more than just being at meetings, or being physically there. Study your demeanor, which is essentially everything you say without opening your mouth, pay attention, become a jotter and use meetings as a means of discovery.

We also sharpened our BS detectors by learning about baseline behavior. Learn to ask more toward minute details to weed out people who are fudging the truth a bit, but also offer an out and make it easier to get that person to tell you the truth. The second 'math' equation we were given was that of influence. Competence+confidence=purposeful risk.

The association lunch we had paired us with our brothers from WPI. Tony and Anthony were both at our regional conference, and Frank was one of the brothers there for our initiation, so it was great seeing the three of them again.

The choice of three sessions had a strong set of support at the presentation by Justin Jones-Fasu, who I went to a program of the day before. Be an ACTion Hero: The ACTions of Super Successful Student Leaders was where me and a handful of others of our delegation were. Justin knows how to put on a show, I will say that right now. He had a dramatic dance session detailing how had he truly loved someone who broke up with them he'd dance their affection back by his incredible moves at the song No Air. He explained the term HERO. H is for humbleness, and to know when to ask for help, and that it's alright to admit mistakes. There needs to be an ability to show an open environment, and not to be afraid to evaluate yourself and be able to admit flaws.

You need to be empowering, though you need to realize that you never want to have the best year/day/program/etc ever, because that can hamstring your organization with too high of expectations. You need to be able to empower others to be able to replicate what you are doing, and to be able to do succession planning and not make it so you are focusing only on you, know that you need to plan for the future.

The R is to be relational. You need to know who's who in your organization and know multiple strengths and weaknesses. Praise is a weird topic because some people love to be outwardly awarded by their accomplishments, while other people don't like making a big deal out of it.We were also told of the two key questions to ask, which are: Why did you originally join?, and what does a successful experience look like?

The O is optimism, You need to be realistic, but you don't need to be a downer. Optimism is more or less a simple topic.

That said, he then introduced us to his friend Jordan and his wife Danielle. Jordan is one of Justin's best friends, and showed us a picture of Justin and his wife, Jordan and Danielle, and another couple. Jordan and Danielle had been married for 9 months, and two weeks after the photo we saw, he told us that she was diagnosed with a very malignant form of cancer and she was given 4 months to live. She wasn't even 30. Her first response was "It's a win win situation, either I'll get better or I'll be in heaven.' Coming from someone who has lost people to cancer in the past I know how painful it is for cancer to take a loved one away from us. On top of that past quote, there was another quote that really stuck with me. "There are people who would love to have our bad days". How often do we complain about the internet being too slow, or not having anything fun to do? I know I complain about nearly everything, but that's something I want to change.

The final actual session I went to was Nathan Mitchell's Getting What You Want by Doing What Others Want, and we determined the difference between leadership and self leadership as a leader directs the group by actually guiding or directing, and they deal with being accountable. Self leadership is about knowing who you are and what you can do and youre ability to manage your communication, emotion and behavior to get there. The difference between the two is leadership is accountability, and self leadership is the accountability of yourself. Within Self leadership there is a list that we learned:
1-decide excatly what you want
2-write in detail and set a deadline
3-target initial knowledge, skills, and ability to achieve the goal
4-determine obstacles to overcome and reach your goal
5-identify those who can help you
6-detailed plan broken down by activity and organized by priority and sequence
7-immediately take action
8-evaluate results and if necessary change your approach.

The power of intention starts with getting clear about something you want then write it down, then get someone to keep you accountable to that goal, and take action everyday toward it as if it's impossible to truly fail.

With our time at NGLA coming to a close, I just want to thank everyone for a great conference, and I look forward to hopefully seeing some of these speakers again on our campuses, or at least keeping contact with them.

-In the words of Mahatma Ghandi, We must be the change we wish to see in the world,
DWYSYWD
Do what you say you will do, or Don't waiver, you start yourself with drive.

-Dan Eveline