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.