Wow, I can’t believe that NGLA is practically over! I have had such an
amazing weekend and have learned so much. Today was another awesome day start
to finish. I loved our opening session, called “Leadersh!t”. Our speaker Kristin
was funny, honest, and real. She talked about her experiences as a leader
during college, and the mistakes she made which caused others to not view her
as a true leader. She gave us some really helpful advice and tips, including
the three most important tools to use as a leader as well as “FBI” a
communication tool. She told us the three most important tools as a leader were
to have actionable values, accountability, and communication. Kristin
acknowledged the fact that many of us have values and talk about what we should
do and could do to represent them, but when it comes down to it we never truly
put them into our behavior and actions. She suggested instead of just writing
out goals or making statements such as “I want to live my values”; you need to
make actionable statements. For example, instead of saying, “I want to live my
values” you could be specific; “I want to promote our value of service and
raise $200 dollars for our Relay event this semester”. This is still living out
the values, but it puts a specific action into the statement and demonstrates
how we can achieve the goal. Her second tip on accountability was
straightforward and simple: you call me out on my shit, and I call you out on
yours. I think this is a statement that all college students, especially Greek
life members, can relate to. As members of such a tight knit community, with
the strong bonds of brotherhood and sisterhood, we know each other, our
potential, and standards, so we have the connection to be able to say “hey, you’re
not representing yourself in a positive light drinking like this and
advertising it” or things of that nature. I think it is important to have these
honest conversations with our members and other Greek members because we need
to hold ourselves to that higher standard that we preach about and need to act
accordingly. Her third tip was on communicating with your members. She gave us
an acronym to use as a template to formulate conversations with members. The
acronym is “FBI: feeling, behavior, impact”. She said that by formulating your
conversations this way we can better motivate, support, and communicate with
our members and demonstrate the behavior of a good leader. I think this will be
easy to utilize within our chapters and can help us become better
communicators.
One session I attended today was “Extending the
Possibilities: Does your Campus need a new NPC organization?”. I was super
eager to attend this session and to see whether or not BSU would be in a good
position to add to our Greek community. The session provided the reasons a
campus should extend, including we need another representative organization, we
need manageable chapter sizes for spatial reasons, the community could benefit
from new life on campus, if the campus population is rapidly growing, and if
the recruitment numbers (registered and placed) were rapidly growing. After
determining if your campus was ready to extend, they explained the beginning
process of extending, including have an extending committee walk around campus,
collecting data, voting, forming an extending committee, etc. What I found especially
important, besides extending for the right reasons was the role of Panhellenic
in helping the new colony be successful. Panhel needs to be beside the
organization from start to finish, ensuring that they receive the same support
and opportunities on campus as the other organizations. Some ways Panhel can
help support a new colony on campus includes letting them observe our
recruitment on campus, share successful fundraising ideas, contact information
of helpful staff, etc. I find this session super helpful because I hope that in
the near future we can bring another sorority on campus, and with this
information we can prepare our Panhellenic community to effectively bring more
Greek life to campus.
We ended the night on a great note, getting all fancy and
attending the Closing Banquet. We had some great food and got to witness the
acknowledgement of the various accomplishments of other organizations and
campuses. Events such as this, where we acknowledge all of the successes in our
communities is one of the many things which makes me so proud to be Greek. I do
hope that in the future the BSU Bears, including myself, will acknowledge the
amazing accomplishments we have had on our campus and submit ourselves for more
awards, because I truly believe we have one of the most amazing Greek
communities and have excelled in many of the award categories. With that said,
none of that would be possible without MB. Her support and passion for the
Greek community and our success is so motivating, and it truly demonstrates
what it means to be an amazing leader. As tonight comes to a close and we prepare
to head home in the morning, I am already feeling nostalgic about leaving. It
has been an amazing experience spending the weekend with so many other Greek
members who have the same goals and desires for their chapters, and getting to
work with them so closely this weekend, helping each other and working towards
that common purpose of growth and success is another reason that makes me so
proud to be in Greek life. As much fun as it has been, it has been a long,
exhausting weekend, so I am off to bed! Goodnight Bears!
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