The Chapter President’s Guide to Starting the Year Off Right

The chaos of August is about to set in on college campuses across the land.  And you, Mr./Ms. Chapter President, are about to lead your troops for another few months.  Don’t make it a weak finish!  The following ideas can make the difference between your year being just another ordinary one or a truly impactful one.  It’s all about paying attention to the details and how you start a new semester. Here are some tips to help you start right:

1. Prepare a chapter retreat.

World-class athletes get themselves “into the zone” before they take the field.  That’s what a retreat can do for your chapter.  Retreats are not just all fun and games.  Good ones have a purpose, and I suggest the purpose be twofold: (1) assess the previous year and (2) set goals for the coming year.  Did you attend your organization’s convention or leadership conference this past summer?  Here is a good chance to summarize some of the best of what you learned.  See this post for more ideas to help you prepare a successful retreat. 

Power tip: Invite your advisors and campus staff to help facilitate this retreat.  They have the skillset to do this and would be honored to take part in something that’s so positive and forward-thinking. 


2. Get the team back together.

Huddle up with your officer team as soon as you can to review early plans for the year.  Likely there are some immediate needs in terms of finance and recruitment.  It’s also a way to make sure they are as invested in the remainder of this year as you are.   

Power tip: If you have the means, treat them to dinner (or coffee or ice cream) as part of this meeting.  Show them how much you value their commitment and leadership.


3. Visit with your Greek Advisor.

Schedule a time early on to reconnect with your Greek Advisor in person.  They remain your greatest supporter and advocate on campus.  Besides just catching up, use this meeting as a way to update him/her on how you assessed the previous year and the goals you have for the coming year (great way to pass along the retreat output if you had that first).  Be sure to thank the Greek advisor and ask him/her for any thoughts on how your chapter can perform strongly this year. Listen as much as you speak.


Power tip:  Bring along a small token of appreciation.  Maybe a food product from your hometown – nothing too elaborate or expensive.  It’s just a nice courtesy that your advisor will appreciate.  Also – be sure to compliment him/her on how tan and well-rested he/she looks!


4. Greet your brothers/sisters.

This one may be a challenge for the very large chapters, but it’s not impossible.  Can you stretch yourself to personally say hello and shake the hand of every single member within the first two weeks of returning to campus?  There is no greater show of leadership than personal interaction.  It trumps any speech you can give or any decision you make.  Perhaps tie this to an invitation to the first chapter meeting of the year, so that you can get some brothers/sisters reconnected who have drifted away.  It’s easy to dismiss an email or phone message.  It’s difficult to dismiss a personal greeting and invitation.  Plus, it shows that you care about the most important thing any chapter president should care about – the members. 

Power tip: If you have a chapter house, move in early so you can be there (and your other officers too) to help move in your brothers/sisters.  Plus you can say hello to the parents and make sure they know who you are.

5. Hug your house manager.

He/she may need it this time of year.

Power tip: Don't let it linger.

6. Meet your chapter advisor for coffee.

For many of the same reasons you want to connect with your Greek advisor, now’s a great time to build the relationship with your chapter advisor.  The reason I suggest coffee or some other way that feels less procedural is because it immediately makes it a more relational conversation.  It also shows maturity because that’s how many modern meetings are conducted between colleagues these days. 

Power tip: If you don’t already have a system in place, be sure to use this meeting as a way to establish a regular communication pattern with your advisor.  And then stay strict to that – another sign of leadership maturity (don’t let your advisor ever wonder if you’ve vanished).

7. Prepare extra hard for the first chapter meeting.

Many times, this first meeting of the semester is the one of the most well-attended.  Spend time preparing so that it comes off as professional, efficient, and effective.  Don’t shy away from a little humor and fun in this meeting as well.  If you want members to come back, they need to see value to the experience. 

Power tip: Start the meeting with an open forum for members to share the best thing that happened to them over the summer.  Don’t be too cautious with what’s shared and how – let the personality of the group take over.  You’re likely to find laughs and applause as a result.

Best wishes to a great start to the year, and thank you for accepting the role of chapter president.  If you spend the time to do those things above, and be rigorous in your preparation and planning, then you will find yourself more relaxed and able to enjoy this experience.  Ready, set, go!

 

The Gift of Appreciative Feedback

Need help finding a gift this season for that friend, or colleague, or student, or family member? I invite you to consider a very inexpensive, simple, and life-changing gift.

The gift of appreciative feedback.

When I was starting out as an advisor to college and youth student groups, I thought that providing feedback meant only the critical stuff. And thus, I avoided it because I never felt comfortable giving constructive criticism. I’m still not comfortable with it, but I’m better at it now after years of practice. To me, it’s still the worst part of advising (albeit very important).

What I didn’t realize at the time was that developmental feedback had a cousin…a much more friendly cousin that fell right into my strengths zone and brought a whole lot of joy to the advising experience.

Appreciative feedback.

Appreciative feedback is that feedback which identifies a behavior that is positive, notices it, comments on it, helps add meaning to it, and thereby amplifies it more loudly than it would have otherwise been.

To me, it’s what makes advising fun. It’s the good stuff, man. It’s the chance to shine a light and watch a chin rise, or a chest puff, or a small grin of pride on the face of a young learner.

And we do not do it enough.
 
David Rock, author of Quiet Leadership: Help People Think Better-Don’t Tell Them What to Do! (2006) states that people tend to receive positive feedback only a few minutes out of every year, versus thousands of hours of negative feedback.

But wait, you might be thinking, I’m a positive person! I tell people good things all the time! That may be true, but note that true appreciative feedback goes much deeper than “good job” or “I’m proud of you.”

Real appreciative feedback is not just a compliment. It is precise and personal. And, it should focus on behaviors and qualities you want to see more of. 

Knowing what those specific qualities are is the first step. For example, one quality we often want to see more of is hard work. As important as that is, it’s still too vague. What do we mean by hard work? You will need to answer for yourself, but if I’m advising a group of students it might include things like:

• Tenacity: Can a student work through a setback or a challenge?
• Determination: In a given task, does a student stay focused and not give up on the goal?
• Optimism: Is there a glimmer in their eye, even when times are tough or the road is long?

Once you have identified some of these specific behaviors, then you can start looking for them. And that’s when being an advisor in the room becomes a whole lot less boring, and much more intentional. Your job is not to simply be present, but to scan the room searching for behaviors that deserve appreciate feedback.

According to authors Judith Wilson and Michelle Gislason, who wrote Coaching Skills for Nonprofit Managers and Leaders (2010), appreciative feedback, if done well, has three primary elements:

1. Observation: Making an observation of a positive action, behavior, or demonstrated quality.
2. Acknowledgment: Sharing that observation using the facts of what you saw.
3. Appreciation: Helping to give meaning to the action or behavior by sharing what it means to you or the impact it can have.

For example, let’s say you show up to the weekly chapter meeting, and you observe the President taking time before the meeting starts to move throughout the room, shake hands with the members and thank them individually for being there. (Observation)

After the meeting, you pull the President aside and say “I noticed that you were greeting people before the meeting and taking extra time to welcome them.” (Acknowledgment)

You continue by saying, “I really enjoyed seeing that because I feel that it set a very positive tone for the meeting and the members who took the time to come felt valued and appreciated. This is impactful because it might mean some of these members now understand the importance of being here and will make greater efforts to never miss a meeting. Plus, they likely feel more connected and engaged to the chapter overall.” (Appreciation)

Boom. Simple. And advising magic.

Author Michael Brandwein also has a good framing of this, and he calls it (1) Describe it, (2) Label it, and (3) Praise it. He is also very fond of acronyms and advocates for the L.A.S.E.R.B.E.A.M. technique. Which stands for: Look for Any Signs of Excellent behavior; then: Respond to that Behavior to Educate And Motivate.

Some things to consider:

• Sincerity is essential, and fake or throw-away compliments can be smelled a mile away.
• Students are a different levels of growth at all times, and so what would be meaningful appreciative feedback for one might be too simplistic for another.
• During meetings, or activities, and whenever a group of students is together, I challenge myself to find at least 3 students who are deserving of appreciative feedback that day. I try to find different students each time, but some repeat-recipients are inevitable.
• While appreciative feedback is best delivered personally and individually, it’s not always bad for others to overhear, since it helps to build awareness of what behaviors are rewarded.
• On occasion I will deliver appreciative feedback in public to more greatly amplify the message and if I feel the student would benefit from the spotlight of recognition.

Advisors, let’s all commit to making this next year one in which we work harder at appreciative feedback than ever before. I think we’ll be amazed at the results, and also amazed at how much more worthwhile our jobs become.

Let’s give a gift that’s irreplaceable, the gift of appreciative feedback.

Women Are Owning Student Leadership

In student leadership, women are stepping forward and men are fading into the background.

 
My middle son, a few years ago, was a crazy fan of the Wiggles.  He knew all of the words to the songs and all of the moves to the dances.  I learned to somewhat accept the Wiggles because…well…they weren't Barney.


And you’ve got to respect these Aussies.  According to their Wikipedia page, The Wiggles have earned several Platinum, Double Platinum and Multi-Platinum records, as well as sold 23 million DVDs and 7 million CDs, and have performed, on average, to one million people per year.

For years, the Wiggles were four men: Anthony, Greg, Jeff, and Murray.  They retired and were replaced by some new members. My youngest son stumbled upon the new Wiggles performing their new songs on YouTube, and I was a little stunned.  They now have a female member!  And she actually seems to be the leader.  This is great – and she’s great – but it’s definitely a shift for the longstanding group. 

I thought about this for a moment, and it struck me that this is sort of like what is happening in the world of student leadership.  The only way it might be even more relevant to our shifting landscape is if the Wiggles re-booted with all women instead of one.

Not only is leadership more accessible to women in higher education today, on most campuses, they are OWNING it.  This isn’t really that new of an observation or occurrence.  However, what is making it more apparent isn’t the continued emergence of women, but rather the shrinking of men.  Men dominated the leadership landscape for a long time, but once women showed up for the party, it seems they went and hid in the basement.  

Before I am accused of not celebrating women’s rise in this regard, I see this is as a fabulous achievement in our society.  When women are involved, it creates a better overall leadership dynamic.  However, in solving one problem, have we created a new one?  In terms of student leadership, we blew right past that 50-50 gender equality statistic and landed somewhere closer to 70-30 in favor of women.  And, it seems like that ratio isn’t going to balance anytime soon.  Are we heading from one extreme to the other?

It’s not just college either.  I used to work with one of the largest and most prominent high school organizations – Key Club – and I noticed it there as well.

The problem is magnified even more when you take into account leadership drive and ability.  When I worked at the NIC and conducted UIFI or IMPACT sessions, it was clear who was in charge.  The Panhellenic Councils were the movers and shakers, the pace-setters, and the power players.  Many of the Interfraternity Councils were struggling to keep up.  Too many of the IFCs would have served their members better to just dissolve and let the Panhellenic Councils take over their governance. 

I’m not saying that in all cases the Panhellenics were effective – just stronger.  

Recently, I had to chance to address almost 1000 new members at a large university. As the room filled, I took note of what is now an expected reality: the men sat in the back, spread out and slouching. The women were at the front, sitting straight and ready to learn. The men wanted to be ignored and unseen, and they were.

While the overall societal affects haven’t been felt as strongly yet (in many industries, men still dominate the leadership), it’s coming.  More women are going to college, more women are succeeding in college, and more women are taking hold of leadership opportunities in college.  Men are being left in the dust.


How have we arrived at this problem of slacker men being run over by uber-achieving women?  Here are my guesses:

Leadership is becoming more relationship-oriented.  Whereas in our fathers’ time, leadership involved power, hierarchy, and tough-minded authority (think Mad Men's Don Draper), today’s conventional wisdom around leadership is that good ones make a solid human connection with the members of their team.  The leader of today listens well, understands emotion, involves others in decision-making, and motivates through recognition and support.  This is more natural turf for women.

The rewards have changed.  Competitiveness, personal ambition, and high achievement used to be the things that set students apart from each other in a positive way.  Men thrive when these things are valued, and always have.  So do many women.  In seems that nowadays, these values are not only de-emphasized, but viewed negatively.  Someone with these values is seen as egotistical.  The values that tend to be rewarded now are cooperation, humility, and selflessness.  Again, men are capable of succeeding with these values but they are more natural for women. 

We expect less from men.  In my current hometown, the local men’s suit store went out of business.  I assume that’s happening in a lot of places because men just don’t dress up like they once did.  This is a minor, but telling point about the state of men today.  They’re not expected to carry themselves like they once did.  When I walk on campuses today, the men look and dress like they were just yanked out of an underground bunker by a Navy SEAL team.  They drift slowly to class, staring at their cell phone, while groups of women blow past them talking with each other about how solve world hunger, or something like that.  Our society is just tolerating the slacker man right now.  It’s cute.  It’s funny.  But, it’s troubling.

It’s academic.  According to the U.S. Department of Education in Fall 2017, women comprised more than 56 percent of students on campuses nationwide. Some 2.2 million fewer men than women enrolled in college that year.  By 2026, the department estimates, 57 percent of college students will be women. Studies have also shown that women are doing better academically than men while in college.  So, if women are succeeding in the classroom, they are likely to succeed in other places as well.

It’s easier for advisors to work with women. Simply put, women are more reliable
than men, tend to listen and work with adult advisors better, and are more coachable. Again, it’s about their strengths in building relationships. Because of this, they may get increased opportunities and support in their leadership efforts.
 
There are many other factors as well. For example, some argue that our K-12 education system is designed more for female learners. Also, the video game factor is real, and shouldn’t be dismissed. Media portrayals of young men certainly favor the slacker lifestyle. It's a multi-faceted issue.  
As I’m apt to do, I see fraternity as a primary solution.  There are few men's-only experiences left in our world today, and if handled correctly, fraternities can become supportive environments that rebuild men's leadership potential.  

We can learn a lot from sororities.  A sorority is still a place where a less-confident, less-skilled, and less-motivated young lady can go and emerge four years later as a savvy, confident, and inspired woman.  Can we say that for your fraternity today?  Does your fraternity take a slacker and make him a man who is ready to take on the world?  Or is it actually the reverse?  

It starts with making leadership development a signature priority for your organization.  There are many criteria by which to measure your fraternity’s success, but one of the biggest should be how many capable leaders you graduate each year.  The answer is not easy, but it’s simple: we need to raise expectations for how men in our organization engage both inside and outside the fraternity.

We can reclaim the confidence and swagger that made us compelling leaders before, and match those qualities with the relational leadership skills that the world now expects.   We can still command a room, but yet find depth in conversations.  We can bring a spark of ambition along with an ounce of humility.  And yes IFC men, we can also bring an occasional (and much needed) dose of calm flexibility to a Panhellenic world that can get too heavily controlled and structured.  This is what balance in the leadership universe looks like. 

In a world where we keep asking about the relevance of fraternities, we have yet another answer: to reverse the tide of diminishing men and turn them instead into eager, committed, and strong partners with women in leading our world forward.  

It’s a good thing that women have emerged as leaders and are here to stay.  However, that doesn’t mean that men need to vanish.   Gentlemen, the women around us have issued a challenge.  They are standing in front singing their hearts out.  What are we going to do?

Four Quotes That Every Student Leader Should Memorize

Most leadership enthusiasts, like myself, love quotes.  We pull them into presentations, articles, and day-to-day conversations.  Quotes are satisfyingly small nuggets of timeless wisdom.  They can speak volumes in their brevity.  I’ve been reviewing some of my favorite quotes recently, and rediscovered four that I think could be considered essential for any organizational leader to understand.

Jeff Cufaude introduced me to this quote over a decade ago.  It’s fairly conventional wisdom now that the best leaders are not the ones who rely on the “do it or else” technique.  We just don’t have the tolerance for strict authority in our leaders anymore.  Instead, we want to be driven towards achievement by the understanding that our work matters, and that we are not the only ones who want the group to succeed.  When a group of individuals unite around shared purpose and objectives, it is a group that will find a way to win.  When that doesn’t exist – when we don’t share a common purpose with our teammates – then what devices are left to the leader?  As Dee Hock states, “command and control.”  A leader who tries to command their group to perform, or control their activities, is one that has lost them.  So, when you return to campus this fall, ask yourself: how can I ensure that our members understand and believe in the mission we’re trying to achieve?  By reaching that point, your team will almost drive itself.

One idea is to take the first meeting of the year, or even better, find a time for a retreat, and do nothing more than review the mission and purpose of your organization.  Ask members to reflect on how they can personally support that purpose, and what needs to happen collectively in order for the purpose to be realized more fully this year.  Every group needs to get re-centered now and then, and the start of a new year feels like the right time to do it.

Organizational culture is a powerful thing.  Peter Drucker found a way to personify it as perhaps the strongest thing living within an organization.  You can spend months or years creating visions and plans, but your success will be dependent on the capability of the culture to accept and implement those ideas.  You may wish for your organization to become the strongest and best on campus.  Yet, your culture may be one that rewards and encourages mediocrity.  You may wish for your members to have the highest GPA on campus.  Yet, your culture may downplay academics in favor of parties and alcohol.

So how do you change or affect culture?  It’s the tallest task leaders can face.  The most effective way is to remove the cancerous cells.  To cut out those who most negatively influence the culture you are trying to build.  At the very least, stop providing those individuals with forums and outlets by which to be so influential.  For example, don’t take a slacker and make him new member educator. 

If you are writing goals and plans for your organization (good) then add a column entitled “culture.”  Reflect on what kind of culture you have right now – is it one that takes a person and lifts them up, or tears them down?  Does it seek opportunities for the organization to be its best, or to be its worst?  Expect that what you write in that column will need to be addressed first.

This quote is probably the most succinct explanation of contemporary leadership that I could find.  Keep in mind, as you take this journey of leadership, that you will be remembered more for who you were than what you did.  That’s not to minimize the expectation that all leaders and organizations are forward-moving and achievement-oriented.  However, the best leaders understand that without attention and care for others, lasting achievement isn’t truly possible.  You can be the kind of leader that very few people experience in their lives – the one that makes them want to be better and want to do more. 

So, take the extra time to provide feedback to someone that deserves to hear how great they’re doing.  Take the even more time to provide feedback to someone who’s getting off course.  And take the most time to simply sit and listen to someone else, for that simple act can be the most significant of all.

The essential question is, when you engage with those you lead, how do you make them feel?

Organizations of all shapes and sizes are notorious for getting caught up in things that just don’t really matter.  Whether it’s personal drama, minutia, or small ideas, we are all susceptible to be being distracted away from the big stuff.  What is the big stuff?  Mission.  Vision.  Values.  As a leader, you will be challenged to keep this front and center, and not get too caught up in T-shirt colors, gossip, and colossal wastes of time.  

You may want to start this year with an audit of how your organization spends its time and energy.  Are you focused on the right things?  As I’ve written about before, if historians were to judge this period in your organization’s history, would they give you high marks for focusing on significant issues?  Imagine you were putting items on a scale.  Which item would weigh more (meaning it’s a greater focus)?  And, is that the way it should be?  For example, what would the balancing scale read for:

New Member Education vs. Greek Week
Initiation vs. Annual theme party
Service Projects vs. Formals
Recruitment vs. Intramurals

It’s not that you can’t or shouldn’t have small things (e.g., intramurals) as part of your fraternity experience.  That’s the fun stuff that can fill in the gaps.  But the big ticket items should never suffer because of those, or ever take a back seat.  

So, to summarize the lessons that these famous quotes provide, focus on things that matter such as the people you lead and the shared purpose that unites the entire organization.  Doing so will create a culture that embraces excellence.  That sounds like a great start to the year. 

Please feel free to share your favorite quotes below.  What words of wisdom drive you and your leadership experience?