Greek Life Leaders: Working the Final Organization

 

Fraternities and sororities must operate as a small business first, and a socialite second in order to be successful. I want to point out some key concepts that show the relation between Greek organizations and businesses.

 

Greek organizations: 

• Divide officers into teams to work with specific aspects of the chapter 

• Must operate on a strict budget, fueled solely from member's dues 

• Must market themselves well to be able to continue to recruit new members 

• Have mission statements and values to carry their members to and gear their brand 

• Must follow rules from, and report to, their national headquarters 

• Have insurance to cover their organization and its members, in addition to many policies and procedures in area for holding events

 

They're just a few points that show how Greek organizations are ran as the best business, combining friendship with professionalism and offering members a great opportunity for personal development.

 

As president, I see all sides of running a Greek organization and must help every officer no matter what team her position is really a part of. My days are filled with constantly making decisions and weighing the consequences. I have discovered to create fair decisions that benefit the higher good, while remaining unbiased in the process. I also reply to everyone's questions and concerns while problem solving when an unplanned event takes place. As an example, we had a small crisis with flyers that were made to market an event we were having. Once they came in, we noticed the contact email on the flyers was spelled wrong. After some deliberation, we chose to utilize the flyers we'd and made a new email address with the typo included.

 

An enormous section of running a successful organization is beneficial and professional communication. Our main forum of communication between officers and the advisory board is emailing. I discovered just how to properly send and respond to emails in a specialist manner. My communication skills have improved substantially since being fully a leader of my chapter. I have discovered to communicate concisely and format information in the most effective way. I have discovered providing information in bullet lists is the best way to get members to read messages fully. Our officers must hold team meetings and get reports of progress in the various areas on the team. Officers are accountable for organizing their own meetings and taking minutes to record what was discussed. Greek organizations teach members to effectively and professionally communicate through emailing, holding meetings, and working with others.

 

One of the very most valuable traits that I'm still learning through my presidency, is getting confident with hard conversations. I work closely with your Director of Standards and Ethics to make sure our members are holding themselves to the high ideals and values. If someone is falling behind, it is our job to own conversations together about why that is happening and what we can do to make sure it generally does not happen again. These tough conversations become even tougher when remembering that the members of our chapter are also our friends and sisters. As a leader of a Greek organization, I am learning how to have these hard conversations while residing in control of myself and the conversation.