Greek Life Leaders: Running the Supreme Organization

Posted by MikePaine on May 13th, 2019

Many may only see collegiate Greek life as a social group who hides their partying behind community service hours and charitable donations. However, I would like to challenge that stereotype by emphasizing the professional development and self-improvement opportunity that's presented to Greek life members - especially those that hold leadership positions. Currently, I serve my one-hundred member sorority as chapter president and assist other officers to steadfastly keep up a well-balanced, structured, and involved organization.

Fraternities and sororities must operate as a κορυφαίες ειδήσεις σήμερα company first, and a socialite second in order to be successful. I would really like to point out some key concepts that show the relation between Greek organizations and businesses.

Greek organizations:
• Divide officers into teams to focus on specific regions of the chapter
• Must operate on a strict budget, fueled solely from member's dues
• Must market themselves well in order to continue to recruit new members
• Have mission statements and values to put up their members to and gear their brand
• Must follow rules from, and are accountable to, their national headquarters
• Have insurance to cover their organization and its members, as well as many policies and procedures in place for holding events

These are just a couple of points that show how Greek organizations are ran as the greatest business, combining friendship with professionalism and offering members a great opportunity for private development.

As president, I see all sides of running a Greek organization and must help every officer no real matter what team her position is really a part of. My days are filled with constantly making decisions and weighing the consequences. I discovered to make fair decisions that benefit the greater 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. Like, we had a tiny crisis with flyers that have been made to advertise an event we were having. When they came in, we noticed the contact email on the flyers was spelled wrong. After some deliberation, we made a decision to utilize the flyers we had and made a fresh email address with the typo included.

A massive element of managing a successful organization is effective and professional communication. Our main forum of communication between officers and the advisory board is emailing. I discovered how exactly to properly send and react to emails in a professional manner. My communication skills have improved substantially since being a leader of my chapter. I have discovered to communicate concisely and format information in the utmost effective way. I have discovered providing information in bullet lists is the greatest way to obtain members to see messages fully. Our officers must hold team meetings and get reports of progress in the different areas on their team. Officers are responsible for organizing their very own meetings and taking minutes to record what was discussed. Greek organizations teach members to effectively and professionally communicate through emailing, holding meetings, and dealing with others.

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

Greek life has a lot more to provide than the social facet of the business, and can truly prepare young adults to join the professional world. Through developing members personally, and developing officers professionally, Greek organizations can offer life-changing collegiate experiences that can't be found elsewhere.