Greek Living Leaders: Working the Ultimate Business

Posted by MikePaine on December 3rd, 2018

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

Fraternities and sororities must operate as a company first, and a socialite second to be able to be successful. I want to point out some key concepts that report the relation between Greek organizations and businesses.

Greek organizations:
• Divide officers into teams to focus on specific areas 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 hold 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 are just a few points that report how Greek organizations are ran as the greatest 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 just a part of. My days are filled up with constantly τα τελευταία νέα των ειδήσεων σήμερα making decisions and weighing the consequences. I discovered to make fair decisions that benefit the more 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 have been made to promote 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 use the flyers we had and made a brand new current email address with the typo included.

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

One of the very most valuable traits that I'm still learning through my presidency, is how to get more comfortable with hard conversations. I work closely with this Director of Standards and Ethics to ensure our members are holding themselves to the high ideals and values. When someone is falling behind, it is our job to own conversations together about why this is happening and what we can do to be sure it doesn't 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'm understanding how to have these hard conversations while staying in control of myself and the conversation.

Greek life has so much more to offer than the social facet of the organization, and can truly prepare teenagers to join the professional world. Through developing members personally, and developing officers professionally, Greek organizations could offer life-changing collegiate experiences that can't be found elsewhere.