Greek Life Leaders: Working the Ultimate Business

Posted by MikePaine on June 17th, 2019

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

Fraternities and sororities must operate as a company first, and a socialite second in order to be successful. I would like to point κορυφαίες ειδήσεις σήμερα 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 on 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, along with many policies and procedures in place for holding events

They 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 good opportunity for private development.

As president, I see all sides of owning a Greek organization and must help every officer no matter what team her position is a part of. My days are filled with constantly making decisions and weighing the consequences. I have discovered to make fair decisions that benefit the more good, while remaining unbiased in the process. I also response to everyone's questions and concerns while problem solving when an unplanned event takes place. For 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 utilize the flyers we had and made a brand new current email address with the typo included.

A massive part of managing a successful organization is effective and professional communication. Our main forum of communication between officers and the advisory board is emailing. I have discovered just how to properly send and respond 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 most truly effective way. I have discovered providing information in bullet lists is the better way to get members to see messages fully. All of our officers must hold team meetings and get reports of progress in the various areas on the team. Officers are responsible for organizing their particular 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 getting comfortable with hard conversations. I work closely with this Director of Standards and Ethics to ensure our members are holding themselves to your high ideals and values. If someone is falling behind, it is our job to own conversations using them about why this really is happening and what we are able to do to ensure 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 understanding how to have these hard conversations while staying in control of myself and the conversation.

Greek life has a lot more to offer than the social facet of the business, and can truly prepare teenagers to become listed on the professional world. Through developing members personally, and developing officers professionally, Greek organizations could possibly offer life-changing collegiate experiences that can't be found elsewhere.