Greek Living Leaders: Running the Supreme Business

Posted by MikePaine on July 22nd, 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 want to challenge that stereotype by concentrating on the professional development and self-improvement opportunity that's presented to Greek life members - especially those who hold leadership positions. Currently, I serve my one-hundred member sorority as chapter president and work with other officers to steadfastly keep up a well-balanced, structured, and involved organization.

Fraternities and sororities must operate as a business first, and a socialite second in order to be successful. I would like to point out τελευταίες τελευταίες ειδήσεις σήμερα  some key concepts that report 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 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 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

They're just a couple points that report how Greek organizations are ran as the best business, combining friendship with professionalism and offering members a good 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 full of constantly making decisions and weighing the consequences. I have learned to make fair decisions that benefit the higher good, while remaining unbiased in the process. I also answer to everyone's questions and concerns while problem solving when an unplanned event takes place. For example, we had a tiny crisis with flyers that have been made to advertise 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 email address with the typo included.

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

One of the very valuable traits that I'm still learning through my presidency, is ways to get comfortable with hard conversations. I work closely with our Director of Standards and Ethics to be sure 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 really is happening and what we are able to do to make sure it doesn't 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 am learning how to have these hard conversations while staying in control of myself and the conversation.

Greek life has so much more to provide compared to 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 could possibly offer life-changing collegiate experiences that can't be found elsewhere.