Blog Post 6

“There is no limit to what can be achieved as long as you start with a solid foundation and an end goal.”

My personal vision statement has been dramatically altered as I have grown older and gained more life experience. I never had one until I came to college and it is something I use more as a motivator to keep myself achieving the best I can. It shows me where I want to go in life and keeps me doing my best to get there. My vision statement is simple, yet very effective for the kind of person I want to be.

I strongly believe every word of my statement. I have not yet hah the opportunity to serve as president in my chapter and this vision has helped me get myself ready to run for it and have a legitimate chance of actually becoming elected. This is why I am in this class, to help me prepare as much as I can for what lays ahead of me in my path and my statement convinced me to take this class to help me get there.

I think your personal vision statement is needed to be known by any leader who wants to be effective. If you think you can lead others, you should have something like this that internally leads you as a person to truly be a successful leader. Without this, how could you expect to lead anything if you can not even lead yourself to achieve a goal? Leadership is action, not position.

 

Blog Post 5

Visions, aims and values are things every major company has as part of their business model that they look to when things need to change or to check that their current direction follows in the paths of where they started from. In Greek life we use these in a very similar manner.

In my chapter we always look to these when we want to try something new or updating an outdated policy or committee. We use these to make sure that everything we do follows them not only to stay true to ourselves but to make sure we are not pulling away from the ideas that led to our re-chartering back in 2004. For example, last year we introduced a recruitment committee headed by 5 younger brothers who meet after ever recruitment event and have the power to hand out rolling bids rather than the old, much more time consuming way of meeting as a chapter and everyone voting on the new pledges. When this was presented many in the chapter grew concerned that this went against some of our founding ideas. After more discussion and review the committee was eventually approved and we have become a much better chapter for it.

When there are differences in our chapter with certain things they may want to change we always have to stay true to our values. When people get upset we pull up the mission statement and have everyone review it to see why something either can or cannot happen based upon that. Staying true to our values is how to keep alumni willing to support us with things like Casino Night and without remembering where we came from we can not move forward as a chapter.

Blog Post #4

Collaboration is the most important thing when it comes to being an effective leader. If you and all your colleagues are not on the same page about a certain idea or topic then it is much harder to actually achieve anything. If you do not collaborate then others who you may be trying to lead will do everything in their power to go against what you say or what idea you have if they do not agree with it. Individuals find it hard to collaborate because often times everyone thinks their answer or solution is the best possible one and are not willing to hear other ideas.

Part of what makes collaboration so difficult is this idea of compromise. In order for a leader to get anything done, people on both sides of the issue need to be willing to compromise a little for the greater good. Many find this hard to do. For a successful collaborative effort everyone needs to be willing to do this. Take this as an example; lets say you are the President and CEO of Ford Motor Company in Detroit and you want to make it company policy that all of your viechles must get 40 MPG or better. 11 of the 14 other board members agree with you but there are 3 who are completely against the idea due to the terrible gas mileage of popular cars like the Mustang and Escape. Due to the fact you can not force them to collaborate with you, everyone in the room has to make some compromises to make anything happen. Without all 14 votes you can not make something company policy, everyone must agree.

Diversity is very important when it comes to collaboration because it enables you to see many different view points on a given issue and should be a highly valued asset for any group or company. Competition is a huge motivator when it comes to collaboration. Take the CEO example I had earlier, if you said "Toyota is doing this now, we have to beat them." then the other board members would be more willing to come up with a collaborative effort in order to remain on top, everyone wants to be number one.

In my chapter our vision is something we always talk about when it comes to making any big decison. I think you can never move forward if you forget where you came from and what you stand for and I make it a big issue when we are trying to make drastic changes. In our chapter we always ask active memebers their opinions on a given issue so that we can get a gauge of how the chapter feels about something and can come up with minor changes that make the entire chapter happy.

Blog Post 3

Becoming a more effective citizen is something everyone should be trying to figure out how to do in their community or group. To me, I am becoming a better and more effective citizen because I am trying to pay more attention to what is going on around me. By that I mean I watch the daily news, read the paper and review the national news headlines. In my chapter I am not currently the President...hopefully soon! To become a better citizen within my chapter I have begun to attend all of the exec meetings held on Sundays before chapter so I can really get an understanding for not only what I am getting myself into but also what is really going on in my chapter.

When I was in High School there was so much of being a citizen that I had not thought of before. For example, I never thought of providing educational activited in schools or churches at no cost part of being a good citizen. I always thought it was more along the lines of participating in elections, watching the news to makw informed decisions and donating your time to organizations. As I have grown more mature these views have expanded into more areas of what the definition of a good citizen is.

Some members of my chapter lack in this area. There are some, who for whatever reason, just never come to chapter and then get mad when decisions they may not agree with are made. I have a simple answer for them; you should have come to chapter and then you would know what is going on. Another area is lack of attendance at events (both social and philanthropic). I would personally love to see these guys be at every event and be excited about all of them. For whatever reason this sometimes does not happen.

I think I can really help my chapter after reading this chapter about citizenship. It really opened my eyes to all kinds of new possibilities/avenues.