The Hungry Student Leader Blog
I like answering the phone at my office, and I do it a lot. It gives me a valuable opportunity to interact with our speakers, facilitators, vendors and customers that I might not otherwise have.
People always seem surprised when I answer the phone. “What are you doing answering the phones?” they ask, as if we’re some multi-national corporation with a bank of receptionists. “We have 10 people here,” I say. “Everyone answers the phone.”
And then I ask them how they are and how things have been going. I share a little bit of what I’m working on. I ask if my staff is serving their needs and if there is anything else we could be doing. By answering the phone, I connect with folks who wrongly feel I’m too busy to talk to them.
As a student leader, do you look too busy to approach?
You’re always running from meeting to meeting. You are constantly texting on your phone, replying to emails and checking websites. You hang in the Student Activities Office for hours on end inviting the madness of that space to overtake you. You have endless to-do lists, meetings, and errands.
What if you’re missing out on valuable informal interaction time with your members or constituents because you simply look too busy? Are you missing out?
How are members supposed to interact with you and share thoughts? Should they seek you out at office hours (most won’t), or should they corner you at a meeting? Do they hope they’ll see you at a party this weekend so they can let you know how they feel about those bylaw changes?
I know, it’s weird. You want to look busy, because that makes you look valuable as a student leader. But, looking too busy can turn people away from you.
Part of being an effective leader is making yourself available to your members or constituents. That isn’t possible if you exude an energy that scares people away. Making yourself available to people means being proactive and making choices that make you LOOK AVAILABLE.
• Put your phone away when walking across campus. If you’re making more “i-contact” (iPad, iPhone) than “eye contact,” start turning the electronic leashes off.
• Eat your food in the Student Center food court, not in your office or on the run.
• Don’t always move with your normal pack of friends. Go solo more often.
• Go to events sponsored by other organizations and strike up conversations with people you don’t know very well.
• When you are going to be hanging out somewhere casually, post it as your Facebook status with a warm invite for people to find you.
• Go to the places where your members hang out: the gym, the coffee shop, whatever.
• Make a point to stop talking business so often. Ask people how they are doing.
• Ask your advisor or fellow leaders to use a code word when you’re being too intense. Sometimes, you need to be reminded to chill a little.
If you are like most student leaders, you feel stretched thin and tired a lot of the time. You probably look like it, also. What message does that visual send to your members?
“Ah, he’s busy, I don’t want to bother him.”
If you feel like you are always on, then you have to manually reach for the “off” switch. It’s amazing when you consciously disengage from the madness how much more connected you can become.
Posted in Communication, Motivation, People on May 15th, 2012 | 1 Comment »
I was speaking to a fraternity chapter recruitment officer last night. I asked him how recruitment was going for the Fall.
“It’s going great. We’ve got our dates set for our events, and we’re waiting on the Greek Advisor to give us the green light so we can put the dates on our Facebook page,” he said.
“Wonderful,” I replied. “But how is actual RECRUITMENT going?”
He had no idea what I was talking about.
Sometimes I wonder, should we just change the titles of these positions? Instead of Vice President for Recruitment, we should just call these folks Vice President of Party Planning? All their energy and creative thought goes into tshirts, food, and the mechanics of passing potential new members around a room.
Where is the actual work. You know, like developing lists, making initial contacts, setting goals, and putting yourself and your organization effectively in front of people? Even if you have a formal recruitment model, why aren’t you working the phones and email so that the right people sign up for the process with your organization already in mind?
Oh, wait… I’m sorry… there are napkins to order.
If you’re in a fraternity or sorority and your recruitment officer has no report right now, fire them. And if the officer’s only report is about the awesome Monday Night Football event we’re going to have in September, then perhaps it’s time for your chapter to start thinking more about sales than party planning.
Getting the very best men and women into your fraternity and sorority community is no longer a passive pursuit. You can’t simply hope to pull in some quality from whatever signs up. To be truly competitive among the myriad of campus leadership opportunities available to new students today, you have to bring a bit more to the table than songs, cheers and matching t-shirts. If that’s the best you bring, that’s the best you’ll get.
You should be making lists right now. Who’s younger brother or sister (or neighbor, or former football teammate, or high school student government president) is coming to your school in the Fall? Reach out on Facebook. Have a phone conversation. Plan a time to get together over the summer. Do the frickin’ work!
“But we are prohibited from communicating with potential new members before formal recruitment starts!” If that’s true, then your community’s rules are killing your marketing potential and should be changed immediately. Any community that would prohibit its member organizations from doing everything possible to ensure their survival with the best possible members is a community that has lost sight of its purpose.
I’m not a recruitment specialist. I have two of those on my staff, and they are amazing. (Visit www.recruitordie.com to learn more. They also offer coaching, if you’re reading this and realizing you need it.) But it seems to me that now is the perfect time to lay some groundwork for an awesome Fall recruitment. As the parent of a high school senior, I can tell you that there is lots of excitement about the transition to college right now. Why would you wait until they actually show up on campus to introduce your organization to them?
If your chief recruitment officer is currently worried about the fonts on posters, then best of luck to you.
Posted in Greeks, Membership, Recruitment on April 19th, 2012 | 13 Comments »
Back in 1989, I helped charter a new chapter of my fraternity at a small college in Virginia. I had visited the colony a number of times prior to their chartering, so they knew and trusted me. When I arrived the day before our initiation rituals, they were very nervous.
Don’t worry about the national written or oral exams, I said. You’ll do fine.
We’re not worried about any of that, the president replied. Everyone is completely freaked out about the ritual.
Seems a brother from another chapter thought it would be hilarious to tell them that they should plan for some pain and punishment as part of the ritual ceremony. There would likely be animals, and repulsive smells that would make them throw up. They should plan to be humiliated and screamed at. And, since that matches every uneducated image of initiation in movies and television, they believed him without question.
They were just looking forward to it being over. They had even lost a few members in the preceding days who refused to take part in such a thing.
I’m all for a little mystery leading up to ritual, but I’m a fan of the positive kind. A new initiate should enter into lifetime membership excited, not afraid. For most groups, your ritual is secret, but the nature of it is not.
This is what I told the men…
Our ritual is a ceremony – a dramatic play of sorts, written by young men more than a century ago. It’s a little trippy, and there are costumes. You’ve probably never been part of something like this, because our society doesn’t do a lot of ritual stuff like it did 100 years ago. You won’t understand all of it as you’re going through it. Just listen and enjoy it. You’ll get to read it, study it, and understand it later. Try to imagine men from 100 years ago sharing this with you, because that’s what it is – a gift from our founders. They worked very hard to make it a ritualistic representation of the most closely held values of our fraternity, and although it’s had a few small changes along its journey to you, it’s the same ritual that every member of our fraternity has shared. That’s what makes it so special. You shouldn’t be afraid, you should be excited. Take it in. This gift to you is a culmination of your efforts and it’s an investment in the brother you’ve become to us. It’s given to you so that you may pass it along to others.
The brother who made them afraid did a disservice to the men. He did a disservice to our fraternity. He crapped all over the beauty of our ritual.
More than two decades later, I’ve had brothers from that chapter message me and thank me for putting their minds in a better place. Whenever I do a chartering today as an installing officer, I tell the men the same thing. I want them to understand the special gift they’re being given. I want them excited and unafraid.
I’ve always been angry at fraternities and sororities who make the week leading up to ritual some sort of hellish time for new members. In my mind, you owe it to your founders to prepare the minds of these young men and women so that they might enjoy, appreciate and understand your ritual to the greatest extent possible. A new member who is exhausted, beat down, or relieved for “the end” will never appreciate the ritual as the gift it is intended.
Everything leading up to your ritual should prepare the men or women to receive the gift. Anything that takes away from that cheapens a century of investment others have made in that special ceremony. A new member who enters into your fraternity or sorority with a full heart and a clear mind will understand what’s been given.
Ritual isn’t a finish line – it’s a starting gate. Does your week reflect that?
Posted in Greeks, Hazing, Values on April 8th, 2012 | 16 Comments »
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I like answering the phone at my office, and I do it a lot. It gives me a valuable opportunity to interact with our speakers, facilitators, vendors and customers that I might not otherwise have.
