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.

“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.

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?

Fraternity brother Jim is laying around with his girlfriend, Carrie, who is in ABC sorority.  They are casually talking, and Carrie says, “What’s the hell’s up with Brother Dave?”

“What did Dave do?”

“My sister Sarah says that he gives her total attitude in Chemistry.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, she says he acts like he’s the total shit and won’t even talk to her.”

Jim then goes to the next chapter meeting and says, “Sorority girls are talking about what jerks we are.  I can’t say who or what exactly was said, but ABC sorority doesn’t want to hang out with us anymore.”

The entire brotherhood erupts in a panic.  O-M-G!   ABC Sorority hates us, and soon, all the other sororities will hate us, too!  Then what will we do?

All because Dave was sleepy one morning and didn’t say hello to Sarah whose feelings were hurt enough that she talked to Carrie, knowing that she would say something to Jim.

Anonymous female sources – the dirty bomb of fraternity.  Drop it in a fraternity chapter meeting, and people have an emotional reaction.

I imagine this happens in sorority meetings, also.

As a fraternity leader, you will be confronted by anonymous female sources in chapter meetings.  It’s a weapon that packs an emotional punch, and it is frequently used by brothers needing an irrefutable way to express a fear, an opinion, or a warning.  Nothing gets one’s brothers shaking like the threat of sorority displeasure.

“I was talking to some sorority women today, and they said…”

If you are a fraternity president, you need to go on offense immediately when this happens.

“Tell me the name of the sorority woman, what chapter she is in, and I will make a call to the chapter president tonight after meeting.”

This is when the brother stammers.  Because usually he’s blown the entire comment into something much larger than it is.

“Well, I don’t want to say…”

“Then don’t say it. Anonymous female sources are not appropriate in chapter meeting. If a sorority has a problem with us or with any of our members, please ask one of their representatives to give me a call, and we will deal with it professionally.  Otherwise, don’t bring this sort of gossip up in the meeting.”

If you let brothers continue to cite anonymous female sources, you will soon be making every decision based on them. It becomes a guessing game.  Every time a brother dislikes something, he’ll reach for the weapon.  And, there will always be brothers who have the emotional fear response.

It also breeds a very unhealthy norm of interfraternal communication. Decisions affecting campus relations are born in the easily misunderstood communications between random individuals.

Yes, I know that informal sorority feedback can be useful.  It’s an inescapable part of the fraternity/sorority political scene in most Greek communities.  But, unsubstantiated comments from anonymous female sources have no place in fraternity chapter meetings.

And, presumably, vice versa, Ladies.  Informal chatter with your boyfriend does not count as actionable intelligence appropriate for sorority chapter meetings.

If you’ve heard something, come tell a chapter leader.  We will make a call to one of their leaders.  We will clear things up.  But, getting brothers or sisters riled up on unsubstantiated comments doesn’t serve the chapter’s interests.  From now on, if you’re going to say that ABC Sorority or XYZ Fraternity thinks something about us, then cite the source and let’s see if it holds up.

By the way, the brothers or sisters who cite these sources are probably also planting bombs going the other direction. Don’t make sloppy comments to sorority women about their chapters and sisters, pretending to be the unofficial voice of the fraternity.  You don’t have that authority.  If you want the women to stop sowing discontent, then we have to stop it, also.

We like awards, recognitions, appointments to university committees, and shirts with our positions embroidered on the breast.  We love opening the student newspaper and seeing our name. We need people to know who we are, what we do, and how hard we work.

We love it when people say, “Good job!”  And, we wouldn’t mind it if we heard it a little more often.

OK, a lot more often.

Since I wrote the book, I have been enormously entertained by friends and colleagues noticing top-third behavior in their own lives.  Turns out, top-third types don’t stop being this way when they graduate college.

I have a friend who travels more than I do, and he insists on logging on to the airline website after a trip to make sure the miles registered in his account.  It bugs him until he sees the credit.  For him, those miles mean status, and upgrades, and a faster line at the airport.  Without that airline status, his travel might be unbearable.  With the perks of status, he can travel six days a week like a modern-day gladiator.

He will probably seek jobs that have him on the road the rest of his life because being a Delta Quadruple Platinum (or whatever the hell it is) has become part of his identity. He needs the validation that comes from boarding a plane four minutes before normal people.

Another friend wrote to me and told me she was a top-third person in her office.  She organizes the outings, the birthday lunches, and the company softball team, and she is annoyed that these things aren’t acknowledged in her annual review.  Never mind that no one ever asked her to do these things and they aren’t actually part of the job for which she’s paid.

A colleague told me that his wife is a top-third type.  “She does so much more around the house and with our son than I do.  At first, I felt guilty about it, but then realized that she gained energy from it.  As long as I was being thankful and acknowledging how hard she was working to better our family, things were peaceful.  But, if I got busy and ignored the effort, that’s when we had problems.”

There’s nothing wrong with seeking some validation for the hard work you do, and I would agree that learning how to validate your partner’s effort is a brilliant relationship strategy.

If you are a top-third leader, and you find yourself negative and griping a lot, one cause might be a lack of validation.  Who regularly validates you? Are you unconsciously seeking validation from people who are unable or unwilling to give it?

A good advisor knows the importance of giving you validation.  It’s one of the most important parts of the job.  It’s important that an advisor challenges you, but if you don’t have an advisor who additionally gives you validation, then find a new advisor.

Spend more time with others in your life who make you feel valued, and spend less time with people (bottom-third members, perhaps?) who take advantage of your willingness to work so hard without so much as the occasional pat on the back.  If you don’t get support and validation from your fellow officers, start giving them more, and see if they give it back.

Maybe start spending some time with others in similar positions from other organizations. They might be starved for some validation, also.  Give to them so that you may receive in return.

Maybe it all sounds weak.  Seeking validation is totally lame, right?

I don’t think so. If it fuels you, then seek it out. Acknowledge your need.

Don’t whine for it – that makes you look pathetic. Don’t complain about how your bottom-third members fail to recognize you (their job is to annoy and ignore you). But take an inventory of where your validation comes from, and seek out those who feed your spirit.  It’s as necessary for your self care as eating right, brushing your teeth, and getting enough sleep.

If you are a middle-third type, you might need to remind yourself to give your top-third a little more love.  It’s the very best way you can be supportive of your organization and its leaders. Think of those groups in which you are a middle-third member and spend a few moments considering how you give validation to those who lead from the top.

Say thanks to Mom for always setting up a beautiful Christmas tree.  Thank the professor who takes the time to support student-run events.  Show some gratitude to the boss who tolerates your repeated need for a schedule change to accommodate your crazy schedule.

When we acknowledge our own need for validation and become proficient at offering the same validation to others, we keep that top-third energy going.

I live in Manhattan and on every corner there is a little coffee shop like the Central Perk in Friends. Apartments in New York City are little prison cells, so aside from spending time at work, many residents do work at these coffee shops, meeting friends, or just relaxing there because they get stir crazy in their tiny little homes. Think about it, when you watch Cash Cab, everyone says they are headed to get coffee! No wonder it is called “the City that Never Sleeps!” Everyone is wired on caffeine.

But, I digress already. Many of these coffee shops are trendy and they all strive for a uniqueness to set them apart from the rest. It seems like a good business model. But, it’s not. Why? Starbucks does the opposite and is beating them all.

Starbucks is a consistent experience whether you are on the Upper West Side or the Lower East Side. (And, believe me, they are VERY different places.) But, even more… it is the same experience in Los Angeles as it is in Oxford, Mississippi. Starbucks is Starbucks is Starbucks is Starbucks. Sound boring? Not if you like Starbucks.

Fraternities and sororities are franchises, too – and that is a great thing. Don’t look down on the franchise concept. It allows us to take something good, sometimes even great, and expand its reach. More people can enjoy good Starbucks coffee, or those amazing McDonald’s french fries, or an affordable oil change at Jiffy Lube, or a good night’s sleep and cookie at a Doubletree hotel.

When it comes to fraternity or sorority, some of our members embrace that business model, while others do not. They prefer to view their chapter through their own view. Creating their own interpretation of what our founders created. Now don’t get me wrong – there is room for interpretation, for some individuality of personality  and style based on the membership of the individual chapter. A chapter is a collage comprised of all that the members bring. But, what there is no room to interpret is our purpose, our meaning, our reason to exist. Too many of our members believe they can make the distinction about who we are. That isn’t their place. They can’t do that. If they want a student organization that is primarily about giving them a social network, or a social life – they can leave. Their fraternity  wasn’t created for that purpose.

It’s inconsistent with the franchise brand.

Let’s picture you manage a Starbucks and decide to make some minor changes and rename some of the drinks. Or, let’s say you decide to change the menu. Or, you say, let’s really express our individuality and change the product. Let’s sell SHOES! Everyone loves shoes. Nice shoes, not crappy one. High quality footwear that would make that guy Tom green with envy. That all sounds good to me. Just take the name off the storefront. Because, no matter how high class the product is, you aren’t a Starbucks anymore. You are a shoe store. Even if you give a free cup of coffee with your shoes.

Women and men that think we aren’t primarily about the building of better women through sisterhood and men through brotherhood better think again. If they think we are a social entity that just happens to produce sisters and brothers – they have taken a Starbucks and made it a shoe store. I say if that is what they really want, they are wasting our time. The drama these members cause isn’t worth the good they bring. They are taking our organization and changing it beyond our recognition.

Notice that I have not once said they are bad people. I make no judgment on them at all. They could be wonderful amazing people. But, that doesn’t change that they are here for the wrong reason. One reason I don’t judge them is that many joined under the wrong pretense because of us, not them. We are the ones that sold them the wrong product. It seems we’ll tell women and men whatever they want to hear in the recruitment process to make sure they join us. Then we hope they will find the true meaning of our organization in some educational process. They will often build bonds with some of the members, but still never truly understand what we are about. They will graduate and say “I was a…” – as if membership was something that was worn for a while and then put back in a drawer to collect dust. Far too few of us actually embrace that our membership is supposed to be a part of who we are, not something that we do.

Purpose or Benefit? Do we see “social” as our purpose? Or, is it one of many benefits of joining? Chapters that see it as our purpose have taken their liberty at redefining us when they have no right to do so. If I walked into your chapter meeting and gave you a choice – you could either never again have ANY event where there is alcohol (official and unofficial events) or you could never again perform your initiation ceremony – what would the chapter choose? What would the discussion be like before that chapter vote? And, would our founders be proud?

A real chapter is able to have a great social life as one of many benefits of the brotherhood and sisterhood created in pursuit of our true purpose. A fraud couldn’t conceive of giving up that part of what they have become. What kind of chapter do you have?

———

David Stollman is a co-founder of CAMPUSPEAK, a full-time speaker, and a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon.  Learn about his speaking here.

Surely, you’ve heard that making a big change – taking a leap – begins with a first step.  A journey of a thousand miles begins with one, right?  That might be buying a book, setting up a meeting, making a resolution, buying a gym membership, or going online and to sign up for a 5k.

Here’s the thing, though.  In my experience, it’s the second step that’s the hardest.

There are a million first steps, and they usually require little investment. You can sign up for the marathon, but getting up early that first morning, getting dressed, and going for that first awful-feeling run is harder.  You can talk about wanting a new job and you can brush up the resume, but applying is such a bigger jump.

Damn you, Step Two.

You can get in the car, take a seat, and adjust the mirrors. Fasten your seatbelt, check your insurance card, and find a good radio station. At some point, you need to shift into reverse, turn awkwardly around to look, and back out of the driveway before you can experience movement in a forward direction.

I had been talking about writing a book for a decade.  I like to write, and I do it relatively quickly.  I had attended a writer’s conference.  I read several books about how to write a book. For four years, I blogged.  I had taken numerous first steps, but was no closer.  I just couldn’t make the leap.  I needed to sit down and start writing.

I kept thinking of first steps.  Write an outline, decide on a title, set goals, research publishing companies, and understand how to market.  Eventually, I grew sick of my inaction, and I make the difficult second step.

Step Two is where the investment begins.  It’s where you make a choice to do one thing instead of another.  It’s where you feel stupid.  It’s when you get angry at yourself for trying.  It’s when you wonder what the hell you were thinking and most seriously consider quitting.

Working for Pi Kappa Phi wasn’t real until I turned down two news photographer jobs and packed the car for North Carolina.  Ten years later, I retired from full-time speaking and started CAMPUSPEAK.  I was scared to death.  Why was I trading the security of a fun, lucrative job to start something totally new?  It took a public announcement of my transition and the signing of a 3-year office lease to move me to Step Two.

For the book, it meant clearing the schedule, taking time off, and sitting down at the dining room table with my laptop and a blank pad of paper. My first 10 pages were a mess of disorganized crap, but it felt good to get off the starting line.  I finished the first draft by lunch on the second day.

If you wait for others to validate your idea, you’ll never get to Step Two.

Writer Jane Friedman kept waiting for her professors to grab her by her shoulders and tell her that she had talent, hoping that the validation would free her to start writing something of value.

“Now that I’m a professor, I realize just how irrelevant (that) is. I see both talented and untalented students, but the ones who impress me are the ones who are motivated and driven to work – the ones who push hard despite obstacles.”

First steps are about getting excited about a possibility.  Step Two is about feeling completely pathetic, untalented, unworthy, and incapable – and making a move anyway.

In his book Rules of Thumb, Alan M. Webber, co-founder of Fast Company Magazine says, “Ask business leaders about career lessons that have stuck with them and they’ll always go back to a key experience that made them get out of their comfort zone – a meeting that was unscripted, a trip that was unplanned, a conversation that wasn’t rehearsed.”

Making the leap means taking a step away from what’s comfortable. You can’t wait to feel confident.  You can’t wait for the plan to be perfect. You can’t wait until you understand all of the potential pitfalls and know for certain how you will avoid them.

Every move you make is a choice between hope and fear.  Step Two is feeling like an idiot, owning the fear, and choosing hope.

—————————-

This article first appeared in the Essentials publication of the Association of Fraternity and Sorority Advisors.

References

Friedman, Jane. (2011) Five Things More Important Than Talent. Writer Unboxed, http://writerunboxed.com/2011/06/24/5-things-more-important-than-talent/.

Webber, Alan. Rules of Thumb: 52 Truths for Winning at Business without Losing Your Self. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2009. Print.

In this video blog, I discuss some steps you can take to evaluate your calendar, trim it, and improve the events you decide to keep.

Motivating the Middle, video 4

What if student leadership conferences were responsibly “wet?”

My partner works with homeless populations.   It’s a challenging group because they depend almost entirely on public dollars for programs to help them get housing, counseling, job placement, child care, health services, etc.

Many of those who work with the homeless have learned that imposing rules based on public morality actually prevents positive change.  Expecting homeless people to completely go cold turkey on drugs or alcohol, for example, stands in the way of actually getting homeless people off the streets, into housing, and in a better place.

If you don’t believe me, read this article.  You know what’s working?  Realistic approaches.

It’s the same concept that has existed for years with intravenous drug users and needle exchange programs.  Yes, we wish the addict would stop injecting substances, but until he does, give him clean needles to slow infection rates, incentivize better choices, and save a lot of public money.  Expecting intravenous drug addicts to simply stop in order to get services helps no one.

You might disagree, and that’s your prerogative.  But, I feel pretty good that I’m right on this one.  I admire those people, like my partner, who fight for the opportunity to actually help people, regardless of public politics.

As I was reading the article, it got me thinking about all the student leadership conferences I attend this time of year, and the battle against alcohol that rages at them.

A huge amount of energy is spent trying to police the alcohol consumption of student participants.

What if, instead of fighting many students’ desire to consume alcohol, we allowed it in a safe and monitored environment?  Would it really be so heinous for a 21-year-old fraternity man to enjoy a beer while watching the step show?  Would allowing professionals access to a cash bar for a glass of wine really fly in the face of higher education values?

Are we teaching leadership – really? – by imposing an unrealistic standard?

Again, I’m just asking the question to spur discussion.

Yes, alcohol abuse is a terrible problem, and thousands of terrible decisions are made under the influence on campuses every day. But does the paternalistic, puritanical approach actually work?  Is anyone asking the question?

What if our leadership conferences made it part of their mission to model something more mature.  Could we pull it off?  Amid all of our educational breakout sessions on risk management and responsible decision-making, could we actually create an environment that encouraged them?

What if, instead of fighting the exhausting battle against consumption, we instead shifted our efforts to fighting immaturity around alcohol?

Very quietly, some national fraternities are choosing to embrace the reality that students might want to legally partake in the context of a leadership event.  They are taking their members to sporting events, and there is no active discouragement of legal purchase and consumption at the ballpark.  Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity holds their leadership school on a cruise ship (not dry) and by all accounts, it’s a pretty fun and engaging event. Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity has held their leadership school at a resort in Cabo San Lucas, and many professionals I know who have attended say that the students, by and large, act very responsibly balancing the evening social time with the daytime learning.

What do you think?  Do you think we could pull it off?

We say we are creating an alcohol-free learning environment.  But, many of us know that’s a fantasy.  If our goal is to somehow convert student leaders into non-drinkers, we are failing. Is there some sort of moderate compromise?

What if we set an expectation of better choices instead of abstinence?

A “wet” program for the homeless in Seattle found that by allowing those using lodging for the homeless to consume moderate amounts in a controlled setting, they reduced overall consumption.  By allowing moderated consumption, they reduced overall consumption, and saved the city more than $36,000 annually in services per individual.

Is there a lesson in there for leadership programmers?

While top-third leaders are motivated by winning, recognition, status, influence, awards, problem-solving and becoming identified with their organization, middle-third members are motivated by different things.

What gets your middle third member engaged?

Balance.  While top-third members make numerous personal sacrifices for their leadership positions, middle-third members care deeply about maintaining balance among various priorities.  While engaging in group activities six out of seven nights is perfectly normal for a top-third leader, it causes stress and exhaustion for the middle-third member trying to balance involvement with classes, a relationship, a job, or involvement in other organizations. Your organization might be a big priority, but it’s not their only one.

Are you demanding too much time?

Harmony.  Nothing makes a leader more competitive than an “enemy” to focus on.  Many top-third leaders are fueled by the endless discord with bottom-third members.  Every meeting feels like a power struggle, and all that drama causes stress for middle-third members.  They like your organization best when people are getting along.  They prefer a collegial tone, and when you are stressed out, angry, or venting, you turn them off.  They might actually side with bottom-third members on an issue just to get you to pipe down.

Are you feeding the drama in your organization?

Fellowship.  For middle-third members, it’s not necessarily about the stressful big events like Homecoming, Greek Week, or the big fundraiser. Middle-third members just enjoy being with their teammates, brothers, sisters, fellow members. Just sharing a meal, gathering to watch a game, playing intramurals, or hanging out can be a real boost to their commitment.  While top-third members are concerned about “doing something” at all times, middle-third members can enjoy doing absolutely nothing as long as it’s with friends. In fact, that fellowship is probably the main benefit they gain from being a part of your organization, and anything that detracts from that is problematic.

Are you offering enough opportunities for members to simply enjoy each other?

Choice.  Middle-third members typically have favorite parts of your organization.  They enjoy certain activities a lot, and others not so much.  When top-third members are forcing (through guilt, fines, and pressure) everyone to contribute 100-percent to every single activity, it wears out middle-third members.  If your calendar is full of mandatory events that middle-third members feel compelled to do, they get cranky.  Middle-third members like to be led, but they don’t want you choosing their adventure for them.

Are your members able to choose their involvements, or are they being dictated to them?