Washing the dishes
Forcing people into experiences against their will isn’t leadership. Inspiring people to create a positive shared experience, is.
How much of your time is spent forcing people to come to meetings, rallying people to show up to events, begging people to give an hour here and an afternoon there? Then come the attendance lists and the penalties for skipping mandatory events. Maybe you have an elaborate points system to incentivize showing up.
Usually it means angrily texting your members 10 minutes before an event, demanding that they get their asses to the Student Center immediately.
Leadership can start feeling like running the attendance office at an elementary school.
For many organizations, the answer is fewer, more meaningful events and meetings. It’s about giving members opportunities to come together around a shared interest or mission, on their terms. It’s about making sure that meetings and events have at least some element that members enjoy.
Washing dishes is no fun. Washing dishes with your family members after Thanksgiving dinner, and laughing your butt off while sharing a couple bottles of wine can be. Right?
When you want to be somewhere, you bring a better attitude. When you enjoy something, you want to do it again. That’s why they do Homecoming every year.
What are you doing to inspire people to want to come together?
That doesn’t mean that every gathering is a party. That mandatory training on risk management might not be what everyone wants to do on a Tuesday night. But, you can add some fun to it. Think. Be creative. What can you do to turn a potentially lame experience into something surprisingly cool?
How can you lead your members so that they know that, at a minimum, they’re going to have a good time together? No matter what happens, they’ll be glad they spent time with each other. How can you make washing the dishes fun?
With or without the bottles of wine. That’s flexing your leadership muscle.
2 Responses to “Washing the dishes”
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This is a good challenging blog. I believe if you want more participation out of your fraternity brothers then you as a leader should have a one on one talk with every member. You should find the likes and dislikes of if person and then find a creative fun event to start everything off. You must also find out if anyone in the fraternity has issues with each other and have a lemon squeeze. A lemon squeeze is a meeting you call to let everything out on the table and let the guys get all the arguing out and whatever is on there chest and by the end of the meeting everyone should be on the same page. Then after all the bullshit is out of the way you will began to have fun with each other more and hang out more and go out to eat and etc.
Cordell Stephens
Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity inc.
University of Southern Mississippi
With both fraternities and sororities, participation is a challenging concept to grasp. Having a leadership role you feel the frustration when members do not participate in events such as ritual, parties, etc. Members need to feel like you are personally taking time out to encourage them to participate. You can do this by acknowledging the members who have excelled and also giving middle members incentives to participate. Tension among members may create a negative environment, so personally clear the air with them. Talk about the feeling among every member, the “fun” will soon arrive.
Elizabeth “EB” Bagert
Epsilon Delta Chapter of he Chi Omega Fraternity
The University of Southern Mississipp