A picture of the brothers that attended our regional brotherhood conference which we planned, coordinated, and facilitated on our campus, the very first year we founded our chapter.

LESSONS LEARNED

From this experience, I have gained countless insights into my leadership ability and the best practices to facilitate growth and efficiency within a group dynamic. These aspects have directly influenced other aspects of my life which include my academics. After my experience as president of the fraternity, I have noticed a great gain in productivity with drastically less conflicts within my teams for various classes. I feel the aspects of collaboration, analysis, idea generation and productive relationships have transferred to the teams I have worked on as part of my school work. I have noticed that the more I pay attention to these competencies the more I can develop them as well as implement them more effectively. As I get older I plan to only further these areas of my leadership ability to ensure all aspects of my life can grow, be more effective, and become more efficient.

Collaboration

‘Collaboration’ has been at the cornerstone of the work I have done as president of the organization. There is no way that the organization would be where it is today if it were not for the constant and effective collaborative efforts of all our members. In every event, we have planned and hosted, a great deal of collaboration was involved to ensure the success of the event. As previously stated, without collaboration some of our biggest and most successful events would not have been possible. One such example was the collaboration with another organization to raise funds to send our members to our leadership conference over the summer.

Others' Circumstances

Through my work as president and as a member of this organization, I consistently ensured others' circumstances were considered and addressed. Whether others' circumstances meant members' workloads or community members wishing to collaborate, I took the time and effort to ensure their values and needs were at the forefront of our consideration. For example, at times some of our members required more time to focus on their academics, therefore, we would work with those members to alleviate their time commitments for this organization to ensure they had the support and time they needed to achieve their academic goals.

Facilitation

One of the biggest roles I had to fulfill as president was that of being a facilitator at our chapter meetings and at our public events. In terms of our chapter meetings, I was required to ensure the meetings ran smoothly and occurred in an efficient, timely manner. Although difficult at times, facilitation at these meetings allowed me to gain an immense appreciation for listening to others, and how often times people debate only to find out that they have been talking about the same thing the entire time, simply through different perspectives. As a facilitator, this allowed me to ensure these issues turned into learning moments and strengthened the ability of our members to hear different perspectives and build upon them instead of attempting to push their own perspectives forward on the rest of us.

Supervision

As president of the organization, a significant portion of my time went into the supervision of our members, events, and logistics on this campus. One specific example of this supervision can be observed in the way in which I assigned roles to our members for specific events. As we would get closer and closer to the date in which we were planning an event I consistently reminded the members of the specific roles they were responsible for, which included items such as photographer, technology specialist, facilitator, etc. In doing so, I was able to ensure that everyone knew exactly what and when they needed to be completing a particular task, ultimately making my supervision of the event as a whole much easier.

Productive Relationships

Interestingly enough, it has been through several other competencies that I have been able to collectively develop ‘productive relationships.’ It has been through the previously mentioned ‘other perspectives,’ ‘idea generation,’ and ‘collaboration’ that I have been able to develop ‘productive relationships’ as a leadership competency. More specifically, and again as previously mentioned, one concrete example of developing productive relationships was when I advocated for more collaboration between different organizations in the multicultural Greek community. In advocating for this collaboration, we as an organization and as individuals were able to create meaningful relationships with other members of our community.

Idea Generation

Luckily, I have had the opportunity to practice my ‘idea generation’ as a leadership competency many times as president. As typical with the initial stages of planning an event, it can be difficult to determine the theme or specifics of an event. In these situations, I have found it crucially important to promote brainstorming or ‘idea generation’ from everyone. Otherwise, people would latch on to the first idea that someone stated instead of the best idea from a group generated list of ideas. Ultimately, through these repeated ‘idea generation’ sessions I have been able to further develop the effectiveness of the competency with each new session I help facilitate.

Analysis

In terms of ‘analysis,’ one specific situation in which I believed I significantly developed my ability to analyze from a leadership competency standpoint was when we were planning a professional development event. We had ultimately decided on two very different but equally valid avenues for logistics and facilitation of the event, after voting as an organization it came down to my final vote to decide the path we would take. Instead of making a hasty decision, I decided to further analyze both avenues with the organization and determine the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ of each avenue. Ultimately, after analyzing the avenues and situation I cast my vote confident that it was the better of the two avenues.

Other Perspectives

One of the clearest examples of my acquisition of ‘other perspectives’ as a leadership competency would have to be the way in which I facilitated meetings throughout my time as president of the organization. I consistently ensured that everyone’s voice was heard, especially when I knew a individual’s personality led them to be soft spoken. By advocating for these individual’s input I ensured that we all, as an organization, gained other perspectives that we may not have considered otherwise.

LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES GAINED

Throughout my leadership experience, I gained a lot of skills and insights in my ability to lead a group of people to a series of specific goals. These skills can be summed up by the following leadership competencies: other perspectives, analysis, idea generation, productive relationships, supervision, collaboration, others' circumstances, and facilitation.

Through these competencies, I learned how to analyze situations and problems from various perspectives in order to produce the best solutions. I also learned how to quickly create ideas and facilitate idea generation from those around me to produce the most innovative and effective implementation strategies. I developed the skill to collaborate effectively with people that come from all walks of life ensuring productive relationships not specific to those in our organization but those in our community as well. Lastly, I developed the ability to supervise others and the work they produce while motivating all of us to produce the best work we possibly could as it would benefit us and those that come after us.

TASK ACCOMPLISHED

Through this role, I was able to accomplish more items than I could possibly list, but some of the major ones include setting the foundation for our internal communication network ensuring everyone can easily and effectively communicate, ideate and implement meaningful community events, and creating one of the closest circle of people I have ever seen. Again, through my role as president I had the opportunity to accomplish a lot of individual tasks especially during the very beginning as a lot of logistical, community, and individual needs needed to be addressed.

PERSONAL IMPORTANCE

I have always been one to help those around me and sometimes even going out of my way to ensure others have the help they need. As president of the fraternity I felt I would be able to take this value to new heights by not only helping those around me and people I know but even those that I don’t. As a freshman, I realized the lack of diversity in Greek life and the little diversity that I could find did not align with my values in passion. Therefore, I decided to not only be part of the founding of a new organization on campus but also to lead that organization in its efforts to help us and our community. In doing so, I was able to facilitate the growth and unity not only of our organization but our community as a whole. For instance, as we grew our organization I took it upon myself to push for more inclusion in our multicultural Greek community through more collaborations between organizations. One such example includes the time I advocated for taking an event we were planning and a similar event another organization was also planning and turning it into a bigger collaborative event between our two organizations. In doing so, we not only built greater bonds between our two collaborating organizations but we also showed the rest of the multicultural Greek community how much more successful an event can be if you take the time to collaborate with another organization. I have always found the gratitude we receive from our community incredibly fulfilling especially after hosting such events and providing these types of opportunities for them.

OVERVIEW

One leadership experience I believe I grew a lot from was my role as the president of Lambda Theta Phi Latin Fraternity, Inc. over the first two years of its establishment at this university. After co-founding the fraternity, I felt it was my responsibility to help lay the foundation of our organization on campus. The main purpose of my role was to facilitate unity, growth, and leadership of our organization. Unity in the sense that we, as brothers, needed to come together for a greater purpose. Growth in terms of both numbers and as individuals striving to make all our members the best version of ourselves we could become. Lastly, leadership, as we to make the organization’s members strive to be leaders in all aspects of our lives. This was an incredibly valuable experience for me because I was able to not only help those around me reach for greater heights but I also learned a lot about my own leadership style and how I could best impact those around me.

Fostering Unity Through

Positional Leadership

FOUNDER OF CHANGE

Other Perspectives, Analysis, Idea Generation, Productive Relationships, Supervision, Collaboration, Others' Circumstances, and Facilitation