These past few weeks, thinking about my role as President and a sister (at this point I apologize for my last two post being almost the same...'goals' are kind of on my mind!!) and I was brain storming new ideas and approaches that we could try and utilize in our chapter. What can we do to grow? How do we reach all of our members? Why don't we get perfect attendance at all of our events?
The answer to my questions came in the form of T.J. Sullivan - I heard T.J. speak at our leadership conference this year and I have been completely obsessed with him ever since. I read his blog The Hungry Student Leader almost everyday. In today's hunt, I found this article: Please All The People Some of The Time
This article....as many of T.J.'s entries do...hit me like a ton of bricks. A "duh" moment. Not everyone shows up to everything because no everyone likes everything.
As leaders in our chapter we're prepared for people t get mad at us, to get angry, to "hate" us or come to us with problems. Every discouraged leader has heard "you can't make everybody happy" millions of times, or "If you can't feel the heat, you're not cooking" but there's no standard or obvious plans to host and develop effective programming! Yes, our Chapter Operations Book or your officer manuals give you guidelines for events, for chapter meetings, for chapter education sessions but no one has the key or a secret guide to being successful in executing chapter plans or socials or sisterhood events - PR needs and tools are different on every campus, the culture is different on every campus....
The key to T.J.'s article is that different activities need to be held throughout the year the appeal to the different tastes, availability and interests of our members. Movie nights may be the perfect first for some of our sisters but the others want to play sports. Some sisters aren't competitive are don't want sports - they want to take trips and get off campus!! So maybe all 185 sisters don't come to every single event but if every single sister goes to one of our many events then we should consider ourselves successful!!
This past Sunday at our chapter meeting we did some strategic planning....in other words we talked about the things we don't like and how to change them. We discussed our expectations and our ideas. IT WAS AWESOME! My sisters had some amazing ideas that might not have appealed to everyone, but had some more excited than I'd ever seen!
When making the chapter calendar remember that while we share the same values and that we all wear the same letters our interests, hobbies, and skill sets are all different. Our similarities make us Alpha Delta Pis, our differences make our chapter unique!
Love and Loyally <3
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