Transcript
Speaker: Okay, before we jump into this first episode of Ethocast of 2026, I have a couple of announcements, very important announcements. Here is announcement number one.
Speaker: The Black Greek Success Program is now known as the D9 Leadership Blueprint. You ask yourself, Eddie, it's been 23 years that this thing that you've been doing has been known as the Black Greek Success Program.
Speaker: Why now? Because there is a new direction for this presentation. And that direction is to actually provide some sort of way for students to understand leadership in the D9 and what it looks like and to focus specifically on the D9 itself. All right. Well, that leads me to announcement number two.
Speaker: Newly published is the D9 Leadership Blueprint ebook. So you can go to D9LeadershipBlueprint.com right now and check out this practical guide for college members of National Panhellenic Council fraternities and sororities to lead with intention to understand how to build stronger relationships in your chapters and families. through chapters, and then also to create a lasting impact on your chapters, your campuses, and beyond. There's a great introductory offer to get the ebook right now for only $9.99. So all you have to do is go to d9leadershipplueprint.com. That's d9leadershipplueprint.com. Check it out right now while you're listening to the podcast.
Speaker: Welcome to Ethocast, a podcast about sound leadership practices to boost the life in college fraternities and sororities. I'm Eddie Francis, presenter of Followership to Leadership and the D9 Leadership Blueprint, presentations designed to help Greeks become more ethical and effective leaders. I'll share lessons learned from my college days, my career journey, and leadership research. This is Ethocast. Leadership.
Speaker: to the letter. thank you thank you so much for joining me on this edition of eto cast happy new year to you that is that is if you celebrate this new year Nah, nah. So my wife and I were having this um really interesting discussion about who you have to watch, who you say Happy New Year to. mean, it's not like somebody's going to bust you in the head or anything. It's not that serious. But what I mean is, is that not everybody celebrates the same New Year. And this is one of those things.
Speaker: i I mean, I've always heard it, but it just still never... It just never resonates with me when I'm talking to someone from a different culture that they just may not celebrate the Gregorian calendar New Year. So did you know this? I mean, if you have frat brothers or sorority sisters of different nationalities or different cultures or different faith practices, then at some point they probably said, oh, I don't celebrate New Year on January 1st. So you have the Lunar New Year. um If you have a frat brother, sorority sister who's from China, Korea, Vietnam or other Asian countries, then they're celebrating the New Year late January, February. um You have the Persian New Year.
Speaker: ah That would be the spring equinox. So you're talking March 20th, Iran, Central Asia, the Middle East, Western Asia. ah And of course, if you have any Jewish frat brothers or sorority sisters, then you know they have Rosh Hashanah. And with that, they are celebrating the New Year according to the Hebrew calendar, that September or October.
Speaker: You have the Islamic New Year. the Islamic New Year ah is a different date, according to Google, according that is that is occurring on a different Gregorian calendar um each year. Gregorian Gregorian calendar each year. And then you have the Ethiopian new year.
Speaker: If you have any frat brothers or sorority sisters from Ethiopia, then they're celebrating the new year on September 11th or the 12th on a leap year. And that's marking the end of the rainy season with bright yellow flowers. You have a Japanese new year. You have ah Thailand, you have India. So you have these different new years.
Speaker: So again, i mean, listen, i'm I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to you know, put the fear of whoever in you is it's just a note it's just a note all right but anyway so according to the gregorian calendar happy new year to you happy 2026 i am so pleased that you are joining me on ethelcast and um ethelcast is presented by edify ventures show them who you are if you are up for public speaking coaching
Speaker: I'm available. What has two thumbs and is, wait, hold, what has two, how's this supposed to go? What has two thumbs and screw it.
Speaker: So I do have ah my availability for public speaking coaching virtually. Just email me, Eddie at eddiefrancis.com, or you can check out my website, eddiefrancis.com.
Speaker: All right. um So listen, listen, if you are a member of the Divine Nine, then this episode of Ethelcast is just for you because I have three Divine Nine New Year's resolutions.
Speaker: Let's talk about it. The views expressed on Ethelcast do not necessarily reflect the views of the hosts, guests, or any entities with which this podcast's participants are affiliated.
Speaker: Questions, comments, email eddie at eddiefrancis.com. New year, new me, new year, new you. Who knows what the deal is, but I have been thinking so much lately about What I want to do as far as spreading leadership goodness to the college members of the Divine Nine. Shouts out to the folks who have hosted me in the past few few years. McNeese State University, Southeastern Louisiana University, University of North Alabama. Bama.
Speaker: um And so all of these groups have been good enough. or All these institutions have been good enough to bring me on campus. Years ago, I got the opportunity to present at University Louisiana Lafayette. I've gotten the opportunity to present at Paul Quinn College at Wiley College. And so I've gotten the opportunity, the great opportunity. to do the Black Rick Success Program, as it used to be called, on several campuses, including my alma mater, Loyola, and LSU as well.
Speaker: So all of that being said, here's the deal. In thinking about leadership in the divine nine, especially on the college level,
Speaker: There are some things that I am going to be talking more about, um especially as it relates to the rebranded D9 Leadership Blueprint.
Speaker: And to get us kicked off, to wet your whistle, I'm going to do three New Year's resolutions.
Speaker: Three. I was going to do nine, but... That will be too long. Seriously. I don't need to hold you that long.
Speaker: So we' we're going to make it three. OK, with that, um the first D9 New Year's resolution as a member of the Divine Nine. Repeat after me.
Speaker: I resolve to. Ask questions. I resolve as a member of the divine nine to ask questions.
Speaker: Whenever there's a conflict, it is our natural inclination for so many of us to judge. Someone says something that we don't like in chapter meeting, and then we just go sideways with it because we just flat out didn't like it.
Speaker: That's normal. That is human behavior. It really is. i don't want you to feel bad about it, but it does take a little extra to make sure that you are understanding what the problem is. And the best way to understand what a problem is, especially when someone says something that you don't like, is to ask a question.
Speaker: Now, I'm going to be honest with you. I'm 55 years old. It has taken me years to figure out that whenever I get upset at someone,
Speaker: The best thing that I can do is to ask a question to understand what the problem is. And I do mean years. It is a natural inclination to get emotional.
Speaker: You're wondering why this person is saying this, but you heard it. So, bam, you are off to the races. You are ready to react. But you don't have to. And so.
Speaker: In that moment, when somebody says something sideways to you, stop and just ask, why would you say a thing like that? That probably is the most useful question that you can ask in a moment of conflict.
Speaker: Why would you do that? Why would you say a thing like that? And so when you ask that question, one of the things that you find out is that you calm yourself down, even if it's just a tiny bit.
Speaker: A tiny bit is all you need. But not only does it happen in moments of conflict, it also happens in moments of misunderstanding.
Speaker: This is not just about calming ourselves down and giving ourselves a minute to process, but also is helping that other person when you ask questions.
Speaker: Asking questions, I like to say, is a key to emotional intelligence. And asking questions also, a lot of times I like to say, is the best way to make sure that assumptions just go sit somewhere in a corner.
Speaker: But here's what I really want you to do with these questions. Use questions as learning and understanding opportunities. Second New Year's resolution for the Divine Nine.
Speaker: As long as we're talking about conflict, as a member of the divine nine, resolve to see the opportunity in conflict.
Speaker: Conflict is hard. I don't know if you've ever heard me tell this story. If you're anywhere around me, if you've listened to any of the episodes of the podcast, especially the ones where I'm doing commentaries and a couple of times when I was talking to guests,
Speaker: I tell the story of when I was a chapter president in college and things didn't go so hot. I had a pretty, um I guess you can say a pretty naive sense of what leadership was.
Speaker: I thought leadership was, I say something you follow. So when people didn't follow what I said, conflict.
Speaker: conflict And guess what? Since I thought that leadership was I say something and you follow. Guess how your boy handled conflict?
Speaker: Not very well. At all. To me, conflict is always bad, always bad.
Speaker: If I saw some disagreement or something, i i didn't know what to do. I don't like conflict. I can't stand conflict. And that's honestly not the best thing because a lot of times there is opportunity in conflict.
Speaker: So how do you do that? How do you see opportunity in conflict? Well, the first thing is realize what we're doing in conflict. In conflict, we normally are taking sides. It's me versus you.
Speaker: It's him versus her. It's is is' left versus right. It's cops versus robbers. We're making this clear line of delineation when there may not necessarily be a need to do such a thing.
Speaker: And so conflict, while it doesn't feel good, it does invite us, though, to investigate why things are happening the way they are.
Speaker: And so when there is a conflict, even though you might be in your feelings and even though you think that somebody is dead wrong it is the great opportunity to do that first resolution.
Speaker: And that is to ask questions. Because in the midst of conflict, when you start asking questions, something that may happen that may be very unexpected is you may learn more things about the other person or the other party that you just never expected to learn.
Speaker: And it may be so enlightening. It may be the biggest aha moment of your fraternity or sorority life.
Speaker: To to find out. What the source of the conflict is. But here's where conflict just pulls a really, really sneaky trick on us.
Speaker: It presents this opportunity to figure out how that person's opposing view or that thing that person said can actually be helpful to the chapter.
Speaker: You might not like it, but the brothers may like it. The sorrows may like it. Or what may happen is this person's anger or that person's opposition to whatever is going on is revealing something, a problem that you had no idea was happening with the chapter.
Speaker: That conflict also might be a cry for help.
Speaker: And when you have those moments. You start to realize what each other's strengths are. You start to discover weaknesses. You start to discover that their strength may be your weakness and your weakness may be their strength.
Speaker: You may find out that you complement each other in in in such rich ways. but it masked itself as difference.
Speaker: It masked itself as just being culturally on opposite ends of the spectrum. And so the next time there's a conflict in your chapter, don't play cops versus robbers.
Speaker: Pause and simply ask this question.
Speaker: What is this conflict allowing us to see hear and learn about ourselves? All right. d nine New Year's resolution number three.
Speaker: And that is I resolve too put mindfulness in my life as a member of blank, blank, blank sorority slash.
Speaker: Fraternity incorporated mindfulness. All right. I want everybody to do this with me. Woosah.
Speaker: So I've been having this conversation with my therapist a lot lately. um and And I'm dead serious about this. So as someone who has ADHD, one of the big ahas for me is that part of having ADHD is um having to struggle to regulate emotions a lot of times.
Speaker: I have been learning what it means to be mindful and trying to do mindfulness exercises. So what what exactly, if you've never done this before, or if you keep hearing about it, but you're wondering exactly what it is, mindfulness is um paying attention to yourself in a nonjudgmental way.
Speaker: and paying attention very closely to the moment that you're in. Mindfulness calls for us to focus on our thoughts, to focus on our feelings, and even what you're feeling in your body at that time.
Speaker: Now, the goal is for you to slow yourself down, to use your brain, cool your heart, slow it down as much as you can,
Speaker: take deep breaths and to take inventory of what you're feeling and why you're feeling that way. So I will give you a very good divine nine example, social media, somebody jumps on social media, tick tock,
Speaker: And they say, yeah, they asked me to be in them fraternities, but man, I saw what they were doing. fra turn they meant Fraternities ain't nothing. All they do is walk around and they they be barking and jumping and and all that stuff. And they be throwing canes and stuff. And nah, that stuff is just stupid. So I turned it down.
Speaker: They all asked me to pledge.
Speaker: Now, just me going through that scenario, I know how somebody right now, if you if if if I really were on TikTok doing this right now, your your TikTok fingers would be ready to go. The TikTok thumbs, they would just be ready to go. The TTTs, the TikTok thumbs, they'd just be ready to go.
Speaker: Bull, ain't nobody asked you to be in no fraternity. You know what? You probably drop lying anyway. So what would mindfulness look like in that instance?
Speaker: Well, what mindfulness will look like is you see the video, you hear this person going off, you decide that you're going watch all two, three minutes of the video, or it's a clip.
Speaker: It's a 15 second clip, right? You watch it. And you are getting hotter and hotter by the second. What mindfulness calls for us to do is to, number one, recognize that we are getting angry.
Speaker: Just recognize it and stop. As soon as you recognize recognize what you are doing and realizing what you're doing, stop. Don't do anything. Don't get the TTTs. Don't do anything. Right? Right?
Speaker: And it calls for us to ask a very important question. Back to New need' new Year's resolution one. Why am I angry? Here's the funny thing.
Speaker: Once you ask that first why, then a string of otherwise follow. Why am I angry? Well, why is this person saying this?
Speaker: Why do I feel that I need to respond to what this person is saying? And then you might have a couple of ah whys that come in there. But then mindfulness all also calls for us to ask questions like, well, if I do respond to this person, what's the outcome?
Speaker: What do I want to happen? Is there going to be some sort of justice served if I respond to this person?
Speaker: Is this person saying this to deliberately make my day worse? What problem is this going to solve? The thing is is, that by the time you get to maybe the fourth or fifth question, hopefully what's happened is that you've calmed down.
Speaker: And hopefully you've realized that there is a thoughtful way to deal with whatever it is that you're feeling. Because what you may realize is that there's no need to even respond to dude.
Speaker: There's no need whatsoever. You may realize that if you respond to him, you're going to be one of 500 comments of angry frat dudes.
Speaker: And all this dude is going to do is come back on TikTok and do another post. and Say and say more of what he said before because you know what he wants another 500 to a thousand comments and you realize that this person is basically trying to take the entire divine nine fraternity world for a ride Now Mindfulness dictates that you ask yourself, is it worth it?
Speaker: But even more than that, what mindfulness does is that it helps us make the healthiest choice that we can make for ourselves. Because you have to realize something.
Speaker: Whenever we get upset, remember that part I say where you start to kind of feel it? By the time you ask yourself, why am I reacting this way?
Speaker: There's something that might hit you. What might hit you is I can actually feel my blood pressure going up. i actually My head is literally getting hot.
Speaker: I am actually about to sit here and cuss at my phone at some dude who may not even be telling the truth.
Speaker: That's what mindfulness does for us. So make that New Year's resolution to yourself as a member of the divine nine that you are going to engage in a practice of mindfulness. Now, what actually does it? What actually helps with mindfulness?
Speaker: Well, if you're a Christian, start with prayer. If you walk another faith, start with whatever that looks like for you, those those those those silent moments when you spend time with with your God.
Speaker: If you love to journal, journaling is actually one of my favorite mindfulness practices. When I journal, it It really gives me the opportunity to answer questions that I already have.
Speaker: And it also, since it's my journal and it's private, it gives me the opportunity to answer those questions honestly. Meditation. If you are not a person of faith, meditate.
Speaker: Go for walks if you can. A good walk will almost always calm you down. But it's not always about calming down, by the way. Mindfulness is not a reaction. It's not meant to be reactionary.
Speaker: What mindfulness is, and in is the way I see it and the way that my therapist and I have talked about it. it You don't have to wait until something upsets you to be mindful.
Speaker: Just be mindful first thing in the morning. As soon as you get up, spend time with yourself. One thing that has helped me is taking three very deep breaths.
Speaker: I actually got that from a mindfulness coach by the name of Priscilla Maria Gutierrez, taking three deep breaths every day.
Speaker: taking inventory of your breathing, taking inventory of what you're thinking, taking inventory what you're feeling. One of the best mindfulness exercises that I have engaged in, as in in addition to journaling, is every night, Halima and I ah will put on sleep music.
Speaker: And so while I'm lying in bed and we're listening to the music, I try to focus on nothing but that music. It actually helps me go to sleep a lot.
Speaker: But I will sit there and I will try to think of nothing, just nothing, and just listen to the music. Now, as someone with ADHD, that is incredibly hard to think of nothing because something is always going through my head.
Speaker: But it is extraordinarily important. So the next time you have the opportunity, take time to engage in some sort of mindfulness practice.
Speaker: So there you have it. Three divine nine New Year's resolutions. Ask questions, resolve to see the opportunity in conflict and resolve to include mindfulness in in your membership of your fraternity or sorority. What do you think?
Speaker: Do you have any New Year's resolutions that you think we should have in the Divine Nine? Drop them in the comments. I would love to read what it is that you have.
Speaker: Hey, check out other episodes of Ethocast, okay? And make sure that you rate the podcast, share it with friends, and again, leave me some feedback. I would love to know what you think of the information that I share in the interviews that I share on Ethocast. Well, I'm Eddie Francis, and again, happy new year to you and all the other new years.
Speaker: Happy new year to you and you and you and for yours and yours and yours as well. That's it for Ethocast. Peace. Ethocast is a four-hour edification limited series. If you like what you heard, like, follow, and share this podcast for more leadership insights for your fraternity or sorority chapter. To find out how your campus or a campus near you can book followership to leadership or the D9 Leadership Blueprint, contact me today, eddie at eddiefrancis.com. Until next time, spread brotherly and sisterly love everywhere you go.
