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10. Kappa | Personal Leadership...That's the Thing
21 Plays3 months ago
Before you can lead your chapter effectively, there needs to be a sense of personal accountability. That's where personal leadership comes in. This episode takes a dive into the importance of personal growth and development so that chapter members, especially executive teams, can do their jobs effectively.
You'll get an idea of what personal leadership is, how to develop it, and how to leverage it for chapter success.
Ethocast is a "For Our Edification" limited series and is supported by Edify Ventures, LLC.
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Transcript
Introduction: Engaging Greek Life
00:00:00
Speaker
Fraternity Sorority Life always has you going, doesn't it? I mean, if you're not doing school, then you are always out on campus doing an activity. If you're not on campus doing an activity, then your social calendar is full. If it's not your social calendar, then it's a service project. If it's not a service project, then it's that path to your career, that internship, that part time job.
00:00:22
Speaker
And so as a member of a return to your sorority you always around people you can't get away from People but one thing you're gonna hear me say about leadership if you haven't already heard me say this is that leadership is about people, right? Well, there is one person in all of this that I want to talk about and that's you And the reason is I want to talk about you and how you are developing yourself as a leader, your personal leadership. Let's talk about it. Episode Kappa of etho cast.
00:01:02
Speaker
Welcome to Ethocast, a podcast about sound leadership practices to boost life in college fraternities and sororities.
The Essence of Leadership in Greek Life
00:01:10
Speaker
I'm Eddie Francis, presenter of Followership to Leadership and the Black Greek Success Program, presentations designed to help Greeks become more ethical. effective leaders. On Ethocast, I'll share lessons learned from my college days, my career journey, and leadership research. Ethocast is a four-hour edification limited series and presented by Edify Adventures. This is Ethocast. Leadership.
00:01:34
Speaker
to the letter I'm Eddie Francis, thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Ethocast.
Personal Readiness: The Airplane Mask Analogy
00:01:39
Speaker
Now if you have ever flown an airplane, a commercial airline that is, then you know that there is a safety demonstration. In a safety demonstration, they tell you that in the unlikely event that the cabin loses air pressure, there are going to be oxygen masks that fall and you are to secure your mask before you were to secure the mask of anyone else who needs help, especially a child. Now, the first time I heard this, I thought to myself, no, no, no, I got to help these people if anything happens. And that's true. I do. But then someone explained to me, well, if you're not in any condition to do it, you can't help them.
00:02:20
Speaker
If you're passed out, then there's no way you can help them. So you really should secure your mask first so that you are healthy enough to provide help. And that's the way I see leadership working in leadership. Your charge is to help a group of people to get from point A to point B, whatever that is, whatever that looks like in your chapter, whatever that looks like in your work life, whatever that,
00:02:48
Speaker
looks like in your personal life or your service life. And the only way you can be effective at that is if you yourself are in a condition to lead.
Eddie's Leadership Journey
00:03:00
Speaker
So what does that look like? We're going to talk about this, but You know, I did find out about this the hard way. When I was an undergrad, I had the opportunity to be the president of my college chapter and it was not actually the best thing. You see, I had just been initiated and not long after I had been initiated, I became a chapter president. Wasn't the best move and even worse move was that I was nominated again a little later on down the line to be chapter president again.
00:03:31
Speaker
And that time it wound up worse than it was the first time. Yeah. I kind of tore the chapter up and I got to tell you the reason is I did not have a sense of personal leadership. I had a lot of stuff going on, but then another part of this, you've heard me talk about followership before. I had not learned how to follow so that I could lead. And so,
00:03:58
Speaker
To get the most out of your fraternity or sorority experience, I think it is critical that you understand not only what personal leadership is, but how important it is to your leading your chapter effectively. Let's talk about it. The views expressed on Ethocast do not necessarily reflect the views of the hosts.
00:04:23
Speaker
guests or any entities with which this podcast's participants are affiliated. Questions, comments, email eddie at eddiefrancis.com. All right, so what is this personal leadership thing?
Crafting Personal Leadership Foundations
00:04:35
Speaker
Personal leadership would be the steps that you take to grow yourself, to engage in personal growth and development so that you are in a position and in a condition to lead other people effectively.
00:04:52
Speaker
Now in personal leadership, there are three things that I think you can look at. Number one, take a look at your personal mission, what it is that you truly believe in. Also take stock of your personal vision. Where do you want to be? What kinds of goals do you have for yourself? And then the third thing would be your personal core values. What kinds of behaviors are going to help you accomplish your goals and then eventually fulfill your personal mission.
00:05:22
Speaker
Now this is also quite honestly those three elements that I just talked about. It actually is also a path to you to developing a strong personal brand, which we'll talk about that on another episode. But you see, if you can lead yourself, then you can lead others.
Realities vs. Expectations in Greek Life
00:05:43
Speaker
but there's also a big mistake that you can make here and it's a mistake that we have to address and that is perfectionism. You know, one thing about Greek life and you kind of heard Sarah Colazzo, uh, alluded to this on episode Zeta of this podcast. She alluded to the fact that she was someone who had it all together. That's the way she wanted it to look. That's the way she wanted it to feel, but that's not quite the way it worked out. But her case is not unique. I don't care what kind of return it to your sorority you belong to.
00:06:20
Speaker
It could be an NIC and NPC. It could be an NPHC. It could be whatever. It could be Latino, it could be Asian or whatever. But one of the things that we always do in Greek life, at least a good number of us is that we engage in this, this pursuit of perfection. We put on the letters and when we put these letters on, we feel that we have to be a certain thing. We have to be a certain way and we won't accept anything less because if anybody catches us slipping, how's that going to make me look? Now. Don't get me wrong. I am not saying that you should not pursue excellence.
00:07:08
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By all means, pursue excellence, make excellence a habit. That is a worthy cause, a very worthy pursuit. But the thing is, is that Greek life has a way of nudging us into a place of unrealistic expectations. We make unrealistic expectations of each other, and we also make unrealistic expectations of ourselves sometimes.
00:07:38
Speaker
No one is perfect, but personal leadership demands that we work on ourselves continually. And that would be the trick. If I had it to do all over again, if I could be a college chapter president again,
00:07:59
Speaker
The thing that I would do is every semester I would do something to evaluate myself. You know, I like to journal. I would have journaled back then much more. I would have asked myself so many more questions about who I am and why I'm doing what I'm doing and why it's special to me and and what is it about this fraternity that, that had me so drawn in and making me want to work. I definitely,
00:08:29
Speaker
definitely would have done a better job of creating goals for myself. And you got to understand something. When I was in college, see now a lot of you in college, you have some great stuff, some great resources. You have these resources of people who are going to take you through goal setting, uh, seminars and, and that sort of thing, your orientation, hopefully,
00:08:53
Speaker
Hopefully your college orientation was one where the expectation was set that you would succeed in college. Hopefully you had a college orientation where people said, Hey, you're going to make it. And this is how you're going to make it. And here are the resources for you to make it. You know what I had in college in a fall of 1988, what I had was a college orientation where the provost said, okay, everybody take a look at the person to your left.
00:09:21
Speaker
take a look at the person to your right. One of you will not be here at graduation time. And I'll be damned if I was the one who wasn't there at 1992, I graduated a little late. I was a super senior. So you have these opportunities right now.
00:09:41
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so that you can figure out ways to work on yourself continually. And one thing I would say is that if you have somehow forgotten about it because Greek life has a way of helping us do this sometimes, don't forget about the resources that your college or university have for you so that you do engage in continuous personal growth and development. So listen, all right, so let's set the stage.
00:10:15
Speaker
you are in your chapter and you are doing personal development. You're doing a personal leadership. You're doing personal leadership. He's doing personal leadership. She's doing personal leadership. Everybody's doing personal leadership. It's a beautiful thing, but you can't do it in silos. If you're in a fraternity or sorority, you have the perfect setup so that everyone can work together. So what you can do is create an accountability system in your chapter.
Accountability and Personal Leadership in Chapters
00:10:52
Speaker
Now,
00:10:54
Speaker
an accountability system doesn't have to be harsh. If you grew up the way I grew up, the way you heard accountability a lot of times was honestly, it was kind of a penalty at times. I'm going to hold you accountable. You need to be held accountable, but There's a speaker by the name of Allen Stein Jr who made my favorite quote about accountability. He said, accountability is something that you do for someone. When you think of accountability that way now think of accountability as a gift. Think of it as an opportunity.
00:11:41
Speaker
And as a chapter, think of accountability as an opportunity for you to communicate with your brothers, to dream with your sisters so that all of you are able to do personal leadership individually.
00:11:58
Speaker
but you help each other develop your personal leadership. Now let me be realistic here. You know, I'm a member of the divine nine. And if you're listening to this, and if you are someone who is a chapter of one, a chapter of two or three, then I have a suggestion. Go to your alumni chapter.
00:12:23
Speaker
and try to get a couple of accountability partners out of the alumni chapter. And now yeah I know that with the alumni chapter, they may not listen to this thing, but just give them the pitch and, and tell them, I need you to help me grow. Oh, they're going to be all in then, you know, cause everybody wants to be a great mentor.
Role Modeling in Fraternity Life
00:12:48
Speaker
So consider this also,
00:12:54
Speaker
Personal leadership is also incredibly important for your chapter members and you because you have peers on campus from outside of your fraternity or sorority who are always checking you out. And when I say checking you out, what I mean is they are observing how you carry yourself.
00:13:21
Speaker
They are observing what it is that you do to bring honor, to bring dignity to your fraternity or a sorority.
00:13:33
Speaker
And that may seem like the opportunity for some people to say they should mind their own business, but they can't mind their own business. You want to know why? Because we in Greek life, we're walking billboards. We put our letters on and we stick our chests out as far as we possibly can. can. So yes, you know, you do have these people on campus who are going to be checking you out. They are looking at you right now. And while they are definitely looking at your chapter as a whole, they are much more interested in what people in your chapter are doing individually. You don't have to like it. You just have to know that this is a distinct possibility. So where do you go from here?
00:14:21
Speaker
Well, I have three suggestions.
00:14:27
Speaker
One, align your personal leadership with the values of your fraternity or sorority to take stock of the three elements that I talked about earlier, your personal mission, your personal vision, your personal core values, and then three,
00:14:49
Speaker
determine how you can be of value to the people around you. And I'm telling you, if you can figure all of that out, then you will see that your personal leadership will serve you very well. And it's also gonna serve your chapter really well.
00:15:10
Speaker
Hey, listen, uh, just want to go ahead and make a pitch here right now. Do you have a spring retreat coming up? Some kind of spring awards event. Do you have black history month and you're looking for a speaker? Well, look your boy up. Okay.
Acknowledgments and Closing Remarks
00:15:25
Speaker
All you have to do is get at me, Eddie, at Eddie Francis.com. I'm going to end on this note and it's going to be a thank you, a big fat,
00:15:35
Speaker
crazy shout out thank you to the McNeese State University National Panhellenic Council. I had the great opportunity to hang out with them at their NPHC leadership retreat in Lake Charles, Louisiana and I love doing it. We hung out for three hours and I loved every single second of it.
00:15:56
Speaker
And I hope, I hope that they got a lot out of it. And yes, throughout this retreat, we talked a lot about personal leadership. So McNeese state. Thank you so much. Go pokes. All right. That does it for this edition of lethal cast.
00:16:12
Speaker
Ethocast is a four-hour edification limited series. If you like what you heard, like and follow this podcast for more leadership insights for your fraternity or sorority chapter. To find out how you can bring followership to leadership or the Black Greek success program to your campus or a campus near you, email today, eddy at eddyfrances.com. Until next time, spread brotherly and sisterly love wherever you go.