Leadership Map

My first official leadership position came when I was in 8th grade. I served as my elementary/middle school

student body president at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic School in Dallas, TX. Fall 2005- Spring 2006

I completed the Camino de Santiago (an ancient Catholic pilgrimage across Northern Spain ending in Santiago de Compostela).

In high school, I was inducted into the Order of the Arrow and earned the Eagle Scout Award.

I graduated from Bishop Lynch High School and went on to study at Loyola University Chicago

I feel that my time spent as Philanthropy Chair for IFC could have been handled better. I had one general event the first semester of my term that went well. 3-4 members of every IFC chapter came to help refurbish the Loyola Preschool playground. It went very well, however the next semester I took a more hands-off approach.

I facilitated a roundtable to get a handle on when people were planning on having their fall events.

Unfortunately, after the roundtable I assumed that the chapters would be able to handle their own events without guidance.

However, a couple of groups tried bigger events than they had ever done before. One of the did very well, while the other by-and-large flopped at their first attempt.

When I handed over the position at the end of the fall I was sure to tell the incoming chair that at least observation is required to make sure that groups have ironed out all the details before the week of the event.

In a Sigma Chi chapter, the Consul’s (my position) responsibility is to be an outward face of the fraternity. My job is to deal with headquarters, alums, and the administration. Whereas the Pro-Consul’s (VP) responsibility is to run junior and executive board meetings and oversee the chapter’s internal organization.

In trying to be like the leader-artist, I have been trying to adapt to my members’ mentality. My Pro-Consul, on the other hand, insists on taking an authoritative approach.

The authoritative style works on the younger members, but has begun to build resentment in the classes which helped found our chapter.

For awhile, I had been having trouble telling him to tone down this style of leadership because that revelation is his to discover for himself; not to mention the fact that his job requires a firmer hand than mine does.

We spoke about it privately, and since then, he has taken more care to not seem as authoritarian with the disgruntled members.

Occasionally, there is an instance where one member feels slighted, but when that happens the three of us sit down and discuss the problem so that we can avoid it in the future.

I am trying to be the artist-leader- finding the perfect masterpiece to fit my chapter. However, like our reading said, this is a process. In the mean time, I have been very reactionary in my leadership style.

When people were wanting to go on inactive status for the semester, I spoke to headquarters and found out the logistics of that practice before I brought it to the chapter. When meetings began to run too late in the evening regularly and people were complaining, I spoke to everyone and had them moved up.

However temporary this system is, it has had its moments of success when issues were acted quickly upon. Earlier this semester, the administration wanted to charge us over $1,000 just for the venue for a regional meeting of Sigma Chi chapters that we were going to host.

I immediately contacted other branches of the administration and with the help of student representatives, we were able to get the venue for almost entirely free. The event was near-flawless and our chapter came off smelling like roses. The reactionary leadership style can work, but only if you act quickly and coordinate your members through delegation.