Bringing Leadership Development to Your Campus by Michael Osborn

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Making Leadership Development More Than Just an Ideal

By Michael K. Osborn National Vice President for Programs Kappa Kappa Psi

Over the past few years leadership development has become an important focus of our fraternal mission. We as a Fraternity have dedicated a portion of your dues to leadership activities, developed and distributed the Guide to Leadership Development, and brought speakers and events to district and national conventions. Each of these activities is a great start to moving our Fraternity toward creating strong leaders for our bands, our chapters and our lives. Can we stay at this current level of activities and fulfill our mission? Simply the answer is no. If we are to become a Fraternity of leaders, setting people up with the skills that we all can use to be successful in life, then we must move forward.

How do we move forward? By bringing leadership development to our own chapters in an effort to make this leadership learning more hands on and more direct in its approach. We all have sat in the lecture class where we were given the book to read and the professor summarized the book, or where we were talked to about something without ever getting a chance to act on the abilities we were being taught. This happens when you are trying to teach large numbers of people at one time or when you are teaching a broad topic. This has been much of the focus so far in our quest for leadership development. Not that we have not done a good job in getting started, but there is so much more we can do when everyone from national president to the most recent initiate is involved in planning and/or participating in activities to strengthen our leadership skills.

How do we create a wide scale leadership development plan at the local level? It could be as simple as taking advantage of the opportunities that you as students are already paying for. Most campuses have some form of student affairs or student activity office that your tuition is supporting. Many times these departments or others on your campus have trained professionals whose job it is to work with campus groups to teach about leadership, drug and alcohol abuse, diversity, and other life issues that confront or are important to college students. It is common that these facilitators are seldom used unless it is a requirement of a group’s suspension or probation for making mistakes in some area. It is also common that these professionals are free for registered student groups (because you are already paying for them through your tuition). Why not utilize these campus resources and be a leader on your campus by seeking out their help without being forced to? If those resources do not exist on your campus or even if they do, some area of your campus (be it the student affairs people or the student government) might provide grants for student groups to bring in resources to achieve certain purposes. This would be a great opportunity to bring in a qualified clinician. There may even be other faculty on campus that are qualified and can bring pertinent education to your group if you seek them out.

Another approach that could be taken to not only fulfill our purpose to serve the bands as well as develop leadership is to work with your band director. Perhaps you could work with your director to bring someone to campus or help to establish a leadership-training program from your bands, or at least your band’s leadership.

Perhaps you could even work with other area chapters to bring resources to your chapters as well your bands. If you have other schools in a reasonable distance then why not share the cost and increase the benefits for our Brothers?

The bottom line for chapters should be finding ways to bring leadership activities home. If you are a chapter leader (and remember that everyone within a chapter can and should be a leader in some capacity) this is a great opportunity to show your leadership abilities to your Brothers. Whether finding leadership development situations to work through as a chapter or bringing in a clinician, it is important that our leadership efforts take on a personal role in our development and provide people with opportunities to have a personal experience with leadership training instead of sitting passively as someone talks to them. It is through providing these comprehensive leadership development opportunities that we take the next step toward fulfill our goal and mission to create a Fraternity of leaders striving for the highest!

Editorís Note:

The Halftime Gallery feature announced in the last issue of The PODIUM has been held over to the next issue due to lack of space. Reminder: send us a 5î x 7î or 8î x 10î color photo of your bandís most interesting or unusual halftime formation. If we publish it, youíll receive credit and your chapter will win a prize: a copy of the limited edition ΚΚΨ/ΤΒΣ 75th Anniversary print, suitable for framing!