The Student Leader Blog

Leadership: An Endangered Species?

At one point or another, the administrative powers that be must have turned to one another and said, “Our student groups have simply got to take on the structure of a government. After all, the government is the most efficient and creative organization out there!” At least that’s what they’ve decided at schools like Hunter College in New York City, where official student groups (from the math club to Dumpledore’s Army) are required to adopt the structure of a miniature government, complete with a president, treasurer, and secretary. So inevitably, the students become frustrated about being forced to fit this mold, and the administrators become frustrated because the students are faking their meeting minutes.

My apologies to the powers that be, but this system simply isn’t working. In my experience, successful groups step away from it and develop their own structure. And though they may have a president on paper, more and more groups are sharing responsibilities and taking turns leading one another rather than following one leader. Collaborative web tools like Wikis are gaining adoption and information is just a Google away. The traditional view of top down leadership is starting to look a bit awkward before this digital backdrop.

Then is teamwork dissolving the very concept of leadership? I don’t think so. Leaders are still the folks organizing and motivating others: Wikipedia is the ultimate display of collaboration, but Larry Sanger was the one that nurtured the idea until it took on a life of its own. Increased access to information and increased ease of communication is leading to student groups with multiple or rotating leaders; it isn’t making leaders go the way of the dodo.

So if involvement in student groups is supposed to lead to personal growth, and personal growth is about building leadership and communication skills, and groups with no defined hierarchies are providing precisely these opportunities for their members, then why are we still concerned about official meeting minutes? Maybe instead of an election, student groups should be required to have a Wiki. Instead of minutes, a blog. And instead of a government-inspired chain of command, enough flexibility for any member to be a leader.

P.S. The image above is a Dodo bird. And very sadly, it is not endangered but very much extinct. For whatever reason, I have always been exceedingly fond of the Dodo, and until very recently was convinced that I had seen one at the Bronx zoo. 

How to Cut Down Your Time Searching Online

The Internet is big and the amount of time you have is not. To get the most out of the few scraps of time that you do manage to salvage, stop searching for the information you need, and let it come to you. Having web tools like an RSS reader, topic alerts, and a personalized homepage is like having a personal secretary bring all of your reminders, correspondence, and handpicked news right to your desk, only it’s free and leaves no clutter in your office.

Your RSS reader (like Google Reader or FeedReader) will pull content from all of your favorite blogs and websites so you never have to visit them to check for updates. I wrote about these in a bit more detail in a past blog post.

Your alert system (like Google Alerts) will keep an unblinking eye out for any information on the web that is relevant to your or your group's interests, combing through blogs, websites, videos, groups, or whatever your specify.

And last but not least, you personalized homepage (like iGoogle and NetVibes) acts as your online hub and aggregates all of this information and more. By visiting just one page, you can see the latest updates to your reader, email, and personalized news. You can also use a widget like Jott.com to view your to do list and add new items as they come up, plus check the weather, browse your calendar, and see all your bookmarks so you don’t have to remember any new URLs. You can also create a personalized homepage specifically for your group so that everyone can add items, see updates, and have access to the same resources.

Sometimes Internet literacy means learning how to use fewer tools rather than more tools. The trick is to choose the tools that save you time, help your group members get on the same pag, and make you breath a sigh of relief.

It's not in my job description, and that's that.

I'm taking an Industrial Organizational Psychology course this summer, and recently, we covered the topic of job descriptions--a subject I've thought a lot about since development of job descriptions was added to my job description at my former job. (You may need to re-read that a few times before it starts making sense).

Anywho, during the class, my instructor was adamant about the fact that a worker must never say "it's not in my job description" to a superior. If your manager tells you to do it, then do it. Otherwise, you come across as unmotivated, lazy, arrogant, or all of the above. I can understand the merit of this advice, but in my experience (as leader and worker), this kind of ready-and-willing compliance also has a dark side.

A former coworker of mine actually lost his job in part because he was constantly agreeing to do things outside his job description. He accepted random tasks as his main responsibilities sat waiting, and he eventually lost credibility in the eyes of his supervisor--all as a result of being too eager to please.

As a worker, to prevent this from happening, I've learned a handy managing up strategy: saying "Okay, sounds good, but here are the things that I am working on right now. Which of these items should I push down in order of priority so that I could take care of what you're asking me to do?" This reminds the leader of your role and its importance while showing your willingness to do what ever needs to be done--as long as it's really a priority.

As a leader, I've made the mistake of asking members of my group to do things outside of their roles and later kicked myself for doing it because (a) I had delegated the task to people who weren't the best fit for it and (b) they completed this task at the expense of their priorities (i.e. the stuff in their "job" descriptions). And I also risked (c) making them feel unappreciated or overworked. All very bad juju. A leader has to respect people's roles and only ask for them to step outside these roles if it really makes sense to do so and with an appropriate explanation of the request, and then adequate appreciation. And that's how you get good juju.

The Bureaucratic Beast of Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy. Not only is it hard to spell, but it is hard to stomach too. Forgive me as I air my frustrations a bit and seek your advice. Here's what I'd love to know: are all colleges stricken with this crippling disease?
Are all companies with over 15 employees  bound to catch it? And what happens to seemingly human individuals when they become entangled in it?

If you have answers to these questions, then by all means, let me in on them, but since I haven't gotten any information yet, then let me turn to the only positive side of this that I can see: coping mechanisms.

As a student leader, I've learned about more forms and discovered more scattered offices than I had imagined in my wildest nightmares. I've never looked the Beast in the face (because no on knows for sure whether it has a face), but I have seen its footprints and smelled its fowl breath. And here is what I've learned:

• It's often (though not always) futile to try to battle bureaucracy: figure out when the fight isn't worth it and come up with some work arounds.
• Make copies of EVERYTHING because that one form that you're sure everything will be just fine with WILL get lost.
• Date EVERYTHING, for the Beast thrives on chaos and confusion.
• Make friends in low places (in a bureaucracy there are no high places). Go out of your way to learn people's names and start conversations, and if you find someone you get along with, hold on to that connection like you're holding on for dear life.
• Keep a directory for your team members of all offices and samples of all forms to avoid going to the wrong place and filling something out incorrectly. It's worth it.
• Get as much as you possibly can in writing for the Beast devours memories of the spoken word.
• When you're at your rope's end, chillax and start skipping the rope. There's only so much you can do, and only so much stress it's worth experiencing. Don't take it too seriously (because laughter is the Beast's biggest fear) and don't be afraid to get creative and have some fun with your tactics. That's right. I said chillax.
  

Now get this blog post signed by 6 people in order of their weight, make 3 copies, rewrite one original, and fax it to me between 12:30PM and 12:32PM on July 29th. Okay, ready, set, go!

Making it by Faking it (PART II)

I got into some interesting discussions after my last post, which made me want to clarify what I meant and didn't mean when I said "faking it."

I am a follower of the "ready, fire, aim" philosophy. I tend to dive into situations that are over my head, and learn to swim in them later. However, I would not recommend this strategy to anyone whose rookie mistakes can lead to serious consequences for the others involved. In short: don't pretend to be a cardiologist.

What I do feel comfortable advocating is faking the confidence necessary to lead until you start feeling that confidence genuinely. But this gets us into another tricky area; if this is okay, then what else is it okay to fake?

I once worked with a company that had three employees pretending to be 10 (because their clients didn't trust a teeny new company); now they have 25 employees. They faked it but then lived up to it. Does that make it okay? Or how about decorating a resume with slight exaggerations if you feel qualified for the job? Or pretending your student group has more members than it does so that more people want to join?

My feeling is that it's better to find an attractive side of your truth rather than make up a new one. A small company can be "boutique style," you can find a company that wants people with little experience but lots of passion, and you can attract new group members to a small group by offering them deeper, more meaningful involvement.

But then again, maybe that's naive... What do you guys think?

Introducing... The Topic of the Month!

We've had a lot of conversations with students at colleges ranging from the gargantuan to the teeny, and there is always lots to learn from what people have to say. To preserve and encourage these discussions, we've decided to come up with a topic of the month, every month, and start talkin.

So without further ado, here's this month's topic (post your answer in a comment below):

"How many hours per week do you work as a student leader during the summer months, and do you get paid?

Native Leader (or making it by faking it)

My mom is always asking me how and where I learned a particular word. I'll say something like "ambivalent" or "taciturn," and she expects me to be able to cite the origin of my knowledge. Sort of like parents on TV act when a kid uses a dirty word. But I never know what to tell her.

I started learning English when I was six, and it was a bumpy road, but I was driving fast. I'd try out a phrase I overheard, screw it up, then smooth it out. Playing fast and loose, as the Americans say. The competing flavor, of course, is slow and steady: buy a textbook, go to class, learn the difference between a noun and a verb. When I ask my mother where she learned a word, she gives me a page number.

For her, this style gets the job done, but English remains more of a subject than the stuff that thoughts are made of. Becoming a native speaker means being a scrappy, risky, and creative learner.

As far as I'm concerned, leadership is just another language; you can learn by the book, or you can dive into the deep end. Now, while I won't deny that I have hefty library of personal development books, I stand by the belief that nothing beats learning from your own awkward, terrifying, and eye-opening experiences. To me, learning to lead has meant pretending that I know how to lead, putting myself in a position of leadership, then figuring it out from there. This also means being able to do research as quickly as questions come up, being brave (and/or crazy) enough to try unusual approaches to a problem, and learning constantly from the people in my groups. It means messing up, laughing it off, and being confident that things will work out, come what may --and no, Mom, I don't remember where I picked up that expression.

Google Sites quickie tutorial/demo

Since I've never mentioned Google on this blog before, I've decided to dedicate today's post to a presentations of my favoritest new tool: Google Sites (sites.google.com).

Check it out here:

Google Sites Demo from Tania Dudina on Vimeo.

Oh... and I may have mentioned in the past some of the ways in which I've used Google Sites. Maybe.

Hope you find this helpful!

Saving money on textbooks and the question of why we are buying them.

The Fall semester will soon be approaching (or should I say encroaching?) and shopping lists will soon contain ISBN codes galore. As we all well know, textbook prices are often somewhere in the hundreds, and many of us never do crack those bad boys open after we shell out the cash for them.  So does all this makes sense?

Websites like Textbook Torrents and Chegg.com are saying heck no (though some more legally than others). Textbook Torrents, a site that allows students to share digital textbook files for free, has gotten quite a bit of attention lately, after publishers requested that it take down some of its listings. The site complied, but the debate over whether this is a new kind of piracy continues. Chegg offers a Netflix-like solution: renting textbooks for the semester and helping students save a whole bunch, provided you're okay with the fact that you can't highlight the pages. Some other alternatives include SwapTree.com and your school's library.

Oh yes, and NYPIRG is pushing for legislation forcing publishers to cut their textbook prices, but I feel that we're all missing the point here.
Maybe instead of persecuting an industry that's just trying to make money like the rest of us, we should start encouraging the industry to evolve.  Why is it that instructors are still assigning textbooks when the Internet is flooded with free information? Why is Wikipedia not considered a legitimate source of information by professors? Do millions of people check on textbook content to make sure it is factual? Maybe what needs to happen is for textbook publishers to wake up and start doing something more constructive, like charging schools a fee for aggregating class-specific information from online sources.

And I mean, come on! Why are we even talking about how expensive textbooks are when we should be talking about the fact that no one is reading them? NYPIRG recommends that teachers and students use old editions of books to save money, but wait a minute, isn't education about new information? And new information happens faster than even the latest edition of a textbook can handle. Even if the legislation does cut book costs down from $80 to $60... that's a $60 paperweight and another missed opportunity to get something deeper from your education.

How to Prioritize (when your to-do list is taller than you are)

I think we've evolved to be doers, but not necessarily doers of the right thing at the right time. Now this obviously sucks. We find ourselves constantly working on something or other, spending piles of time and energy, and at the end of the day, there is no time to do that one super-important-gosh-I-meant-to-do-that-first thing. Though I am still plagued by this very modern ailment of scattered attention and procrastination, there have been a few things I've been able to do to get myself and my groups to be more productive.

BIG PICTURE PRIORITIZATION   

First and foremost, I keep in mind Steven Covey's wonderful, wonderful time management matrix from Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (which I HIGHLY recommend):

The way Covey puts it, our activities fall into 4 quadrants: (1) Urgent and Important (like deadlines, pressing problems, and medical emergencies), (2) Not Urgent and Important (like planning, studying, preparation, starting projects with deadlines early, relationship building, and exercise), (3) Urgent and Not Important (like many meetings and deadlines for things that won't really make a difference in your life), and (4) Not Urgent and Not Important (like busywork and time wasters).

The sad truth is that we tend to spend the bulk of our time in quadrants 1, 3, and 4, and hardly ever visit quadrant 2. But ignoring 2 makes 1 fill up with more and more pressing and stressful items, making us feel overwhelmed.

The solution: get your quadrant 1 items out of the way (staying out of quadrant 4), then focus on quadrant 2. The more you do so, the less items you have in the nasty quadrant 1 and the better you feel. Tadda!

FINE-TUNED PRIORITIZATION

Now that you're in the right quadrant, you still have to figure out which item goes first. My technique is taking a few minutes to rate each one (from 1- 5) based on:

- How close the deadline is
- How much time it will take
- How close I am to having all the necessary resources to complete it
- How good it will be if I do it
- How bad it will be if I don't do it

The bigger the sum of the ratings is, the higher the chances are that you'd better get started like right now... I need to go right that paper for my class now, don't I?