The Student Leader Blog

Can you change a system that doesn't want to be changed?

I hear over and over again that you can't change a person unless he wants to be changed. Well, how about a system? Does a system ever want to change? I think the bigger the system the less likely it is the it will want to get up and stretch its legs for a second, let alone attempt moving around and doing something different. Change is a system's biggest fear, right next to noncompliance.

When it comes to being a student leader, do you ever get the feeling that creating positive change feels a lot like moving grains of sand from one bucket to another with a pair of tweezers?  Or digging a tunnel with a toothpick? That about describes my state of mind when I find myself face to face with the Education System Monster. I start having this sickening feeling that no matter how hard I try, the most I can ever hope for is improving the experience of a few people. But the system remains unchanged.

Maybe things have to be changed from the top down. Maybe you have to crawl into the thing and get it to do what you want instead of just pushing it around from the outside. But how do you do that? This reminds me of Mr. Incredible's fight with that spidery robot thing that learns all your moves. First he fights it for a while, but then he manages to jump inside of it and get it to bash its own brains out. But where are the system's brains?

(Check out the last 2 minutes of the video)

 

Transformational Leadership: Giving Goosebumps and Drinking Your Own Kool Aid

Memorable leaders make us sit up straighter when we’re listening to them, they make us laugh, make us cry, make our pulse skip a beat or two, and give us goosebumps.

Transformational (or inspirational) leadership is probably what most of us imagine when we think of leadership, but in reality, leaders are usually transactional (leading through rules, rewards, and punishment alone). Why is the former more desirable than the latter? Ask yourself what the difference is between Martin Luther King Jr. and your current supervisor. Ask yourself whom you would rather follow: someone who fills you with passion and determination or someone who simply tells you what to do?

So how do you go from compliance to respect? From guide to guru? Researchers say that you need to practice the following:

    - Get very good at the skills necessary in your leadership positions (know how to fill out those damn forms better than anyone).
    - Become a role model (practice what you preach at all times, no matter how tired you feel or how inconvenient it may be).   
    - Have a vision and get others to see it - people don’t want to just do stuff, we want to change stuff and make stuff too.
    - Take positive risks and get creative - do things in a new and unexplored way and encourage your team to do the same.
    - Demonstrate your passion (if you find yourself jumping up and down or trembling while you speak about your group’s vision, you’re on the right track).
    - Notice people - show your team members how much they matter and that you see their strengths.
    - Challenge members intellectually (give assignments and ask questions that make their brains feel tingly).

Inspiring a group also takes a boatload of confidence and enthusiasm (a former employer of mine calls it “the sparkle in the eye” - he actually hires people based on that sparkle). And I think the prerequisite to inspiring others is inspiring yourself first. My friend Kevin calls it “drinking your own Kool Aid” (i.e. being a true believe of your own claims, goals, organization, cult, whatever). It’s only when you can get yourself out of bed in the morning because of your passion, when you find your vision creeping into most of your conversations, and when you can't think of a better way to spend your time than working toward your goals, then you can start pouring the Kool Aid into other cups. Bottoms up!

 

And the Adventure Continues

It's been a month since my last post already?! That's crazy. Seems like just a month ago I was spittin' game about my really long hallway and incredibly clever decorating efforts.

Oh.

Well anyway, it's 10 minutes before my birthday, I'm turning 21, and I'm at college. Might as well post about how school has gone so far. Balancing classes and the RA job is a struggle but I get work done. Everyone knows how boring and awful classes are so I'll focus on the latter item there, the more fun part :).

My residents have been great lately. Sometimes they're a bit noisy, but I think given my residence hall's reputation for sort of wild and crazy kids I've done a decent job of keeping them on the straight and narrow, if I do say so myself. They do go out a lot, but that'll happen everywhere you pack 52 18-year-olds into a pretty small space. I haven't had to call the police or paramedics yet, so that's something.

Most of my residents go about their daily business without guidance from me but I do make an effort to talk to at least 3/4 of them twice a day, either about official school things or just to hang out. Those efforts paid off in a huge way last night. I have this annoying problem where I try not to mention my birthday in the weeks leading up to it, but I end up telling everyone I know a week ahead of time anyway. Well, one of my residents works at Hallmark. I was sitting in my room with the door closed yesterday. When I tried to leave, I couldn't, as my residents just wouldn't let me. Eventually they did and I found this:

No other RA that I've seen in my 2+ years here has had their door decorated by their residents on their birthday. It meant so much to me and I gave everyone involved a big hug. To amuse myself I will provide an image of some of those people here as well:

I caught a cold this week which has put a damper on the celebration but I don't care. It really showed they gave at least half a crap about me which meant all my work is paying off. Inside the little bag there I found lots of candy and birthday cards signed by the people who helped decorate and other random roommates. My parents and grandma are coming down tomorrow (actually today! I'm so wasted! Whoo!) so I can show them I've not been wasting my time here. Life is pretty cool sometimes.

How to improve your self control in 4 steps

Over the past few months, I've been working with a friend of mine as her "life coach." We organize her home, discuss productivity blocks, develop organization systems, and other similarly fun stuff. I don't claim to be qualified, but at least I don't seem to be doing any damage.

This week, our focus is supposed to be on self control because my friend pretty much has none.

Hah! I say to myself. I can teach self control! Just then I notice that I'm feeling a bit nauseous. I look down and realize that I've just eaten about 3/4th of my left over birthday cake. It was an entire cake. I also notice that I'm tired. Perhaps it's because I just wanted 6 episodes straight of The Wire, but that's just a guess. Okay, maybe I'm less qualified than I suspected.

After this realization, I decided to do some research and some brainstorming on this subject. I've just started down this path, so forgive me if I stumble, but here are 4 steps for developing self control that just might work:

1. (a) Make a list of area in which you exhibit good self control and/or particular situations in which you felt you had a lot of self control.
(b) Write down what you were thinking and feeling or what you generally think and feel in these instances; how do you get control over your actions? Why do you think you have control in this area and not others?
(c) Write down how you feel about yourself when you practice self control and what its positive consequences have been.

2. (a) Make a list of the areas where you lack self control (e.g. eating, arguing, procrastination, poor prioritization).
(b) Write down your thoughts and feelings (especially rationalizations) at these times and try to find the flaws in the reasoning that leads you to "give in."
(c) Write down how you feel about yourself when you exhibit poor self control and its negative consequences.
(d) Compare this list to item 1.

3. Make a list of positive alternatives to your usual poorly controlled actions (e.g. eat a carrot or celery stick when you see a brownie lying on the table, turn to your to do list when you are about to start wasting time on line, instead of replying to a Facebook message right now, set a Facebook/email/text message date for yourself (set an alarm on your phone) and do it at a more appropriate time, turn off the light at a particular time at night even if you don't feel sleepy).

4. Review these lists on a regular basis and add to them as you learn more about your self control. Get to know your strengths and weaknesses (especially your rationalizations) so that you can catch yourself in time.

As I said, this is a new path for me, so forgive me if I stumble. I'll keep you posted on the efficacy of this advice as I try it out on myself. Your suggestions and confessions are encouraged :)

P.S. Must. Not. Go. Back. For. More. Cake.

All Work and No Play Makes Yours a Dull Group

Look at me whipping out an idiomatic expression again. Though I’m not sure if a parody of a quote from a creepy movie I never even saw counts…

So this post is about fun. Are you getting enough? Are you giving your team enough? With all the forms you have to fill out and the rules you have to memorize, your fun drive may be a tad low, but once you get started having fun, it gets addictive enough that you don’t have to try too hard. 

Fun comes in all shapes and sizes. As they say - it’s not the size of your budget that counts, but how you use it. Fun can be a huge party or a carnival type thing, complete with cotton candy and inflatable jousting rings, or it could be a game you play with your team for $0.00 (e.g. Morton’s Lite).

Download Mortons_Lite.pdf

You could redecorate your office together, walk backwards, meet in a park under sprinklers, have a random costume day, play flash mob games, come up with wacky themes for your meetings, create a theme song for your group, make YouTube videos together, put glitter on your forms, play some music, or just share some jokes.

Side effects of fun include bonding, looking forward to school, greater team loyalty, more creativity and innovation, and bigger smiles.

The point is that fun is fun, and we should have it whenever and wherever possible… because it’s fun, and life is short.

Deciding How to Decide

There are different decisions to make and different ways to decide. So how do you choose? Decision-making researchers (yup, they exist) suggest the following techniques:

    - Make the decision alone without any group member input.
    - Get opinions from a few key members of the group, but decide alone.
    - Decide with a few key members.
    - Get input from entire group, but decide alone or with key members.
    - Make a decision together with the entire group.

Of course, you can also ask someone to make the decision without your involvement (e.g. ask an advisor or count daisy petals), but the decision-making researchers don’t find those options interesting.

As a student leader, I think the impulse is generally to decide things democratically (at least it was for me). This is the best approach if the result of the decision is going to affect your team members directly (e.g. time of your meeting). But there are many other decisions that other people don’t need to and don’t want to think about.

For example, my attempt at having all my group members decide on a banner was completely unsuccessful, and a waste of time because I ended up waiting weeks for input that never came and then made the decision by myself. Even my attempt at deciding together with two key members was unsuccessful when I tried to get us to pick out chairs for our new office. I got two nearly identical email responses from each of them saying something like, “Whatever you choose is fine. The curvy one looks weird, but whatever.” FYI: I went with the “curvy” chairs, and everyone seemed happy with them (great back support).

In short, some decisions need group consensus and some need one decider (and everything in between). I think it’s okay if that one decider is you as long as your team is comfortable with you making decisions and the other members have opportunities to decide independently as well. Please spare the daisies.

What Ender’s Game Knows About Student Leadership

I just finished rereading Orson Scott Card’s book, Ender’s Game, and aside from being a great read, it is practically a handbook on student leadership. So okay, the main character is a genius six year old with the fate of mankind resting on his teeny shoulders, but that’s kind of like being a student leader at college, right? Kind of?

I won’t give away any of the plot points (because you really should read it), but here is an overview of what the hero, Ender Wiggin learns about leadership.

    - Power does not come from fear but from respect.
    - A team empowered to think independently is stronger than a team that follows orders     perfectly.
    - Give each team member autonomy, responsibility, and a chance to shine.
    - Avoid talking down to team members and never make fun of them - it could make you the big shot for a few moments but will ultimately lead people to lose trust in you.
    - Give praise when praise is due.
    - Make time to work with team members privately, in small groups and one-on-one.
    - Stay in control of your emotions so that people can depend on you, but show your human side so that people can empathize with you.
    - Push your team members to be their best - they’ll get tired, but they’ll appreciate it.
    - If insect-like aliens come to take over your college, remember to have fun while you’re destroying them.

(A wonderfull www.xkcd.com comic that you'll get if you read the book)

Campus Wide Game of Tag....With Zombies ( HvZ )

Campus life at Rochester Institute of Technology has never been so alive...well actually dead. The students are engaged in a campus wide game of modified tag called Zombie Tag that runs 24 hours a day nonstop.

USA Today picked up on the evolving game that's spreading like wildfire across the US.

The rules are fundamentally simple: Zombie tags human, human becomes a zombie. Unlike movie zombies, with shambling walks and undead makeup, zombies in the game just wear headbands to distinguish them from armband-wearing humans. And they are free to sprint.

Humans ward off zombies with Nerf guns or by hitting them with a balled-up sock — a defensive move that stuns the zombie, usually for 15 minutes. The goal is to still be a live human at the end.

There is even a website dedicated to the game as well as several YouTube clips that play like a late night edition of SportsCenter.

The idea of mixing small group activities related to just your interest group with whole campus events is great and collectively builds the culture on campus. Even if not everyone is participating as a human or zombie there is something about this "always on" type of engagement that builds excitement.