The Five Dysfunctions of a Group of Camp Counselors

What?
In the summer of 2009 I was a camp counselor at Camp Horizons in Harrisonburg, Virginia. The previous summer I was a Counselor in Training (CIT). There were a group of us that were first year counselors after our summer of training and we were the youngest counselors at camp. We were mixed in with very experienced counselors and those that were much older than us. Some of us were only two years older than the oldest camper. This led to a whole slew of problems. There were problems in the cabins, within teaching activities, and even just over-seeing evening activities and campfires. There was tension and unhealthy relationships that were forming on camp. Something had to be done. Below is the group of "support staff," or counselors in charge of each village and activity at camp.

So What?
Having an absense of trust within our staff at Camp Horizons led to all sorts of issues. The older counselors did not trust us to properly teach any of the activities. In the picture below, I am standing with my basketball class and it appears that I am close in age to my campers. But, it only meant that I was a little less strict with them and I let them decide what we would do. I didn't run drills with them. They were at summer camp, they came to have fun so that's what they would do. But, the older counselors thought that this was wrong and that I should have been teaching lessons. The unwillingness of the counselors to be vulnerable enough to trust us to lead well was what was getting in the way. The lack of trust led to a fear of conflict within our staff. Because these counselors didn't trust us as new counselors, they feared that the campers would not be satisfied or safe with us. They thought that we were legitimately incompetent with our actions. In one situation, I was in charge of planning an evening activity. It was a really nice night and I wanted to plan something with water balloons. It turned into a huge water fight and kids were running around all over the place. The older counselors felt like I was displaying a lack of leadership and they feared conflict and injuries. The fear of conflict led to a lack of commitment. The older counselors essentially forced us out of our own authority. They continuously would take over when we were in charge and our group never had a clear consensus of what was going on. Because we quickly became an uncommitted team, our confidence quickly diminished which led to avoidance of accountability. We were not committing to a clear plan of action and the younger counselors soon became very hesitant of their actions. This lack of accountability led to a few counselors holding personal resentment towards a few of the other staff members.

Now What?
In order to avoid all these issues from happening, the camp has enacted a few new aspects to the counselor program. It's understandable that the camp is no longer hiring staff directly after their CIT summer. They wait a year to let them age and mature a little bit. Having an equal staff is very important because if the campers realize that there is conflict going on within the counselors, it could become a greater problem. Also, there is now a week long training program before camp starts in order to allow the counselors to all get to know one another better and really build teamwork before they have to be responsible for campers all summer long. Also, each counselor gets 24 hours off on the weekend to leave camp and have personal time. This allows the counselors to rebuild themselves since being a counselor at a sleep away camp is a exhausting job. It's important that counselors all get along and have fun together because if not it would be impossible to have fun with the children. Below is the group of younger camper's female counselors enjoying the Disney dance.

Yearbook Editor: From a Different Perspective

What?
Now that you have read about the issues within my yearbook staff during my senior year of high school, I'd like to go into the strengths that we had. I clearly made it seem like our staff was completely incompetent but the truth is that the editors and I were very satisfied with the final product and we did not complete this task just the three of us. Every school year, the staff is required to attend a workshop at a hotel that consists of spending the entire day learning about applying your theme to layouts. This workshop is extremely beneficial to the staff because they are more apt to listen to professionals rather than the editors. As editors, we were generally only a year or two older than the rest of the staff which meant that they did not feel as though they had to listen to us, therefore it was nearly impossible to teach them how to make layouts.
Because the yearbook is so important to the school's student body, the yearbook staff requires an application and interview process. After this process, we create a process team. Because this group creates an overall product over a long period of time, it is a process team. There is a lot of work that goes into the yearbook.

So What?
Because the creation of the yearbook is such a long and tedious process, there has to be rewards given in order to make sure the staff feels appreciated. From Daniel Levi, I have learned that giving individual rewards is good for motivating high performers but discourages team work. Because of this, we usually paired two people together to create a layout. Therefore, when they finished their pages, went to an event to take pictures, or simply seemed like they were working well together, we gave them positive recognition. We would bring in baked goods or reward them with a good grade. I say this because people were slacking so much with turning in assignments that giving poor grades to the slackers was what we turned to. We noticed that when we would reward the entire team, the motivation and morale in the class would sky-rocket. At the end of a large deadline when everything would be turned in on time, we would have a party with the newspaper staff during class time. We would order pizza and go outside and enjoy the day. This really got the staff at a good happiness level and ready to tackle the next deadline.

What Now?
Looking back on my time as a yearbook editor, I realize that I was probably more harsh than I should have been with the staff. They probably didn't realize that there were many other people that wanted their spot on the staff and that was why I had such high expectations of them. A lot of the staff thought that the class would be an easy-A and boost their GPA. I'm sure they all got a wake up call when they saw their quarterly interim grades. I would use scare tactics to get them to do their work. At the end of the book, we wrote a letter from the editors, recognizing each staff member for their accomplishments. This was somewhat like a team recognition program because we would reward them with a non-cash reward of just recognizing them through the book. We wanted the school to know how much time, effort, and skill went into the creation of the book. I think that by the end of the school year, the staff really appreciated the editors and understood that when we would edit their pages, we were really showing our perfectionism rather than criticizing them for creating weak pages.

Honduras Mission Trip

What?
In the summer of 2007 I went on a missions trip with my church youth group to San Lucas, Honduras. While we were on this trip we worked closely with the children of our sister-church. We played soccer with them and taught them English while they taught us Spanish. One of the biggest aspects of the trip was rebuilding a kitchen within the church. we had to tear out the cement floor and lay new cement. A lot of the teenage boys within the San Lucas community thought that they should help us remove the cement. We got into a group and tried to figure out a strategy. We decided that the boys in the group would break the cement with the tools and the girls would carry the pieces over to the pile. The Honduran boys decided to join in after we decided this and would break the cement and then carry the pieces themselves. This messed up our process because people were going through the one door over and over again. There was not really space for people to enter and exit repeatedly, which is why we came up with the system. As a group, we came up with this simple way that the goal was going to be accomplished. This defines our team's culture because we came up with norms and roles that each person would fulfill.

So What?
As a group, we collectively decided that this process was messed up because of the Trait Approach. We assumed that because they were not apart of our youth group, they acted as they pleased. They came up with new ways of doing what they wanted to do. As a culture, they do not value teamwork as much as my group did. They have different values, skills, and personalities. These boys thought that by doing the task individually with everyone contributing the same amount, they would be successful and efficient. We didn't want to say anything to the boys because negative comments often cause misperceptions and interpersonal problems within the group. Some people within my group formed social perceptions about the boys. They assumed that because they wanted to be independent and work alone, they are always stand-offish and like that. They formed stereotypes by categorizing the boys.
In order to fully understand how we were going to operate as a team, these Honduran boys would have had to ask us. They were most likely worried that their English would not be good enough for us to understand what they were asking us. This was another assumption that was commonly made.

Now What?
Returning from the trip, we realized how hard it is to truly be the minority. I think that as a group of mainly Caucasian, Episcopalian people we just have never been in the position in which we were the minority. It's hard to have true diversity within a group and avoid assumptions from being made. A lot of times when we're in school, we make the first impression error by basing our judgments on the first impression we get of people in the group. For example, if I was ever in a group for a project in high school and I had heard that someone in my group was lazy and didn't perform well in the last group he/she was in, I would automatically assume that they would not contribute to my group.
Going on this trip taught us a lot as a group. It taught us not to take life for granted after seeing the living conditions within the city. In San Lucas, the typical family has seven children and live in a one to two bedroom home. Their homes were usually made out of cardboard boxes, at least in the area that we were in. We also learned so much about ourselves. We were placed in an area in which English was not the first language spoken by any means. We had to learn to adapt and not disrupt the culture where we were.

Yearbook Editors turn to Positional Power

What?

When I was a senior at Yorktown High School in Arlington, Virginia, I was the Editor in Chief of the Yearbook. I also served on the staff for three years before that. To say the least, I knew what I was getting myself into when I took the position as Editor. The other two editors, Liz and Lindsay had only been on the staff for one year prior to becoming editors so there was a bit of training to do. The summer before we started our editor year, we attended yearbook-editor training camp at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. (see picture). We learned about layouts, chose our theme, and were very excited about the upcoming year. We were ready to outshine the other books with a theme of, "speak up," in order to properly represent every single student of the school of 1,800 students. Out of these 1,800 students, there were about 50 students interested in applying for the yearbook staff.

We were a little nervous about hiring a staff of 20 because we had to perform interviews and make sure that we were asking the right questions. As leaders, we were practicing Soft Power in order to create an overall appeal to the yearbook staff. Through this soft power, we used referent power. There have been staff's in the past in which were what we liked to call, completely incompetent. We were hoping to avoid this for our senior year. After the interviews, we accepted about four freshmen, six sophomores, five juniors, and five seniors.

So What?

The staff that we chose did not turn out the way that we had anticipated. It seemed as though everyone took the class as an easy A and the editors were the only ones that took it seriously. So, we turned to Positional Power and took full advantage of our editor positions. According to Levi, We quickly noticed that deadlines were not being met, their pages were less than mediocre, pictures were being taken off Facebook, and attendance was starting to dwindle down very rapidly. So, we used our Legitimate Power and started to give out C's on report cards. We got complaints from parents and I would simply tell them to come into the classroom after school let out and I could explain the grades. I had no shame in doing this and had to a few times. It wasn't fair to the editors that the staff members were submitting such poor work and not showing up to class. We were told by our sponsor that we had to be coercive with our direction with the class. Looking back on the book after we received it, we realized just how many Sunday afternoons that were spent at Liz's house eating peanut butter m&ms and editing each page, one after the other. We would completely alter the layouts and change the photos. The staff would never be too happy about this but their submissions were simply not up to par. We were happy with the result of the book. Going through this experience with the staff taught me a lot about leadership.

Now What?

Because of this experience, I will use leadership differently in the future. I should have started off by being stern with the staff rather than focusing so much on them getting to like me. I should have stated how important deadlines were, letting them know about the fines that we were paying each day that the pages were late. I should have told them that it was not an easy A and that I would enforce strict attendance. In the future, I need to learn how to be more stern but also keep a positive and welcoming attitude. I need to balance my power a little bit in the future and let others give input. Each day when we had a themed page, I'd stand at the board and take ideas from people and delegate tasks so it may have just been the incompetence and lack of seriousness of the class. Regardless, I think that both the editors and the staff were at fault in leading and executing this class. 

Sigma Kappa Sorority Recruitment Party Chair Committee

What?
At Virginia Tech, I am a member of the Epsilon Chi chapter of Sigma Kappa Sorority. Within my chapter I have served as a party chair, helping to plan Formal Recruitment that takes place in January.  This committee consists of 16 members with 4 people assigned to each round of recruitment. This past recruitment, I was apart of the Philanthropy committee. We were in charge of decorations and deciding how the whole round would work.
In order to learn about this process, we have weekly meetings throughout the school year. At each meeting, we present a new idea to the group. As a party chair, we accept input from the other party chairs and try things out. Through what I have learned from Daniel Levi's leadership theories, it's clear that things don't always go the way you plan when working in groups but that there is always room for improvement.

So What?
After going through the recruitment process, It's easy to see that it's important to the chapter to have certain people in charge of organizing and planning recruitment. There were certain characteristics that I saw revolving around the party chairs. Unfortunately, the girls, including myself became victims of social loafing. According to Levi, social loafing is defined as the reduction if individual contributions when people work in groups rather than alone. The head of Philanthropy round was also in charge of our week long philanthropy event in the fall. Because she was so consumed with planning that, the planning for recruitment was put off until the last minute. The rest of my group decided that she would end up doing it. We decided this because everything that we'd want to contribute to, she'd just change. When recruitment came along, we had no plan and everything was a disaster.
In our case, I think that all our group needed was a little bit of cooperation. According to Levi, good cooperation leads to good communication. This is what our group really needed. Also, cooperation is more likely to occur in smaller groups than in larger groups. Because we had a lack of communication, we had trouble identifying our goals.


Now What?
I have now seen what the process is like through experiencing recruitment. I know how we should make changes for recruitment in 2012. It's easy to see what went wrong and what needs to be changed. This upcoming semester, I will serve as a party chair again, in hopes to bring new ideas to the table. I'm eager to hear from the new girls that will serve as party chairs to see what they have in mind for us. If a conflict arises, I will know how to fix it. With what I have learned from Levi about cooperation, I will easily be able to apply that knowledge and make sure our party chair organization goes more smoothly. I'm excited to start planning recruitment 2012 because of all the ideas and eager minds that are going to be apart of the process.