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.