Facilitation Observation Analysis

The meeting that I chose to attend was for a club that I have never experienced before.  I attended the American Sign Language (ASL) Club meeting on Friday, August 30, 2013.  The meeting began very informal.  When I arrived there were a few people there, and a time to socialize with unfamiliar faces was made available.  I was also able to introduce myself to a few of the members who I had not yet met.  I felt this was a very good opportunity because I have rarely been in the McDaniel’s Building, so everyone that I saw there was a “new face to me.”  This definitely presented itself as an chance for me to feel more comfortable when the meeting actually began.

When the meeting began, the President, Chris, introduced the club to visiting individuals such as myself.  This was a nice way two welcome people.  I did note that from this point the President did lack confidence and structure when trying to act as the official head of the club.  Ashley, the Vice President of ASL was a great voice for the club and she made it clear that the club really has a mission of enveloping the community by being inclusive of the deaf community.  I really appreciated when she stated that the mission was to bridge the deaf community with the Adams State University community of students.  I also feel as though she transitioned this very well by allowing a time for attendants to introduce themselves.

The ice breaker that Ashley provided was an opportunity for students to introduce themselves by name, and then have them state what brought them to the meeting.  This was inclusive to the club by requiring students to introduce themselves using American Sign Language.  I felt as though this was a great opportunity for first time attendees such as myself to see how the community removed barriers and community with each other.  I was awe struck when I saw that even the individuals who I would not have had a clue that knew sign language, introduced themselves using it.  When it came time for me to introduce myself, I had no idea how to sign my name, so Cody Morton, the Secretary, introduced me.  I felt that this was a very welcoming gesture.

As the meeting progressed, I saw that the only two individuals who played a consistent role of executing a fluid meeting were Cody and Ashley.  I saw both of them as very strong contributors to the meeting and its success.  On a constructive criticism note, I would suggest that their other officers should engage as much as they did.  I felt that a message may have been sent to the attendants that the rest of the officer team was not as enthusiastic as the other two were.

I overall feel as though this meeting went very well.  I do feel as though there could have been stronger if the officer team would have worked as a unit.  I did do a follow up with Ashley and she indicated that she and Cody would be meeting on Saturday, September 1, 2013.  I have observed that these two are the main driving forces behind the club and the direction it is going in.  If I were to say something in regard to this, I would suggest that the club evaluate who they want to be in each position, because from how it appears, there are only two who are tirelessly working towards the vision that the club seeks.

 

Executive Report

As the President for the Pacioli Executive Board, I can confidently say that I feel as though our club is going in a positive direction.  There has been many milestones that my Executive Board has reached in these recent weeks following the beginning of the semester.  Initially, this year Pacioli began with four members.  With the hard work and dedication of the Executive Board, we were successfully able to increase the membership amount drastically.  The current paid members sits roughly around 20, and the prospective members that remain unpaid is in the ballpark of an additional 30 people.

On a separate note, I have realized that a club that is growing at the speed that Pacioli is results in obstacles with communication.  Trying to convey messages to our members and make sure that each of them are on the same page has been a very difficult task.  It has began to echo that same difficult among the Executive Board members.  I have noted that I need to incorporate a list similar to the one that fellow classmate Michelle Little presented during one of the first days of this class.  That table not only holds the members of the club accountable for the duties that they claim, but it also gives me the opportunity to develop my responsibilities as a President.

Opportunities for Pacioli have become so abundant in number that I want to focus on “staying true” to the vision and the why that the Executive Board laid out for the club.  I believe that the prime opportunity for me to navigate to this point is by working with my members to develop a Constitution for Pacioli.  The Constitution conceptually acts as a navigational chart to direct the club in the direction that it NEEDS to go in.  I know that I do not know everything that the capacity of the Presidency  demands, but I am learning slowly, and with the help of my officers I will reach many points of wisdom.  I also know that this class and my fellow classmates will offer me many opportunities to learn and develop my skills as well.

Vision Statement

The vision statement that Pacioli has adopted is as follows:

“Pacioli strives for each of the members to have one job offer and a graduate school opportunity arranged prior to graduation from Adams State University.”

Executive Report #2

At the beginning of this academic year I knew I would be beginning a new chapter of my life, but I was not aware that this chapter would entail a lot more than a culmination of a the previous chapters.  Assuming the leadership role for a club that was not very active the previous year was very intimidating and scary because I had not precedent that I should follow.  I personally believe that the expectations for Pacioli were low since they were not very involved.  My goal was to first focus on membership and this meant recruiting at every opportunity that was available.

After the members had been recruited, I started taking this class and it has helped me to be an effective leader.  I realize that I still have a lot of work to go, but I am confident that I will develop my own leadership strategies which are best suited for me and the people that I lead.  Currently, I have been encountering a few struggles.  The concept of facilitating/leading a club and trying to sustain a very positive approach to my academics has been a challenge from time to time.  I have found that it can be very overwhelming to manage both, because that requires me to concentrate twice the energy to ensure that all of Pacioli’s operations are running smoothly.

Homecoming week has been one of my greatest nemesis’ during my time as President.  I have a one executive board officer who is very ambitious about homecoming and is wanting to run with the idea, and there are several members who have looked at homecoming from a realist perspective.  I have began to observe that the ambitious officer is very disappointed when we collectively choose to “scale down” her vision of the events, and has a tendency of taking it personal.  I realized that this would be a more difficult conflict to discuss, because I am aware that emotion and business do not mix well, so I needed to form a strategic approach of the situation with this officer.  One thing that I did in order to approach the situation was to constructively sit all of my officers down in a board meeting and share each of our thoughts and expectations that we hold for Pacioli during Homecoming week.

One of the things that I found very rewarding about this meeting was that everyone of us took ownership of things we have done, been a little to over the top with, and how we have also failed our members in someway.  For example, I feel as though I may have failed my club because I chose to let my officers who are more creative than I to design each of the Homecoming events.  I realize that I may not have structured this concept very well because there was not leadership or facilitator behind their projects.  They drafted great plans for each of the events, but when it came to their execution, the plans lacked the necessary facilitation.  Conceptually, this opportunity allowed me to develop my actions and decision for my position in the future.

Executive Report #3

The past few classes from Leadership and Event Planning have helped me tremendously in multiple aspects.  I know that after Homecoming I was very stressed but relieved at the same time.  My stress stemmed from the idea that I may have burnt some of my members out during the events of the previous week, and I was also worried that my Executive Board did not feel satisfied with our our involvement in each.  One thing that I learned as a leader was that everything that I say, I must follow through with.  For example, the float was the most time consuming project and being that my garage was the storage facility during its construction, it was mandatory that I be there during all the construction activities.  This time commitment was a lot, and I think that is was very evident that I did not obligate myself as much as I should have to my studies because of the project.  After failing on exam, I realized that I would not be able to manage this extra stress that really was not necessary.  I cancelled all of the remaining workshops to work on the float for the week and my members were very angry with me.  I reminded them that our sole purpose as students was to obtain a degree, not to strictly partake in club activities.  I knew that my words did not calm their frustrations as well as I had hoped, so I knew that being we had already committed to a float, I needed to follow through with it.  I organized one workshop that was able to accomplish all the tasks of the other workshops, and we dedicated all our time to it.  This was held on Friday which I think was a very good decision, because the events of our classes had concluded for the week.

This opportunity and handling of the circumstances for the float will only make me a more effective and efficient leader next year.  Also, I have realized how fundamental the incorporation of the programming and planning schedule is for events.  I know now that if I follow the sheets that we have been given in class more religiously, it will only strengthen the results of the finished product.

After watching a new Ted Talk, I have began to concentrate a new approach with the way that I may handle the affairs of Pacioli.  I have began to philosophy that attitude is everything.  I think that for some of us on the Executive Board, it is often very easy for us to become discouraged or quick to fall into the gossip of what we are disappointed about that did not happen.  I personally feel that if each of my officers and I were to practice having a positive attitude and having faith in ourselves before the storm, we will have faith and be successful by it as we sail through the storm.  Next, I have began to make sure that each of my members and officers are aware of what we are doing.  I think that often times we may look at projects/events as being current and reaping benefits that we do not really seek until they are right before us.  I think that if we were to practice being aware more often, we would have have attitudes that would reflect a purpose that is bigger than our individual selves.  Finally, I have made it my personally mission to be more authentic in my approaches to overall situations.  I realize that there are many avenues of getting to a specified outcome, but I am really trying to incorporate more originality and creativity in it.  I am especially trying to do that with the way that I am organizing Pacioli’s trip to Denver.  I feel as though this would not only benefit the way that I lead Pacioli, but it would enable me to discover a different dimension of how I can lead and I will be able to grow from that.

Critical Evaluation

The events of Adams State Homecoming have been very exhausting.  I think that this feeling is universal among many of the clubs that participated and the royalty that was representing each.  This was my first year being an executive of a club during this time of year, and I guess people were not kidding when they said that it would cause such a headache! In fact, I slept from 3pm Saturday afternoon until 10am Sunday Morning.  That is a total of 19 HOURS!!!! I think that is the most I have ever slept consecutively in my life!

The events that I chose to cover in my critical evaluation were those from Homecoming.  During the week, we participated in the Lip Synching competition, the Medicine Show, the Comedy Show, and the Parade.  The Lip Synching competition went very well.  I feel as though the organization was there as well as direction for the clubs.  I know we were informed of when we would be up to perform, and this made our planning and ultimately our presentation go very smooth.  I also appreciate the way that Ashley handled the wrap up of the evenings’ events on state.  I do have to say that I admire the way that she recognized each of the individuals that helped her.  I think that this was a very wise thing to do as it allowed for the members to feel a sense of appreciation, and it exhibited a component of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.   (For the future, I will make sure that Pacioli has either two CD’s or the song in MP3 format so that we do not encounter any problems when it comes to playing our music.)

On the following evening, the Medicine Show took place.  Again, I feel as though this was a very organized event.  It went extremely well as far as the involvement that Pacioli had, and I appreciated how friendly the GAB Staff was with coordinating with our requests for the closure of the stage curtains.  The only constructive criticism that I have for GAB for this particular event is that in the future we need microphones on the stage.  I know we had put in a request on the Sunday for the rehearsal, and I was under the impression that we would be receiving them so that we could be heard audibly throughout the auditorium.

After the comedy show, all royalty was required to sign in to show that they did in fact attend the event.  I think that this was a very appropriate measure because it ensured that each of the nominees were in fact there even though the event was not required for the entire clubs to attend.  This is the first event that I had a concern about any of the GAB sponsored events though.  During the time that we were signing in, the Queen nominee approached Tiana to express her concern that her name was spelt incorrectly on the ballot.  From a leadership perspective, I feel as though Tiana handled this situation very poorly.  She did not show any empathy for the nominee’s point.  I think that this situation could have been handled much better than it was because the situation worked its way through the grapevine very quickly.  Tiana addressed the situation by stating that if there was an overwhelming amount of votes for the Pacioli King nominee, then there would be a reason to call for a revote.  Personally, I do not know if this was an effective thing to say because a Queen should not have her votes based upon those of the King.

Finally, the only other thing that I would add in sequence with event planning would be the number of sashes that were ordered for the Royalty Nominees.  Overall, I think that GAB did very well with the events of Homecoming with the exception of stress crossing into the way that they dealt with student concerns.

Second Quarterly Funding Request

i am not going to lie, this class has been very stressful.  Although the stress has been pretty intense, I have learned a lot that has enabled me to become a better leader for my members.  For the second AS&F Quarterly I wanted to apply a lot of the elements that I have identified from class.  I began by developing an event that incorporated:

1) engagement from the members

2) involvement from all of the Executive Board during the planning process

3) room for suggestions/alternative ideas

4) voting to confirm that this is an event of interest

 

The event that I proposed was a lecture series.  I believe that ASU is a University that offers a lot of great opportunities to the students, but I think that we over promise the contacts and experience that we offer for the fields of study. It was my mission the close this gap so that students are offered the avenues necessary to secure their engagement and understanding of the professional degrees that they are seeking as undergraduate students.

 

i realize that in order to do anything great, I must first start doing things well with the foundation of this concept.  Pacioli will begin with identifying the audience as the students within the School of Business.  We will be focusing on getting a diverse group of speakers over a series of 7 lectures so that we are about to increase each students engagement in academics by 1 level in addition to where they currently are.  Next, we will be collaborating with clubs outside of Pacioli.  Such clubs are PBL and AgriBusiness.

 

I did take take this idea before my club, and encouraged them to generate a few of their own ideas so that we had a broad scope of choices to decide from.  it was a landslide vote to go with the lecture series, so that is what I drafted the Second Quarterly Funding Request for.

On a final note, I have began to practice a new element of leadership that I believe has been very effective. “Under promise, over deliver.”

 

Executive Report #4

The semester has drew to an end, and there is so much that I have learned from my experiences as a club leader and as a student of HEAL 279.  I feel as though I have acquired a lot of vital concepts that have allowed me to lead a club such as Pacioli and identify the shortfalls of what we have organized as well as assess the overall events that we have partaken in.

 

The first event of the semester that I organized was a trip to Denver to visit an KPMG (One of the Top Four Accounting Firms in the World), and the University of Denver.  The planning process was very stressful and demanded a lot of dedication from my Executive Board.  I was very lucky to have very motivated individuals sit on my board so that we were able to plan and organize a trip that was very efficient and strict on focusing on  the mission and vision of the trip.  The mission of the trip was to engage students in an activity that would encourage them to view their present academics as the primary ticket of determining whether or not they will be elgible for graduate programs or prospective jobs upon graduation from ASU.  The vision was to motivate students to excel in their work and increase their participation within Pacioli and to look at the club as a resource for getting their foot into whichever door they should choose.

 

Post trip, I have allowed my Executive Board and the rest of the club members to take a “break” and focus on their academics.  I held a meeting a week following the event that assessed the events of the trip, and I received a lot of constructive feedback that will allow me to work on the member concerns more when I plan another trip for Pacioli.  As for next semester, we have a lecture series that is being planned and will be offered to all School of Business majors.  The vision for this event is to get students to increase their participation by one level as we have studied from blender events.