In Leadership class, we have officially come up with a name for our team: Team Back Corner. It fits, because we sit as a group in the back corner of the room in class, and it's unique. The group has been discussing what we are going to do for our service project. Last week, we concluded that we would give back to the Greek Community here at Virginia Tech. We are going to pass on our knowledge of Leadership skills to the new girl pledge class of Sigma Kappa Sorority. We made the decision as a group through having one group meeting to discuss what we wanted to do as a service project first, then another meeting where we decided who we would spread our knowledge to as well as how we were going to do it. We then brainstormed activities we could conduct for them to do to teach them about teamwork, communication, and cooperation. This process that Team Back Corner carried out in deciding what to do for our service project relates very closely to the brainstorming and group creativity discussed by Levi in Group Dynamics for Teams. In Chapter 12, he explains how creativity can be limited by groups, unless everyone is able to contribute to the decision making of the group. Because we took our time deciding what to do and didn't rush into it, and everyone in the group was able to contribute their ideas, we successfully brainstormed and came up with creative ideas. SO WHAT?
We have chosen to do this as our service project because in order to be in a sorority, it is very important that you develop leadership skills, as well skills needed to work properly within a team. There are many jobs delegated to girls who have served time in the sorority, and these jobs require working with girls within the sorority, with sororities throughout campus, and sorority chapters throughout the country. To teach these new girls proper leadership and teamwork skills (discussed by Levi), we are holding a workshop that consists of an opening intro presentation, three activities that involve working within teams to accomplish a goal (Human Knot, Trust Walk, Designing), and a closing presentation that summarizes what they have learned for the day. The workshop will only be an hour long, so they only have ten minutes at each activity. We are hoping that these activities will help them to practice and understand what it takes to work together successfully within groups and reach their goals as quickly (but efficiently) as possible.
NOW WHAT?
The group needs to contact our liaison in the sorority named Carly to make sure that the service project is confirmed. Once it has been confirmed, we are going to set up a date and time to run the workshop. We have completed our list of resources that we need, so the next is to collect the supplies that we will need in order to run the workshop. We have to create any important slides for the intro and outro presentations. Most importantly, we have to finish our proposal that describes the service project. I feel very confident that this workshop is going to run smoothly, and that we can successfully spread our knowledge gained through leadership studies.
