THE EXPONENT: Volume 99, Number 1

"Our goal is simple - You achieving yours."

Good men and jackasses can't coexist for long in a chapter environment, eventually one or the other changes, leaves, or is forced out, and so a chapter collectively defines its character. - Pete Swanson minn88

How true that statement rings. Like individuals, groups like Triangle can't and won't tolerate less than the best of themselves. This takes personal discipline to become the best one can be and to help others do the same. It takes fortitude to help someone who's straying from that road. It takes commitment to improve our Fraternity one member at a time.

It's the beginning of a new year and, for most undergraduates, the beginning of a new academic term. You've got a unique opportunity to grab right now...be willing to make your life and the lives of others more successful and happy...recognize the attitudes and methods which are hindering you from achieving your personal or your collective goals and make change so that they do.

Contents

• Attitude
• Leadership Strategy III: Trust Through Positioning
• I Don't Buy My Friendships -- I EARN Them
• A Success Story

Attitude

Anonymous

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a fraternity... a home.

The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our Attitude.

I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you.

We are each in charge of our Attitudes.

Leadership Strategy III: Trust Through Positioning

Summary of book by Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus (Copyright 1985)

Also see part 1 and part 2 of the series.

Fail to honor people and they fail to honor you; but of a good leader, who talks little, When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, They will say, "We did this ourselves. -- Lao Tzu

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with great talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. -- From a plaque on the wall of Ray Kroc

The difference between human organizations and other organisms is the central importance of the time dimension. In most natural systems, change occurs very slowly and is often measured in thousands of years. In human systems, change can occur very rapidly. As a result, nothing is more important to modern organizations than their effectiveness in coping with change. Whereas other organisms change as a result of natural selection, organizations change as a result of specific choices that they make themselves.

The leader's vision for the organization must be clear, attractive, and attainable. We tend to trust leaders who create these visions, since vision represents the context for shared beliefs in a common organizational purpose. The leader's positions must be clear. We tend to trust leaders when we know where they stand in relation to the organization and how they position the organization relative to their environment.

There are four main strategies that leaders choose (sometimes unwittingly) in order to position their organization:

1. Reactive. With this approach, the organization waits for change and reacts - after the fact. Some leaders who operate in this fashion act through default. In other, possibly more effective cases, a reactive strategy is designed to keep options open and to provide the necessary flexibility to cope with a wide range of occurrences. A reactive mode is the least expensive (and often the most shortsighted) strategy; it may occasionally work, but only in slowly changing environments that allow enough lead time to react.

    

2. Change the internal environment. Rather than waiting for change to happen to them, leaders can develop effective forecasting procedures to anticipate change and then "proact" rather than react. In the short run, they can reposition the organization by granting or withholding funds, manpower or facilities to parts of the organization expected to be affected by the changes.

   In the long run, internal environments can be changed in a more enduring way by altering internal organizational structures; by training and education; by selection, hiring, and firing; and by deliberate efforts to design a corporate culture that develops certain values.

    

3. Change the external environment. This approach requires that the organization anticipating change act upon the environment itself to make the change congenial to its needs. This might be done through advertising and lobbying efforts, collaboration with other organizations, creating new marketing niches through entrepreneurship and innovation, and various other means.

    

4. Establish a new linkage between the external and internal environments. Using this new mechanism, an organization anticipating change will attempt to establish a new relationship between its internal environments and anticipated external environments. In the short run, this can be done by bargaining and negotiation, where both the internal and external environments change to accommodate each other more effectively.

Trust implies accountability, predictability, reliability. Trust is the emotional glue that binds followers and leaders together. The accumulation of trust is a measure of the legitimacy of leadership. It cannot be mandated or purchased; it must be earned. Trust is the basic ingredient of all organizations, the lubricant that maintains the organization, and, as we said earlier, it is as mysterious and elusive a concept as leadership -- and as important.

One thing we can say for sure about trust is that if trust is to be generated, there must be predictability, the capacity to predict another's behavior.

I Don't Buy My Friendships -- I EARN Them

Mark Zmarzly
From the Daily Nebraskan (U. of Nebraska), April 2, 1998

I don't have much money so they aren't good friends. Just kidding, fellas.

That's the reason I joined a fraternity. I figured I wouldn't make any friends on my own so I'd better buy them. I pay for the privilege of friendship.

What I can't figure out is why my room and board at the fraternity was only $3,240 for the school year. Dorm rates next year are $3,640. Our double occupancy rooms are bigger than the dorms. Our room rates also include extended cable. If I'm paying for my friends, why am I not paying as much as a person living in a dorm?

It is a commonly held stereotype that members of the greek system buy their friends.

There are social, pledge and initiation fees the first year that push your total living expenses as a freshman over that of someone living in the dorms. There are also in-house scholarships, paid offices and payment plans that reduce that cost back below that of living in the dorms. I didn't join a fraternity because I feared I wouldn't fit in. I joined because I thought the guys there would be loyal friends for life. On March 27, I received a reminder of that fact.

It was the last day of spring break. I was sitting around with five friends in our Panama City Beach (Fla.) hotel room. We were sitting around talking, waiting to go out for the evening. We were supposed to be talking about the week, women, the trip home or what club we would be going to. Instead we were talking about another friend of ours who was back in Nebraska.

In March 1996, a brother in my fraternity came up to me at 8 a.m. the Thursday before spring break. I had heard his little sister had passed away the night before. He walked into my room and told me when the funeral was so I could spread the word among the fraternity members.

I asked him how he was holding up, and he broke down crying. I hugged him for 10 minutes, not knowing what to say. I told him how sorry I was and that I would see him at the funeral.

I didn't know his sister, but I felt an instant connection to the pain he was going through and I felt devastated. The funeral was on Saturday. My fraternity brothers took off work, delayed spring break trips, put off going home and even came back from out of town to be there in support.

When we arrived, the church was packed. There were five seats reserved in the pews for myself and four of the other officers. The other 30 or 40 of my brothers watched the funeral on a television in another building, without sound.

We weren't there to hear the funeral service. We weren't there to speak. We were there to support our brother. That support came in the form of simply being there for him.

We saw our friend for a total of only 30 seconds that day. In those 30 seconds, he walked out of the church, looked over at all of us standing in the grass and said to his mother, "That's my fraternity."

That brother had a difficult time with the death of his sister. The next time we saw our friend he made it obvious how much our support that day meant to him. When I think of that day I think of tragedy and pain, but most of all, I think of support.

Brotherhood and the fraternity experience are concepts without definition. When someone comes up to me and asks me to explain what brotherhood is, I can't. It is something different to all members.

Friendships are formed and tightened in every aspect of our lives. A simple conversation over dinner can make a friendship stronger. Fraternities and sororities add another dimension to a friendship.

Members of the greek system are there for a common purpose - to add their ever-improving abilities and skills to the organization. This common purpose and the shared experiences bond members together tighter than in a normal situation. You work and live with these same members, and it only increases the bonds that you feel.

Just two weeks ago the women of Gamma Phi Beta Sorority buried a sister and friend, Laura Cockson. These women have been each other's support for the last two weeks. Not only have they given a shoulder to each other but also to the Cockson family. The grief that all of these family members feel is eased ever so slightly by the knowledge that so many people knew and loved their daughter.

The goal of this article is not to convert all members of this campus to greeks. The truth is that being greek is not for everyone. It takes a lot of time, dedication, personal sacrifice and selflessness. The unity and friendship that results from this conscious time sacrifice has been enormous.

I could not imagine surviving and excelling the way I have over the last five years without my fraternity brothers. People in the dorms may have friendships that match or even exceed the ones I have described above.

If you believe that greeks pay for their friends, I won't disagree with you. We pay willingly with time, sacrifice and ourselves

A Success Story

Excerpted from an email sent to the National Headquarters about two years ago from a chapter that had had a great deal of success overall, but particularly in recruitment.

As for this years large pledge class, we did change a few things. We started last semester, trying to get everybody to realize that what we were doing wasn't working. We needed to change our image and make people realize that Triangle is serious about scholarship and providing connections for jobs as well as trying to have fun while in school. After several discussions with the active body last semester, we finally got the point across that we need to do a few things.

1. We needed the engineering campus to know that we are serious about scholastics. This was done by starting study sessions on campus. Usually only Triangle guys go, but we started advertising them so that students know that we have them.

    

2. We needed to get more involved on the engineering campus. We started this last year with events like sponsoring a pre-engineering bash with the College of Engineering and getting involved in Engineering Expo, which occurs every other year.

    

3. We needed to utilize our resources (such as Alumni) to offer resources to members. We have tried to create more networking with Alumni. For example we brought in an alumnus from Abbott Labs to talk about how to interview. This was a large success.

(Editor's Note: The National Headquarters staff can provide you with information from research about what students today are looking for in organization membership.)

TRIANGLE FRATERNITY

Is Serious about Scholarship

Sets and Demonstrates High Standards

Celebrates Achievement