THE EXPONENT: Volume 99, Number 2

"Our goal is simple -- You achieving yours."

I think that one of the reasons I've been interested in The X-Files is its theme of "trust no one." I would venture a guess that I'm not alone in that interest. Not trusting people is a natural defense mechanism. It also often seems that we are justified as a society in thinking that we really shouldn't trust people. So why wouldn't we find interesting something that supports our belief system? It's too bad, though, that we humans don't seem to listen to the wisdom of the ages -- "all things in moderation." Confucius once said that "3 working together can do more than 6 alone." We must trust each other to work like those 3. In Triangle, that best means that we Brothers must trust each other to get the best results for each of us.

My apologies for what may seem like a long issue. I hope you read it all nonetheless, because I think you'll find it both interesting and useful.

Contents

• Choose!
• Leadership Strategy IV: The Development of Self Through Positive Self-Regard
• How To Improve Scholarship

Choose!

Source unknown

Jerry is the kind of guy you love to hate. He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, "If I were any better, I would be twins!"

He was a unique manager because he had several waiters who had followed him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him, "I don't get it! You can't be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?"

Jerry replied, "Each morning I wake up and say to myself, Jerry, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood. I choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life."

"Yeah, right, it's not that easy," I protested.

"Yes it is," Jerry said. "Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It's your choice how you live life."

I reflected on what Jerry said. Soon thereafter, I left the restaurant industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something you are never supposed to do in a restaurant business: he left the back door open one morning and was held up at gunpoint by three armed robbers. While trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found relatively quickly and rushed to the local trauma center. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body.

I saw Jerry about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, "If I were any better, I'd be twins. Wanna see my scars?" I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place. "the first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door," Jerry replied. "Then, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or I could choose to die. I chose to live."

"Weren't you scared? Did you lose consciousness?" I asked.

Jerry continued, "...the paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the ER and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read 'he's a dead man'. I knew I needed to take action."

"What did you do?" I asked.

"Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me," said Jerry. "She asked if I was allergic to anything. 'Yes' I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, 'Bullets!' Over their laughter, I told them, 'I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead'."

Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully. Attitude, after all, is everything.

Leadership Strategy IV: The Development of Self Through Positive Self-Regard

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

Also see part 1, part 2, and part 3 of the series.

My intentions always have been to arrive at human contact without enforcing authority. A musician, after all, is not a military officer. What matters most is human contact. The great mystery of music making requires real friendship among those who work together. Every member of the orchestra knows I am with him and her in my heart.

--Carlo Maria Giulini, Conductor, Los Angeles Philharmonic

Many leaders use five key skills:

1. The ability to accept people as they are, not as you would like them to be. In a way, this can be seen as the height of wisdom -- to "enter the skin" of someone else, to understand what other people are like on their terms, rather than judging them.

    

2. The capacity to approach relationships and problems in terms of the present rather than the past. Certainly it is true that we can learn from past mistakes. But using the present as a takeoff point for trying to make fewer mistakes seems to be more productive for most leaders -- and certainly is more psychologically sound than rehashing things that are over.

    

3. The ability to treat those who are close to you with the same courteous attention that you extend to strangers and casual acquaintances. The need for this skill is often the most obvious -- and lacking -- in our relationships with our own families. But it is equally important at work. We tend to take for granted those whom we are closest to. Often we get so accustomed to seeing them and hearing from them that we lose our ability to listen to what they are really saying or to appreciate the quality, good or bad, of what they are doing.

    

4. The ability to trust others, even if the risk seems great. A withholding of trust is often necessary for self-protection. But, the price is too high if it means always being on guard and being constantly suspicious of others. Even an overdose of trust that at times involves the risk of being deceived or disappointed is wiser, in the long run, than taking it for granted that most people are incompetent or insincere.

    

5. The ability to do without constant approval and recognition from others. Particularly in a work situation, the need for constant approval can be harmful and counterproductive. It should not really matter how many people like leaders. The important thing is the quality of work that results from collaborating with them. The emotionally wise leader realizes that this quality will suffer when undue emphasis is placed on being a "good guy." More important, it is a large part of the leader's job to take risks. And risks by their very nature cannot be pleasing to everyone.

Leaders Are Perpetual Learners

Learning is the essential fuel for the leader, the source of high-octane energy that keeps up the momentum by continually sparking new understanding, new ideas, and new challenges. If the leader is seen as an effective learner from the environment, others will emulate that model, much as a child emulates a parent or a student emulates a teacher.

While the leader provides the stimulus and focus for innovative learning, some organization are learning-handicapped. They just seem to be so rigid and inflexible that nothing less than a major crisis can change them. That's the bad news. The good news is that leaders can redesign organizations to become more receptive to learning. They can do this by redesigning open organizations that are both participative and anticipative.

Individuals learn as part of their daily activities, particularly as they interact with each other and the outside world. Groups learn as their members cooperate to accomplish common goals. What the leader hopes to do is to unite the people in the organization into a "responsible community," a group of interdependent individuals who take responsibility for the success of the organization and its long-term survival. In doing so, leaders contribute to the competence of individuals and groups to manage complexity in their environment.

The Wallenda Factor

Shortly after Karl Wallenda fell to his death in 1978 (traversing a 75-foot high wire in downtown San Juan, Puerto Rico), his wife, also an aerialist, discussed that fateful San Juan walk, "perhaps his most dangerous." She recalled: "All Karl thought about for three straight months prior to it was falling. It was the first time he'd ever thought about that, and it seemed to me that he put all his energies into not falling rather than walking the tightrope." Mrs. Wallenda added that her husband even went so far as to personally supervise the installation of the tightrope, making certain that the guide wires were secure, "something he had never even thought of doing before."

From what we learned from the interviews with successful leaders, it became increasingly clear that when Karl Wallenda poured his energies into not falling rather than walking the tightrope, he was virtually destined to fall.

We're now at the point where we can bring together the two elements of the management of self into a unified theory. Basically, both positive self-regard and the Wallenda factor have to do with the outcomes. In the case of self-regard, the basic question is: How competent am I? Do I have the "right" stuff? The Wallenda factor is primarily concerned with one's perception with the outcome of the event.

The management of self is critical. Without it, leaders may do more harm than good. Creative deployment of self makes leading a deeply personal business. It's positive self-regard. The meaning of this phrase comes from responses to this standard question: "What are your major strengths and weaknesses?" For the most part, leaders emphasize their strengths and tend to minimize their weaknesses. Which is not to say that they weren't aware of personal weaknesses but rather that they did not harp on them. Good leaders always emphasize the positive -- their best and the organization's best.

The Myths of Leadership

1. Leadership is a rare skill. Nothing can be further from the truth. While great leaders may be rare, everyone has leadership potential. More important, people may be leaders in one organization and have quite ordinary roles in another. The truth is that leadership opportunities are plentiful and within reach of most people.

    

2. Leaders are born, not made. Don't believe it. The truth is that major capacities and competencies of leadership can be learned, and we are all educable, at least if the basic desire to learn is there.

   This is not to suggest that it is easy to be a leader. There is no simple formula, no rigorous science, no cookbook that leads inexorably to successful leadership. Instead, it is deeply human process, full of trial and error, victories and defeats, timing and happenstance, intuition and insight.

    

3. Leaders are charismatic. Some are, most aren't. Charisma is the result of effective leadership, not the other way around, and that those who are good at it are granted a certain amount of respect and even awe by their followers, which increases the bond of attraction between them.

    

4. Leadership exists only at the top of the organization. In fact, the larger the organization, the more leadership roles it is likely to have.

    

5. The leader controls, directs, prods, manipulates. This is perhaps the most damaging myth of all. Leadership is not so much the exercise of power itself as the empowerment of others. Leaders are able to translate intentions in to reality by aligning the energies to the organization behind an attractive goal. Leaders lead by pulling rather than pushing; by inspiring rather than ordering; by enabling people to use their own initiative and experiences rather than by denying or constraining their experiences and actions.

Once these myths are cleared away, the question becomes not one of how to become a leader, but rather how to improve one's effectiveness at leadership -- how to "take charge" of the leadership in an organization.

How To Improve Scholarship

From a presentation by Gerald Jakubowski at Triangle Fraternity's Herbert F. Scobie Leadership School, August 1996

Definition of Scholarship:

...achieving one's fullest potential

• Over emphasis on activities
• Misdirected priorities
• Lack of study skills
• Lack of motivation
• Personal physical factors (e.g., too tired)
• Lack of an organized chapter scholarship program

• "Grades are an individual thing."
• "We're a social fraternity."
• "We were really involved; that's why our GPA fell."
• "Image is based on parties and intramurals, not scholarship."

1. ESTABLISHED STANDARDS AND ATTITUDES

Factors that Affect Scholarship

• Grades are becoming increasingly important as today's graduates enter the job market. Competition is great and grade point average will be a major factor whether you are offered a job or even an interview.
• There needs to be a personal and a chapter "mind set" towards academics.
• Strive for academic excellence.
• Enforce scholarship program without reservation and without hesitation.
• Establish conditions to study and academic achievement.
• No matter how good the program is, it will fail if the members do not have a positive attitude toward its goals and objectives.
• Good scholarship will create better members and a better chapter.
• A demonstrated commitment to scholarship can make a difference during recruitment.
• Insist that chapter members never tolerate academic dishonesty.

1. Personal pride and achievement
2. Future employment
3. Group recognition and approval
4. Duty and obligation to self and to group
5. Desire for respect and approval
6. Rewards
7. Fear of punishment, penalty, rejection

2. SCHOLARSHIP CHAIR

It is important for the Scholarship Chair to realize that he can't make members study; scholarship is an individual commitment! His most important task is to create a proper environment and an attitude within the chapter house; one that is conducive to study and one which provides the resources and motivation necessary to facilitate good study habits. The Scholarship Chair must also develop a Chapter Scholarship Program by involving as many chapter leaders as possible; he should not attempt to "do it alone!"

Responsibilities of the Scholarship Chair

• Develop and/or implement a written chapter scholarship program.
• Be the "force" behind the proper chapter attitude toward scholarship.
• Establish and enforce chapter rules for study (quiet hours, minimum GPA requirements).
• Set chapter GPA goals.
• Establish and provide chapter scholarship awards.
• Maintain scholarship files/test files.
• Schedule guest speakers.
• Promote intellectual curiosity.
• Provide academic resources (tutoring program, "how to study" resources).
• Establish a chapter library or other study area.
• Become acquainted with university services to assist members with academic difficulties.
• Communicate with national headquarters as to programming or resource needs.
• Assist in the development of a scholarship program for new members.
• Compile grade reports and follow-up with individual poor performers.
• Chair chapter scholarship committee.
• Prepare weekly scholarship reports for chapter officers and make a report at every chapter meeting.
• Maintain confidential academic records on all members.
• Consult the campus Greek advisor and other campus officials for assistance and resources.
• Attend scholarship arranged by the IFC or other student life organizations. If these meetings do not exist, suggest they start and volunteer to lead the effort.

Who should be on the chapter scholarship committee?

1. Scholarship Chair
2. Class representatives
3. Scholarship advisor and/or faculty advisor
4. Pledge educator

• The members appointed to this committee are not necessarily the chapter's best scholars, but members devoted to improving the academic attitude and overall scholastic standing of the chapter.
• General Committee Goal: Develop programs that the chapter will adopt in an effort to improve its academic standing.
• Members will study with or without a productive scholarship committee or chairman. Effective programming can't make members study, but it can help them study better and achieve their maximum potential.

1. Set goals and objectives for chapter scholarship.
2. Prepare and distribute chapter scholarship program.
3. Recommend and enforce quiet hours.
4. Ensure chapter library has up-to-date materials.
5. Organize a tutoring program
6. Implement an awards program/incentive program.
7. Provide speakers and programs for the entire chapter.
8. Recommend changes to chapter by-laws, if necessary, to reflect chapter commitment to academic excellence.
9. Develop scholarship programming for pledges and hold-overs.
10. Assist the rush committee in evaluating the academic of potential members.
11. Work with the social committee to ensure that chapter events are not scheduled during critical times on the academic calendar.
12. Review academic performance of initiates, pledges, hold-overs, and initiates not in good academic standing. Coordinate special programming for these who are deficient.
13. Maintain the chapter scholarship bulletin board.
14. Be familiar with campus resources.

A Scholarship Review Board is helpful for monitoring the overall chapter scholarship program and for assisting individuals having academic problems. For example, the board can meet with individual members experiencing academic difficulty, develop a course of corrective actions, and monitor the individual student's progress. Likely candidates for the Scholarship Review Board are the chapter advisor, faculty advisor and alumni members.

5. SKILL DEVELOPMENT AND PROGRAMMING

Scholarship programs to be offered to the membership

1. Test taking skills
2. Note taking skills
3. Time management skills
4. Motivation
5. Goal setting skills
6. Stress management
7. Career decision making
8. Interest inventories
9. Resume writing
10. Individual academic assessment
11. Individual academic goals

• Study Halls and Tables -- Location should be quiet and conducive to study. These activities must be properly monitored. One suggestion would be to hire a graduate student to monitor the study hall. Study halls should not be forced.
• University Programs and Resources -- The Scholarship Chair should be familiar with campus resources available to chapter members.
• University Regulations Regarding Academics -- The Scholarship Chair should be familiar with the academic standards of the university -- probation, suspension, etc. He should be able to articulate these requirements to the chapter membership.

A university has a plethora of resources to assist individuals in doing their best academically. Consider these resources.

Campus Resources
Invite personnel from these offices to present a program to the chapter. As a minimum, provide information about these offices to the chapter members and make referrals when necessary.

• Campus-wide, College and Departmental Tutoring
• Remedial Courses
• Test Files
• Academic Assistance Offices
• Writing/Math Labs
• Assessment Centers
• Career Development Center

• Test Files
• Faculty/Course Evaluations
• Faculty Advisor
• Guest Speakers
• Tutoring Network
• List of Members by Major (i.e., who's majoring in what)
• Use of Big Brothers
• Individual Counseling by Scholarship Chair, Scholarship Committee, Scholarship

• Study Halls
• Chapter Library
• Study Buddies
• Study Groups

Here are some incentives and awards to consider for recognizing individual scholarship achievement:

• Annual or Biannual Scholarship Banquet
• Individual Achievement Awards
• High GPA in Chapter
• Most Improved GPA
• Best Big Brother/Little Brother GPA
• Scholar Athlete
• Scholar Leader
• Press Releases
• Letters to Parents
• Financial Rewards -- dues, fees, scholarships
• Minimum GPA to Hold Chapter Office
• Minimum GPA for Initiation
• Minimum GPA to Maintain Good Standing within the Chapter
• Recognition for Those on Dean's List
• Recognition at Chapter Meetings
• Certificates
• Gifts

1. Treat pledges and new members with respect, dignity, and acceptance.
2. Pledge programs should be based upon a system of management and guidance rather than law enforcement.
3. Walk the Talk! Pledges copy the behavior of active members.
4. View pledges and new members as individuals with physical and mental needs. Discipline does not necessarily promote high academic achievement!
5. Use awards and incentives.
6. Pledge scholarship programs should be organized and expectations clearly articulated. Consistent behavior and actions of the active membership is important to the performance of pledges.
7. Provide:
   • Introduction letter from scholarship chair -- include chapter scholarship standards and list of scholarship committee members with room numbers and phone numbers
   • List of where to study
   • Directory of campus resources
   • Time management aids
   • List of chapter aids and resources
   • Classroom aids
   • Study tips
   • Information on stress management and tension
   • Programming

1. Members not going to class
2. High use of alcohol
3. No investment in room/no decorations, etc.
4. Member not seen studying
5. Procrastination

• Quiet hours are established and enforced. Suggestions: 7pm - 8am Sunday to Thursday and 24 hours the week before finals and finals week.
• Chapter library is established with appropriate resources (magazines, books, dictionary, encyclopedia, periodicals, etc.). Remember, the purpose of the chapter library is not to replace the university library.
• Ensure study areas are quiet and well lit. Provide study areas for groups as well as individuals. Establish a study area/room away from the TV room or other recreational facilities.
• Schedule chapter/pledge activities as to not conflict with heavy study times (e.g., mid-term exams, finals, etc.).
• Review academic responsibility with all new members. Make sure new members understand the chapter commitment to scholarship. Make sure new members understand the chapter scholarship program and the expectations associated with it.

1. The first semester is the most difficult.
2. The new members will seldom admit they need help until it is too late.
3. Freshmen tend to become infatuated with the fraternity experience.
4. Specifically, freshmen experience difficulties with:
   • Freedom
   • Academic Challenges
   • Issues of Sex
   • Substance Abuse
   • Food
   • Sleep
   • Identify Clarification
   • Goal Setting
   • Purpose
   • Relationships
   • Time Management
   • Lifestyle Change
   • Career Decisions
   • Financial Issues/Financial Aid
   • Jobs

Tim Eiler minn87
Triangle Fraternity National Council Past President
Engineering Project Manager - Digi International Former U.S. Astronaut Technical Educator
baSIcs: Something Innovative in business administration consulting services
RELENTLESS pursuit of EXCELLENCE!!!

TRIANGLE FRATERNITY

Is Serious about Scholarship

Sets and Demonstrates High Standards

Celebrates Achievement