To The Old Officers
Hey there officer, you did it! You made it to the final stretch and you are in the fourth quarter. Mostly, the work is done and you are moving on, moving out and moving up. Before you bombard your predecessor with a mind dump and barrage of new internet passwords, consider how you might leave things better than when you found them.
Fraternity and sorority members are both creatures of habit and invention. We find a system that works and we do it over and over and over again with little regard for flexibility or modernized environments. Sometimes, we decide that the way we have done things in the past needs to drastically change so much that we wind up repeating work and making things harder on ourselves. There is nothing wrong with either of these things but as you transition out I want to challenge you to leave things better.
Here are 5 things you can do as an outgoing officer-
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Get the logistics in one place. All the passwords, meeting dates, contact information, rule books, stuff no one wants to even think about daily need to be in one easily accessible spot. You don’t need to spend time talking about these things, just make a list of what is there and what the new person needs to know. Consider sharing with them what they need to access and do in their first week, month, and 3 months to help ease them into their position.
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They really need your wisdom more than your re-hashing of what you did. More than the checklist, think on the why and the how. Consider what you found helpful, what you wish you had done differently, the goals you had in the beginning of your role and what prevented those goals from coming to fruition. What can this new person focus on or what can they accomplish that you were not able to? What are the resources you found most helpful? What do you wish you had known?
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Help them dream. Ask your predecessor what their vision is and help them make a plan as to how to bring that to light. Consider asking them what you can do to support that and challenging them to think through barriers and needed supports.
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Don’t be a stranger. Check in often at first and maybe monthly thereafter. Celebrate wins with them and answer questions with a mindset of coaching rather than telling. For example, “I don’t think that will work unless you are willing to do a lot upfront” vs “That is a super brave idea- I wonder what if we should make a list together of what will need to be done upfront.”
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Don’t hover. The position you left is not yours any longer. You did what you could and now it’s someone else’s turn. It may look different or not be what you would do and that’s ok. Give new leaders the space to fail and succeed.
Group growth is what we do here. This is a list that I would call “adjacent” to group growth. This stuff matters a lot because a chapter that transitions well is in a place to functionally focus on what matters- who we bring into our experience and the experience we are providing.
Written by Dr. Colleen Coffey-Melchiorre, Growth Consultant