OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Choosing an Organization Worksheet

Complete the following making sure to support your ideas and cite from the textbook and other
course materials per APA guidelines. After the peer review, you have a chance to update this and
format for your Electronic Portfolio due in Module 6.

1) Describe your organization.

The organization that I am choosing to examine is the sorority I have been a part of my

entire college experience. I served on the executive board as the Vice President of Philanthropy

and experienced the background structure and workings of the group. These organizations operate

like large scale cooperation’s where there is regional leadership as well as national headquarters

that designs rules and regulations for the regional leadership to follow. The largest challenge is

that the majority of regional leadership are young leaders in college finding the best ways to lead

other college aged students. All positions are volunteer elections and responsibilities include from

planning large scale events, fundraising efforts, chapter operations, PR and Marketing, finance

and more. Due to the fact that I was most involved with the fundraising and philanthropy I saw

the interesting structure that comprised the organizations and the vast implications that had on the

regional chapters ability to fundraise easily and successfully.

2) Describe how Describe your role in the organization (it can be internal or external).

I was the Vice President of Philanthropy for this organization and my role included

raising funds for A New Leaf, managing chapter volunteering, leading awareness efforts,

planning large scale events, leading a small group of ‘staff’ and more. This role demanded many

different skills from me and forced me to work cross organizationally as well as outside of our

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 organization to make connections and help further our cause and expand our resources. Due to the

nature of the organization I had to learn impactful conflict resolution, stellar communication

skills, public speaking, and fundamentally understanding the challenges of the group to learn how

to be successful.

3) Describe the situation. (see the Canvas instructions for details, especially about how
your situation will be analyzed from five different perspectives over the next five
modules)

The situations over the course of my tenure in this role and in the organization as whole that

tie together to paint a larger picture of the dilemmas we were facing. Thinking critically about the

frames of this course, I can come to reflect those issues in regard to structural, People, Political,

and Symbolic issues all blended together to cause implications on chapter motivation and

success, something that was almost impossible for leadership to conquer without large, wide scale

change that in many ways could not be fully possible. When describing the situation, I think it

important to note that within organizations, very rarely can you take it at face value, meaning that

the situation at hand is likely just a symptom of a larger fundamental issue happening below the

surface.

Right off the bat I observed that motivation was a serious problem, and this was evident in

how people treated their positions, showed up for volunteer positions, and spoke about our

philanthropic endeavors as a whole. This could be seen in poor meeting attendance, lack of

collaboration, The first place this observation materialized was in the planning of our first event.

Amid meetings, check ins, and touch bases where I was assured my team was accomplishing their

goals, I came to find out that they were embellishing and were severely behind in critical tasks to

the event. A description of the conversation can be found below. This incident early on in my

position pushed me to rethink how I was going to operate in this position and the extra steps I was

going to have to take to ensure success. Unknown at the time, all of the steps I decided to commit

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 to aligned to critically examining the 4 frames we will be examining. This conflict is multi-

dimensional and can be assessed through many different frames or lenses. Concepts of

observations for analysis related to this scenario include:

Structural Issues: Realignment of responsibility, adoption of new work practices, including

more checks and balances. How structure can impact productivity.

People Issues: Harnessing motivation and adapting my leadership to a more motivational and

transparent style, focusing on team bonding and communication, and aligning our goals to that of

the organization to breed feelings of ownership.

Political Issues: Strategizing ways to welcome change when regional and national leadership are

set in their ways and fearful of change and innovation.

Symbolic Issues: Challenging the stereotypes that plague sororities and creating real change.

Also creating a culture that looks at issues as symptoms to a larger conflict and how to eradicate

it.

Our textbook describes that, “the demands on managers wisdom, imagination, and agility

has never been greater…” (Bolman & Deal, 2021, p. 6) and as I analyze this situation, I have

never seen the role of a manager more clearly. As a leader in the organization and of the project

as a whole I had the power to shift the course of the organization as a result of seeing its flaws

and examining them.

Description of Meeting conversation:

The weekly meetings, in the beginning, were incredibly casual and had a collaborative

feel, so I thought. They would begin with a time for my team to share what they were working on

and then I would paint a picture of the direction I wanted to go and delegate tasks to the members

and check in over the course of the week. In the weeks leading up to the incident, dialogue from

the team would be simple “yes we are looking into the venue,” “we have this idea for the

photobooth,” or “yes I can definitely get on that task this week,” which in response I validated

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 their ideas and expected forward movement. Alarming dialogue started with, “I’m not sure about

the venue application process,” or “what do you think about…” on task that were stated as

completed.

In Summary the direct situation I will be addressing is:

Leadership is a challenge to begin with, and student leadership adds a whole other layer
of complexity. I will be analyzing an incident that happened during my tenure as the the
Vice President of Philanthropy for my Sorority. I lead a small team of people that were
aiding me in planning events and working on small event tasks that I did not have time to
complete. During our meetings I was assured that all the tasks for a specific event were
being completed and that the team was fully on track, just to find out that I was being lied
too and that the work was not being done and the event was critically behind.

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 Reference or References