#ztaola

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Our sisters Celia, Whitley, Rebekah, and Courtney are having a blast at Officer Leadership Academy in Atlanta! Can’t wait to hear about all they learned ❤️ #ztakappachi #zetataualpha #ztaola

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My OLA Experience

By Baylie Schneck (Kappa Psi Chapter, Kutztown University)

Officer Leadership Academy is a great time for incoming Executive Committee officers to transition into the roles they have been elected to by their fellow chapter members. This year, I returned to OLA for the second time, excited and ready to transition from my role of VP III/Membership Chairman to President. I am so eager to lead my chapter and do everything I can to help Kappa Psi Chapter continue to grow. I was also excited for my incoming VP III to learn everything I learned last year along with even more new ideas to bring back to the chapter. 

As incoming President, I was a little nervous going into the weekend. What if I wasn’t able to handle being President? What if it would all be too much? Honestly, The VP III role can be overwhelming during Primary Recruitment, so I can only imagine what being President feels like. 

I want nothing more than to be the best President I can be for my sisters because they deserve the best ZTA experience; and OLA was vital in helping me feel confident in taking on a position that will sometimes make me feel like the weight of the world is on my shoulders. The weekend made me feel much readier to take on my position and reach the goals EC set for our chapter. I learned a lot of great ideas to implement from other incoming Presidents, including new incentives to raise chapter morale and tips to make meeting Crown Chapter criteria simpler. 

Throughout the course of the weekend, my fellow incoming EC officers and I talked extensively about transitioning into our new roles as well as tons of new ideas and goals to bring back to the chapter. Being a member of the outgoing EC as well, it was refreshing for me to hear all of these ideas and ways to move forward in the coming semesters. One specific idea we discussed at OLA was the opportunity for sisters to earn “bonus points” by going to other fraternities/sorority philanthropy events if they are unable to attend chapter events due to work or class. Through this addition to the chapter activity point system, which aims to improve chapter engagement, sisters would have a better chance of being in good standing with the chapter without neglecting their other obligations. 

After all of our individual sessions were finished on Saturday, we took the time to sit down with our General Advisor and share everything we learned, our goals for our positions in order to get the ball rolling to make our new ideas happen. This new EC has a lot of big plans for our chapter, so it’s really important to get started as soon as we can. It was really important for us to sit down as an EC at OLA so we could talk about all of our ideas while they were fresh in our minds and because we still had access to all of our awesome facilitators if we had any follow-up questions about our positions or ideas for our chapter. 

We are working really hard to make the transition as seamless as possible so our chapter can continue to run smoothly. After getting the idea from another President at OLA, our outgoing EC is going to create folders that include all the tips, tricks and things they wish they had done differently during their time in their position to give to the women stepping into their roles. 

On top of all the knowledge we gained from other chapters, we also had some major takeaways of our own, including:

Remember that all members of EC are equally important.

Everyone has to be on the same page in order to lead the chapter to the best of our abilities. 

Always keep lines of communication between each other and the chapter open. 

I also learned a lot about my personal leadership style. After taking the Noble Leadership Assessment in Z-Learning, I found out my Noble Leadership Style is the Influencer. Leaders with this style enjoy executing projects; but I learned I need to remember to delegate jobs to the rest of EC and even PC members instead of letting the weight of what the chapter needs to accomplish rest on my shoulders alone. 

Overall, the weekend was very beneficial for us as an EC and as individuals, and the opportunity to use the resources and knowledge we gained at OLA can’t come soon enough!