Use Your Summer to Make Your RSO Thrive!

A Summer of Relaxation and Learning
A Summer of Relaxation and Learning

The summer months are often dead for RSOs. Everyone is scattered, you most likely aren’t holding any events, and let’s be honest, it’s time to relax. Summer is the time when your RSO and really anything related to school, gets put on the back burner for three blissful months. While it is necessary to find time to relax and rejuvenate for the next school year, the summer months can be utilized to make your RSO thrive. You may wonder how such a feat is possible. How can I empower my RSO during the summer when no one is around and all I want to do with my free time is relax? In this article, Student Organizations will be answering those very questions. Below you can find articles that help you do everything from learning how to affirm and recognize your RSO members, to putting your leadership experience on a resume. While these may not directly relate to your summer months, these topics are things to think about as you head into the fall. These are things that will help you scaffold your RSO to thrive.

Job Well Done! – Develop a plan for recognizing your RSO members and leaders:
There are bound to be RSO members in your organization – whether that be a leader or a member – that go unrecognized. Have you taken the time to send out notes, or a good ole’ email to some of your star members thanking them for their work? An essential to effective leadership is affirmation. Affirm the members you are leading! When you affirm the positive, or a admired trait in a member, that perpetuates the positivity. Plus, who doesn’t like to be recognized for their work, or for something someone noticed in them? That’s right, no one, everyone likes to be affirmed. Write a thank you note to member who was crucial to the success of an event. If you notice that a member is having a rough week personally or academically, give them their favorite treat. The next time you see someone doing something well, go up to them and tell them right there on the spot. Below, we have provided a link that shows you how to create an atmosphere of recognition in your RSO.
http://involvement.rutgers.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/74/2014/12/Scarlet-Source-Motivating-and-Recognizing-Your-Members.pdf

Listen Up! – Advice on becoming a listening RSO leader:
Another essential to leading an RSO is listening – being a listening leader is so important to the overall health and efficiency of your RSO. By listening to your RSO members, one can cultivate an atmosphere where students feel accepted and comfortable. This is essential for cultivating creative and effective members. Listening to members and other leaders not only helps them feel heard, it also allows for innovation. By listening to other members, you can create one big think tank – a space where you can hone your goals and think creatively. While the nature of each of your RSOs each demands a different scale and style of listening, below are some links to get the conversation started.
http://www.levo.com/articles/skills/better-listening-skills-in-meetings
http://involvement.rutgers.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/74/2014/12/ScarletSourceActiveListening.pdf

Learning Styles – Utilize your RSO members’ different learning styles:
It is helpful to understand that each of your RSO members and leaders learns differently. Everyone has a different learning process. Each RSO member takes a different route to learning something, as well as different amount of times. In sum, everyone learns differently. That is why some people enjoy certain classroom styles over others, or why we choose certain majors. That being said, when it comes to thinking about your fall training or asking someone to fulfill a task, you must think about the different ways your RSO members learning styles might fit into this. How would a visual learner or a social learner be best trained? How can you frame your instructions to a member to fulfill a task who is a solitary learner versus verbal learner? Below is a link to a diagram of different learning styles. While individuals do not fit neatly into these different learning styles, nor is this link comprehensive, it is a good place to start.
http://www.edudemic.com/styles-of-learning/

Cultivating Creativity – Creativity is the source of a meaningful RSO:
“Creativity. It is essential to unlocking the secrets of the world.” – Barak Obama. Just kidding, Obama did not say that. But he should have, because creativity is essential to making progress. When we are allowed to enter creative spaces, we can breathe and our minds can wander. We can think outside the box and come up with innovative ideas. When we are given a safe space, where we feel heard and valued, we can begin to let the creative juices flow. When those creative juices flow, new ideas for your RSO can come into being. Cultivating creativity for both your members and leaders is essential to being an effective (and honestly enjoyable) RSO. Below are some links to get the creative juices flowin’.
http://blog.umhb.edu/developing-creativity/#.VzYDPiH7wik
https://www.ted.com/talks/julie_burstein_4_lessons_in_creativity?language=en
http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_brown_on_creativity_and_play?language=en

Goal Setting – Take time to dream up your RSOs goals for next year:
Dreaming for your RSO is essential – you can think about what you want to accomplish and how you want to accomplish it. However, dreams should then turn into goals, and if there is one thing leaders know, it is that you must set goals, and they must be measurable. If dreams merely stay dreams, what good is that? You need to think about how your RSO can make dreams into reality. The first step to that is goal setting. Below is a link that walks you through the process of goal setting.
http://involvement.rutgers.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/74/2014/12/ScarletSourceGoalSetting.pdf

Let’s get Ethical – Preparing to make future RSO decisions ethically:
RSO leaders are asked to make decisions all of the time, whether that be what event to put on during spring semester, or how to handle conflict between two members. In the midst of busy schedules, demanding school work, a personal life, difficult personalities in your RSO, the pressures of being a leader, and so on, it might be hard to think clearly about ethical decision making. Given that leaders are people, sometimes they make decisions out of emotions or biases. There are times when making a “good” decision can be hard. However there are some basic guidelines that you can think about when making those decisions to make sure you are making a decision for the good of your RSO. The link below provides basic guidelines, principles, and questions regarding making ethical decisions.
http://involvement.rutgers.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/74/2014/12/ScarletSourceEthicalDecisionMaking.pdf

Public Speaking, Eek! – How to prepare to present to large audiences of all types:
Now that your events have kicked into gear, and the school year is in full swing, it’s time to address a possibly pertinent topic to your RSO leadership: public speaking. It is likely that as the school year starts, and your events/meetings become more consistent, that public speaking is bound to come up. You might have to lead your group through an exercise, or speak at an event. Depending on the leader, public speaking can be freaky and uncomfortable. For others, talking in front of an audience is thrilling. No matter where you fall on the spectrum, the links below can help you muster the guts to speak as well as hone your enthused speaking abilities.
http://blog.umhb.edu/three-tips-to-reduce-anxiety-during-public-speaking/#.VzYC_iH7wik
http://www.inc.com/ss/jeff-haden/20-public-speaking-tips-best-ted-talks
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/239308

Transferable Skills – How your RSO experience translates to the Job Market:
Depending on your experience as an RSO leader, you may be thinking that the leadership experience you are gaining isn’t relevant to your future or your career. Or you may be wondering how to put your very career relevant experience as an RSO leader on your resume. Regardless of your experience as an RSO leader, it is relevant to your future career. Not only has it equipped you with different skill sets, it has also informed the way you might think about your ideal future work environment. Make sure your RSO leadership experience makes it on the resume. You hear? The work you do inside the classroom as well as outside the classroom is constantly informing and shaping you as a future employee. That being said, below are some links about how to think about your leadership experience as informing your future career, as well as guidelines to putting your skill sets on a resume.
http://www.levo.com/articles/career-advice/leadership-in-college-helps-in-work
http://spu.edu/administration/center-career-calling/get-hired/job-search-skills/transferable-skills

Learning for Dayzz – Levo offers guides for continual millennial learning:
Now that you have thought through these various topics, about leadership, it is time to keep learning. Levo is great website that empowers young millennials (that’s you!) as leaders and future employees. They offer various guides on different topics as well as numerous articles addressing important issues for young professionals today. It is an awesome resource not only for leaders but members of your RSO. Although, it is not specifically about clubs on college campuses, it is still relevant. And it is relevant because ultimately, your RSO is shaping you and its members as individuals – cultivating skills, empowering knowledge of self, helping the community, etc. The time spent by an RSO member in an RSO goes beyond their four years. These are experiences that they will take with them into their future. This will inform them personally and professionally. While both are equally important, and often intertwined, we have provided you with this link to think to keep learning and thinking about your future career (and your RSO experience is certain to be bound up in that). Feel free to explore the other resources the website has to offer!
http://www.levo.com/guides

These articles only skim the surface of these topics. There are more articles out there, there is more research to be skimmed, there are books to be read, and people to talk to. Remember, this is only a teeny tiny brief introduction. So if you are interested in these topics, do not let that interest stop here: talk to your professors, speak to your advisors, browse the internet, find some helpful blogs, read a few books, search good ole’ JSTOR. Let this merely be an open door to empowering your RSO to thrive and succeed.