Something Oprah said...

Oprah Winfrey was busy this weekend stumping for Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. You can watch her entire speech here.

She said something about "apathy" in her speech that naturally caught my ear. Speaking about her past ambivalence about politicians and elections, she admitted that she had become apathetic about politics, and she said:

"Apathy is the attitude that disappointment is normal."

I thought that was a great quote. Give it some thought, as I have, and I think you'll see that's it a pretty insightful statement. How easily we choose not to care rather than face the continuous disappointment we feel when change won't come, when the status quo leaves us dissatisfied, when our low expectations are regularly met.

"Apathy is the attitude that disappointment is normal."

Good quote. Thanks, Oprah.

To give a gift, or not to give a gift?

Gift giving is fun, right? You get nice things, you give nice things. Everyone's happy. Sadly, the whole dilemma of gift giving causes a lot of people stress this time of year. As a student leader, should you give your advisor a gift? How much should it cost? What about other advisors? Your fellow officers?

How far up the student affairs food chain do you go? Should you give something to the Dean? What if you get a little something from your advisor and you are totally broke and can't reciprocate?

I think, as a general rule, no one expects gifts from their students. We know you're broke, and this is an expensive time of year. You should be buying things for your family, friends, and that girl you've been sleeping with. Really, don't blow $10 on a Starbucks gift card for me.

I think nice hand-written cards are especially nice (yeah, nicer than that Facebook posting on my wall that says "Ho, ho, ho, Fat Boy!"). Write your advisor and your fellow leaders each a holiday card – yes, "holiday card." (Don't send a Christmas card to your Jewish advisor.). In the card, write a nice note about how much you enjoy working with him/her and a kind wish for a happy 2008. If you want to get really fancy, get a print made of a photo that he or she will enjoy – maybe one of the group, or of you and your advisor. In the world of digital photo sharing, an actual PRINT has become something special, and you can get those for about 20-cents at your local drug store.

If you are determined to spend money on an advisor or a fellow leader, then make it something cheap and personal. Don't go and blow a bunch of money on an Olive Garden gift card when you can put that photo print in a cute, cheap frame. Make it personal, and get creative. Those are the very best gifts.

This year, our company took all the money we would have spent on holiday cards and small gifts, and we bought three llamas for deserving families in poor countries via Heifer International. It's a really cool charity, and people enjoyed the gesture. Maybe you can give a small monetary gift to a local charity (or your school's foundation) in your advisor's name. They would think that was really thoughtful.

If you're going to spend money on anyone in your student leadership world, spend it on some vastly under-appreciated person, like your advisor's secretary, or the little dude who cleans up your student activities office every night. What about your mail carrier, the lady who works in the coffee shop downstairs, or the guy at the print and copy shop who saved your ass 10 times this semester.

Days you just don't program

One of my least enjoyable programs happened at Louisiana State University a few years ago. I was hired in to speak on a Monday night at 8 p.m. for a mandatory Interfraternity Conference educational session. All the men had to be there -- initiated members and pledges. Only problem: the New Orleans Saints were playing Monday Night Football, and opening kickoff was at 8.

The advisor wasn't a sports fan, and he didn't see the big deal. "The program's only an hour. It's not like they are going to miss the whole game," he said. Boy, did he miss the point. The men were so angry to be there, I could see them shooting daggers at me throughout the speech. I shortened the program, and when I ended it, they leapt out of their seats. They didn't even politely applaud. I did the very best I could, but I was set up to fail miserably.

I felt like Hillary at a Young Republicans meeting. It was ugly.

OK, so to help you avoid a similarly unfortunate situation, please check the following things before you plan a speaker or some other large event:

- Check your basketball schedule, particularly if you are at a school where people care about basketball. Or hockey, or women's lacrosse. Whatever sport your school cares about always takes precedent over all other events.

- Don't plan anything on Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Halloween, the night of the Academy Awards (Feb. 24, 2008, by the way), Superbowl Sunday (Feb. 3, 2008, by the way), or the NCAA March Madness Final Four or Final (March 21 and 23, 2008, by the way).

- Jewish holidays... people never plan anything on Easter or Christmas, but they'll damn well plan their leadership retreat over Yom Kippur. That's bad form. If you're not sure of Jewish holidays, just Google "2008 Jewish Holidays," then block those days off your calendar.

- Monday Night Football. Fraternities really like to sit around together, drink adult beverages, and burp while watching the game... any game. Plan your program so they have time to get back before it starts.

- The season finale of popular shows. I spoke once on the night of the season finale of Grey's Anatomy. The women and the gay men were pissed. First thing I said from the stage was, I hope somebody is recording Grey's or I'm going to kill myself! And, I put my hand on my hip while I said it. I managed to survive that program and even got some applause at the end. God forbid you speak at an engineering school on the night of the Heroes season finale. There could be violence.

There are probably more, but these are the big ones. Put these things in your programming calendar at the start of your term as an officer. A little time on a search engine and you can find out all of these "dates to avoid."

When do you step in and do the job yourself?

An interesting question from a student leader at Widener University this weekend. "When you see someone screwing up something for an event happening next week, should you step in and take over, or should you just allow them to fail?"

In this student's case, flyers were needed to publicize a special event next weekend. The group's previous event had been poorly attended because this same person waited too long to publicize the event. Now, it was happening again.

The president knew he could yank the task away from the procrastinating officer, but he also knew there would be drama if he did. Should he just do it and then deal with the drama? Or, should he give the person the benefit of the doubt and wait and see? Perhaps it will be done tomorrow or the next day -- just in time for the event. But, what if it's not? Will everyone blame the president for allowing the weak officer to fail at the same task twice?

I'm a fan of letting people screw things up from time to time. More things are learned from occasional failure than from organization presidents who spend all their time covering for incompetent subordinate leaders in the group. But for many student leaders, that's a scary gamble.

I advised him to have a meeting with the officer and demand immediate activity (like in the next 24 hours), or delegate the task to another person in the group. It might even be a good idea to do it in the presence of another officer. Ask the person if he/she needs help getting the task done. Perhaps this weak officer would love to pass it off to someone more competent.

When given the choice between "doing the work yourself" or "letting the job go undone," my advice is to step in aggressively with others in your organization, and get the task done. However, you can't let the officer who dropped the ball get away with it, and you need to put safeguards in place so it doesn't happen again. If someone has messed a task up once, it's incumbent upon you as the group leader to make sure that this person:

- Understands how and why the error was made
- Understands how to accomplish the task in a timely and appropriate way next time
- Understands clearly the deadlines for getting the task done

In retrospect, what this president should have done was to ask to see a draft of the event flyer two weeks in advance. If that deadline wasn't met, then it would have been a justified move to ask the officer to step aside or assign the critical task to someone else. Setting incremental deadlines in advance of a project or event is a great way to force a lazy or incompetent officer to show some positive movement before it becomes a crisis.

Dealing with underperforming officers or committee chairpersons is just part of the job. Your job as president is to make sure that the machine is running. That usually means keeping an eye on the performance of your workers far in advance of the critical times. Otherwise, you'll constantly be reacting to crisis after crisis.