February 9, 2012

Fox & the Hound – A Sure-Fire Icebreaker

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troystende-foxandhound02

[showtime] This activity is very high energy and is great to do when you want to get people up and moving. Make sure you have enough room so it can stay safe. I’ve facilitated this activity with eight people all the way to 800 with great success. To start the ice breaker off you’ll need to get people in to groups of exactly four. This can work with five but it’s just not quite the same. To get started, I might say something like this: “When I say go and the music comes on, you’ll form a group of exactly four - no more and no less. Preferably with people you don’t know. When you get this group of four, stand in a circle and get to know as much about each other as you can while the music is still going. Ready, Go.” Once they’ve formed groups and have had a few minutes to … [Read more...]

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Putting some spring into your campus club recruiting

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About a week ago my oldest daughter Amber, who is a freshman at Georgia College and State University, spent a part of her day manning a table for The Catalyst Network at Springfest 2010, a visitation day planned for admitted high school seniors. A little while into her volunteering, Amber sent me a text saying that things were slow and they hadn't seen many students to recruit for the organization. By the end of the day, the group, which is for minority sciences majors, had spoken with about four students and only one of those was an incoming freshman. Overall GCSU has a low percentage of minority students and there aren't many being recruited from high schools. So, what's a campus organization looking to recruit new members to do? Dave Kelly, our resident leadership expert, has the … [Read more...]

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A Leadership Boot Camp done right at Georgia Southern University

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KELLY-GA-Southern-bootcamp3

This past September, I was recruited for combat duty by the Georgia Southern University Leadership Boot Camp. My job was to turn students into a well-oiled, combat-ready leadership machine. Ok, that is a bit of an exaggeration, but I was the keynote speaker (“10 Steps to a Winning Mental Attitude”) and a break-out session presenter (“Making the Most of Your 24/7” and “Everyday Leadership”). However, this blog entry is about what I saw the Georgia Southern people doing right and some ideas for you to use on your campus. Success Tactic #1- The event was put together by Mandie Thacker, the leadership coordinator of the Office of Student Leadership and Civic Engagement, with the assistance of a committee of active, engaged students. This was the 46th annual fall conference! That … [Read more...]

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Creating a Culture of Student Leadership on Your Campus

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At the start of the academic year or the semester many colleges and universities conduct leadership programs and retreats for student government officers, members of the campus programming board, emerging leaders programs, and residence life. Many of these programs include a variety of topics including servant leadership and developing effective communication between team members. Usually, there is a team building element to these events where students get to know each other better and make connections that will hopefully make the year a success. There is another large pool of student leaders on your campus who sometimes get overlooked and who also need to develop their leadership skills. Those are the officers and prominent members of other campus organizations. A half- or full-day … [Read more...]

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Bring It To Me – A Sure-Fire Icebreaker

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troystende-bringittome02

[showtime] Being a professional speaker and student leadership trainer, I'm on college campuses facilitating leadership retreats and orientations often. This icebreaker has never failed. I’ve used it successfully with groups as small as 10 people all the way to 800 people. This is great for adding some fun and energy to a meeting or helping new acquaintances feel more comfortable around each other. Just follow my script and it will work for you too. Create groups The first thing I do is get them into smaller groups- ideally no less then 4 and no more than 12. It’s best if the groups are the same numbers, but depending on the number of people, that can be a difficult thing. My favorite size ranges from 8-10. It’s important to get them into their groups in quick and succinct … [Read more...]

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Tummy HA HA… Laugh your way to team building

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I took this video in Orlando in July, 2009 during a leadership retreat for the SGA leaders of four of Valencia Community College's campuses. This is a team building exercise called "Tummy HA HA". It is a fun activity that helps with a number of the steps or "building blocks" in team building. My role as the facilitator is to determine the size of the groups, explain the rules, moderate the action, encourage open participation, and make sure that the teams play fair in determining a winner. You will hear me calling out one of the team members who busted out laughing and making his team start over. The idea is for the members of the team to have a shared experience, something they can relate to later, joke about, etc. This activity also gets the members of the team out of their comfort … [Read more...]

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Real leaders see themselves as one of the group, not above the group

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Often when working with campus leadership groups advisors ask me to help instill a sense of responsibility and pride in their students during the keynote, conference or retreat. I’m beginning to understand more and more why I’m getting this request as I witness disturbing new trends among college students today. Here are three recent examples from the news: 1. There’s the president of a Student Government Association who publicly supports the dry-campus policy yet gets caught one evening very, very drunk on campus. The school’s official policy states he should be expelled from SGA at the very least, yet he and half of the SGA believe he should be exempt and suffer no consequences since he is of legal drinking age. … [Read more...]

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Overcoming your fear of… Hockey?

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You might think that I’d be one of the last people who’d feel fear and apprehension about joining new groups since I make my living as a speaker. My whole career for the past 10 years has centered around traveling to new places and meeting new people and talking to new groups. It seems absurd that I would still be nervous about joining a new group. Even as I write this, I think how ridiculous that is. But the fact is that it’s true. So if it’s true for me, it’s not too big a leap to believe that students, student leaders, and even professional staff often have a fear of joining new groups (and maybe even you reading this article :)). So what can we do about this? Since I’m forced to confront this often, I’ve come up with a couple tips for students and student leaders that … [Read more...]

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Diversity Programs Gone Wrong

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I was recently asked if I knew any diversity activities and it got me thinking. Diversity activities, and especially the one I was thinking about, can be very powerful and life changing. But they can also be damaging to the individual and the group. Most of the success or failure rides on the shoulders of the facilitator. A common activity I facilitate when I do diversity work with student leaders such as Orientation Leaders, RAs or Executive Boards is called “Cross the line.” It’s very well known and widely used. Usually about 10% of the participants have done this activity before with a different group and facilitator. They often come up afterward to tell me about their previous experiences. Some of the stories are more upsetting than others. Sometimes they say how the last time … [Read more...]

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New Student Orientation Programs: The Key to Student Success!

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I remember my new student orientation program as though it were yesterday (it wasn’t). All of the incoming freshmen—yes, once upon a time, new students were called freshmen (not First Years, New Students, Post-Secondary Initiates, etc)—gathered in Albee Hall on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. We were given some basic rules and “do nots” of the university and then were organized into groups of ten with an experienced student -- I don’t think he was even called Orientation Leader-- who had us sit in a circle outside on the grass. He prompted us to introduce ourselves to each other, with our name, hometown, major, and, I think, the number of pets we grew up with. We then adjourned to the student activities fair with dunk tanks, ball toss, and other carnival … [Read more...]

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“Get the focus back” at Student Orientation

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troy-attention-01

I was facilitating a full-day orientation leader training recently and an orientation leader asked me how to get a group’s focus back without yelling at them. That is an excellent question and one that comes into play often- whether you’re doing an icebreaker with 500 new students or you’re running a committee meeting of 8. The worst thing one can do is yell at them to, “Be quiet!” “Stop talking!” or even “SHUT UP!” It’s hard to believe but I’ve heard the latter said by experienced people. Not only is it demeaning, but it’s disrespectful. What you want to avoid is “teacher mode.” This is the stereotypical high school teacher who uses yelling and intimidation as a way to maintain order in the classroom. People have had enough of that in their lifetime and if … [Read more...]

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What is your campus organization’s defining statement?

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The College Speaker Series on CampusTalkRadio

Listen to Dave discuss this topic on The College Speaker Series on the CampusTalkRadio Network.   "The program designed to teach you 3 things in 30 minutes. Guaranteed!" Do you belong to a club or organization on campus? Are you the advisor for a group? Ever have to tell people the name of the organization and then have to explain what it means? I know the feeling. I used to be the District Administrator for the Georgia District of Circle K International. I was responsible for 28 chapters, including helping them to effectively recruit members. I went to campus after campus and watched our student leaders struggle with trying to explain what Circle K was—and what it was not! “No, we are not the Circle K that is the convenience stores.” “We are not a dude ranch with … [Read more...]

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Linking Student Success to Co-Curricular Activities

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Some of the best time that students spend is participating in co-curricular activities. I use CO-curricular, because the things that students can be involved in supplement what they learn in the classroom.   My own leadership experiences in clubs and organizations as a student were some of the best times of my life. I had fun, I learned so much, and I got to try things and even make mistakes when the stakes were not that high. My leadership development was through these experiences and interactions with other people. I learned about conflict resolution, motivation techniques, team leadership development, and got to travel all over the country attending educational leadership conferences. Then I would come back to the classroom and apply my experiences to the material being … [Read more...]

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Those Damn Tomatoes Again!

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42-15200383

Right up until he passed away at 92, my grandpa and I used to do lunch often. His usual order was a BLT sandwich. Just to be clear, that is a sandwich with bacon, lettuce and tomato - a BLT. Every time the sandwich arrived he'd peek inside and say, "Those damn tomatoes - every time!" I'd be chuckling and thinking to myself, "Grandpa, wouldn't you expect that a BLT would have some 'T' on it?" I just never said it out loud. Remembering this special time with Grandpa, makes me think about life. How many things am I doing flat out wrong? How many ways am I stuck in a box. I've always done it that way so why change?  If I don't like what I'm getting, shouldn't I order something different? Why am I so surprised by life's "damn tomatoes?" … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Student Leadership

Gotcha – A Sure-Fire Icebreaker

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troystende-gotcha01

Step-by-step, this is an orientation ice-breaker that works every time. Every semester you're looking for a new icebreaker for student orientation. Asking around, you hear a lot of great ideas that either sound way too complicated or just aren't the right fit. You Google, 'icebreakers' and it gives you about 1,080,000 results in .19 seconds. After spending forever and a day searching, you find an icebreaker that sounds simple and seems fun. How hard could it be?  After all hey describe the whole thing in 3 sentences? Come orientation day, the icebreaker flops. This is an all too common story. Most icebreakers flop because the students don't fully understand the directions or they feel corny or awkward doing it. It ends up being a lot of work and not a lot of play. Follow these … [Read more...]

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Lynn U’s Student Leaders get started on the right foot

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lynnu

Four hours with a dozen key Lynn University student leaders is a grand opportunity for all of us to roll up our sleeves. It was practically one-on-one time... The president and vice president of the student government association... the outgoing president and a presidential candidate for the Hillel Club (which provides social and educational programming focusing on Jewish holidays, scholarships and history)... and a few more officers and candidates rounded out the attendees. With an intimate group like this, we can really get to the core issues that their campus organizations are dealing with every day. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Student Leadership
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