Facebook: Will it keep you from, or encourage you to return to campus?

Alumni professionals, alumni volunteers and freelancers (alumni who increasingly plan their own class and group reunions without requesting support from the institution), here’s the big question facing Alumni Associations today: does social networking online help, hurt, or not affect your interest in returning to your alma mater?

Andy Shaindlin, the most important thought leader and thought-provoker in the profession today, offers up this:

Reunions in the Digital Age: More Compelling, or Less?

From where I sit, I believe Facebook in particular has given us our best shot in years at actually growing reunion participation.  From class leaders creating Facebook pages to promote reunion and reconnect folks, to independent alumni building their own reunions (freelance volunteer), this online tool has certainly improved vastly the ties alumni have to their college experiences.

My theory is that more people will attend reunions, but more importantly, and here is where we alumni staffers need to pay attention: alumni will increasingly fall into the freelance volunteer category.  I use this term to describe alumni who, for a variety of very good reasons, believe they can represent the institution and draw more people to college/class reunion/alumni events if the institution just leaves them to their own devices.  They have the local resources to pull events off, use Facebook to connect their friends to the event, and they importantly, are working with affection for the institution, not antagonism.

These events have grown at Lynchburg College –  in New York City, Georgetown/Washington, and elsewhere — and seem to meet a critical need for these folks to get together with their tightest circles of buddies, on their terms, without fear that they will have to spend lots of time gripping and grinning with officials and party crashers.

Ultimately there is only one right way to “commit” affinity programming properly: the way that makes the most people the most connected to their alma mater, and committed to being more engaged through event attendance, volunteering, and giving.  And the folks on campus need to be prepared to serve these alumni where they are.

If these phenomena — from Facebook to freelancers — serve as a gateway to a greater level of engagement for a segment of our population, we should support them fully, because they are helping us succeed.  And right now, that is what I see happening.  It will be interesting to watch it develop, and see whether we will ever be able to tie these tools to increases in those metric areas I mentioned above.

What do you think?  As you respond, describe your relationship to alma mater (staffer, committee volunteer, or freelance volunteer)

Trust: A new thought for relationships

Familiarity breeds contempt.  [This quote manifested itself as I completed writing the blog post below.  It belongs here at the start, but I found humor in how I only had this "revelatory" moment after expressing fully the thought below.]

Trust is not about the truster believing in the other party.  Trust is evidently about being comfortable confronting the other party, perhaps even to the point of being downright aggravating.  If you are in a committed relationship, consider for a second: have you ever been in a heated discussion with your significant other and wished — or even suggested — she or he would talk to you the way they communicated disagreement with less-trusted folks, like their co-workers?  Have you wished your boss would talk to you the way she or he talks to your customers when they disagree?  I know civility is losing ground to stress-induced verbal confrontation as a means of dialoging in the United States, but too many of us treat the people closest to us — those we need and trust the most — the worst.  We go well beyond “clear and effective communication” an approach contemptuous familiarity.

UNFORTUNATELY, TRUST HAPPENS

Recently, I have been involved in a number of discussions in which I expected a less-familiar conversant to challenge me more; and in a few others in which I expected a closely-acquainted conversant to find no reason for pause.  As the more distant person went to great lengths to be polite or respectful of my opinion, the dearer friend not only removed their gloves, but they swung away with no regard for how I might receive their harsh words.  And in both cases, my only deduction to explain causation is that TRUST HAPPENS.  As it does, the varnish of considerate communication seems to peel away to reveal a rawness that can be disconcerting.  You might find yourself wondering, “who is this person, and where is the guy/woman I thought I knew?”

As trust grows, conflict between two people, or within a group, seems to grow, not decrease.  I listen to many young people talk about relationships and how important it is that they “trust” the other person.  They mention it almost before they mention love.  I sit in meetings in which managers and leaders spend inordinate amounts of time figuring out how to increase trust between the customer and the organization.

And now, I have a different perspective on trust.  Gaining trust strengthens the relationship to the point where the engaged parties don’t use that trust to extend more latitude to the other.  Quite the opposite.  In our society, we use it like a weapon.  Now that you trust me, let me tell you how I really feel.  My wife, who knows me best, says I can be downright unrelenting sometimes.  And when she points it out, I find that I am not only communicating candidly, I am taking advantage of our trusting relationship to vent, blow off steam, unload about things that happen at work, during a really bad racquetball game, because I didn’t sleep well.  I haven’t cared or been more kind and generous BECAUSE of trust, I have instead forced her to accept the fury I might rather direct at others.  But . . . . then they won’t like me.  I trust that she still will, eventually.

IT IS TIME TO GET IT RIGHT

Therefore, I am going to spend some time trying to offer a new level of candor from the outset of a relationship.  And I further expect that, as a result, fewer people will want trusting relationships with me.  But the relationships that prevail will be far more enjoyable because the most contentious opinions and ideas we might discuss will have been dealt with while the person is figuring me out.  I hope my wife and some of my closer associates notice!

Reversing my relationship management approach will mean I won’t be subject to, or use, the type of brutal directness that can come with “trust.”  Instead, the more seasoned my relationships become by time and shared experiences, the more harmonious they will become.

Does this ring true for you, or am I alone in recognizing that trust can create some funk in my strongest relationships?

The power of changing One Small Thing

On January 5, a number of colleagues and I started a weight loss challenge.  The competition would be replete with tired false self-motivation, old platitudes, and false starts, but I pushed my usual standards aside in favor of a new concept.  This time, I was already self-motivated.  I decided to change one small thing.

To date, I have lost 20 pounds, hit and worked through at least one difficult plateau, and seen at least two weigh-in periods in which I lost at least 7 pounds.  I have dropped one waist size, lowered my blood pressure and cholesterol, and have more energy.  I find my racquetball game improving and see the possibility of returning to near the weight I was when I wrestled at William and Mary.  So what am I doing differently?

When I sit down for a meal, or have an opportunity to splurge, I simply ask myself to make a very simple decision to stay disciplined long enough to choose what to eat.  I also make sure at least one meal every day is a tasty salad.  The beauty of this method is that the longer I stick to it, the more invested I am in ensuring the next interface with a decision is advantageous.  Even though making many small decisions becomes second-nature, it does not get so easy I can stop thinking about it.  I have to remind myself frequently to maintain discipline, and not get over-confident.  It would be easy to get cocky, and forget that calories don’t care about my confidence.  They respond only to controlled management.

So I attribute my success in this competition, in which I have remained in no worse than second place, to NOT having to co-exist with some enormous, complicated diet program, or special food system, or even enormous amounts of exercise.  Nope, I just make one small decision, up to five times a day (lasting about three minutes per day, in total).  So requiring that level of discipline in such short bursts, mentally, is really easy to accommodate.

So far, I think I have made 180 small decisions.  Of those, more than 90 percent have been good decisions.  So 160 times, my system has worked for me, and 20 times I blew it.  Or so it would seem.  But upon closer review, six of those have been intentional “pressure release” choices, made intentionally.  After each of our twice-monthly weigh-ins, I purposefully enjoy a really delicious, unhealthy cheesesteak.  Its a small decision to not be too hard on myself.

Will I win?  Is this a defensible long-term strategy?  I don’t know and right now I don’t care.  The absolute beauty of this new technique is that I don’t have to worry about either of those things.  They will take care of themselves.  All I need to do is  keep spending one minute at a time, three t0 five times per day, making good calls.  Time for breakfast.