Leading Your Organization
Leadership is less about holding a particular position and more about the skills and abilities you bring to your organization. It is about communication, influence and collaboration, and working with others to reach a common goal.
Before you embark on leading your student organization, take this opportunity to find out more information about how to develop as a leader and get buy-in on campus.
LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM
Your time at the University of Toronto Scarborough is about more than getting a degree; it is about your overall development as a person. It is about being exposed to new perspectives and re-examining your own. It is about learning how to
build and maintain strong personal and professional relationships, and discovering new strengths and passions you never knew you had.
The Leadership Development Program can help you begin to develop skills and perspectives that will empower you to have a positive impact on your own life and on the lives of others.
The Department of Student Life offers leadership development workshops in the following areas:
Exploring Leadership
These workshops help you explore and understand your own perspectives and approaches to leadership, and how they impact the way you interact with others and society in general.
Personal Development
These workshops help you develop as an individual by providing skills and perspectives you can utilize every day. You can learn how to communicate more effectively, deal with conflict in a constructive way, manage your personal finances,
deliver presentations , manage time and stress more effectively and many other skills.
Organizational Development
These workshops provide you with the skills necessary to contribute pos itively to the leadership of groups. From event planning to sponsorship, budgeting to volunteer management, you will learn how to better position your groups for success.
“Perspectives on Leadership” Speaker Series
Take the opportunity to hear a wide variety of guest speakers talk about their personal experiences and perspectives on leadership. From high-profile business and political leaders to fellow students who are making a difference in the world—this series gives you the chance to learn from and be inspired by some of Canada’s most dynamic leaders.
To register for workshops, please visit www.utsc-leadership.ca or check the intranet daily.
STRATEGIC PLANNING
Strategic planning is a process often used by leaders to provide clear direction to organizations. A successful strategic planning process will examine and make informed assessments about your organization. This will help your organization anticipate and respond to change by ensuring its mission, values, goals, and objectives are clear to the primary stakeholders.
Strategic plans cover all aspects of an organization’s work, including programs and services, management and operations, fundraising and finances, and decision-making. Depending on the organization’s scope and emphasis, a strategic plan might also describe approaches to marketing, internal and external communications, and student recruitment.
Below are some guidelines for successful strategic planning:
1) Understand the environment in which you work.
No organization operates in a vacuum. Social, political and economic factors continually impact each student’s willingness to participate in your group. It is thus essential that a strategic plan reflect the environment in which you operate. Programs, services and operations should be reexamined and reshaped in light of the current and future needs of students. Surveys and focus groups are helpful when trying to assess your environment.
2) Assess your organization’s strengths and weaknesses.
The foundation of a successful strategic plan includes an assessment of the capabilities, strengths, weaknesses and limitations of your organization. Information, both objective and subjective, must be gathered from multiple sources, including executives, members, faculty, staff, donors and partner organizations. This process may include an assessment of staffing, programming, and communications of your organization.
3) Use a consultative approach.
All stakeholders in your group should have a voice in the planning effort. This may include current and incoming executives, staff, volunteers, members, donors and partner organizations. A strategic plan should not be the exclusive responsibility of a small group of stakeholders. If the planning process is to succeed, it must incorporate the views of all the constituencies that will be affected by the plan or have a role in its implementation.
4) Create a planning committee.
Strategic planning should be consultative—but not at the expense of being progressive. The core planning should be handled by a small planning committee with sufficient decision-making authority to analyze feedback provided by stakeholders
and make recommendations for your organization. Committee members should not have the authority to arbitrarily adopt and implement key action steps. But neither should they be required to seek your organization’s approval at every step. Your organization must have confidence in their skill and judgment.
5) Use case studies.
Each organization has its own customized strategies, values, goals and action steps. These attributes are often not transferable, no matter how similar the organizations. However, it is possible to learn from the successes, failures and mistakes
of others. For example, every organization deals with challenges related to human resources, technology, finances, fundraising, succession planning and decision-making.When drafting a strategic plan, take into account how other student
organizations have addressed the same challenges you face.
6) Prioritize and strategize.
Developing a workable strategic plan means analyzing your organization’s objectives and strategies and determining which take precedence.Your planning committee should outline a full list of priorities and, if there are many, decide which to move ahead on and which to set aside. Once priorities are set, members of your planning committee need to identify strategies or sets of activities to achieve the goals and objectives. Next, key members should be assigned roles, timelines should be established and budgets created to reflect the new priorities.
7) Be open to change.
No matter how relevant its original mission was, no organization can afford to remain confined to the same goals, programs and processes year after year. As student needs change, strategies need to be revisited regularly. If your organization
is to remain viable and effective, you must be prepared to change as extensively as conditions require. Failure to do so will result in your organization becoming unpopular or irrelevant.
IDENTIFY THE ISSUES
U of T Scarborough is overflowing with legitimate student concerns.The amount of flat-programmable social activity space and study space available is amongst the lowest in the country. Rising tuition and incidental fees bite into students’ pocket books. Various other problems—including ongoing struggles with student apathy and accessibility concerns—continue to hamper the student experience.
As student leaders you work to solve these issues, but deciding what issues to tackle can be difficult given the amount of time you have. The trick is to concentrate your energies on issues of student importance that have realistic outcomes.
Has your organization identified an issue of student concern? The SCSU provides student representation for all undergraduate campus organizations in advocating for positive change at U of T Scarborough. Academic matters, equity and campus concerns, and space issues are areas in which the SCSU advocates to the University on behalf of student organizations. Please email studentsandequity@scsu.ca for more information.
FORGE MUTUALLY-BENEFICIAL PARTNERSHIPS
The University is a complex institution with many decision-makers, many decision-making bodies and many channels of influence. Figuring out who makes the decisions is difficult, but not impossible.
The Department of Student Life is your resource in bridging the gap with important decision-makers on campus. Each Student Life Professional at U of T Scarborough advises and consults students. Many also advocate to the Council on Student Services and Vice President & Principal on how to best enhance the student experience.
In many cases, Student Life Professionals are also past student leaders who may understand or feel a connection to causes like yours, and/or have an interest in their progress. The key is to reinvigorate that connection!
DEVELOP AN INCLUSIVE FRAMEWORK
Some student organizations are stigmatized for their adherence to a particular identity or set of values. Prospective participants often believe they will not be given sufficient opportunity to express personal insight, experiences and values through participation in these groups. These individuals will then often either choose not participate in student life at all or will create their own groups to better address the issues and concerns which they feel are adversely affecting the campus.
The perception of there being limited opportunities for students to engage and collaborate in existing organizations contributes greatly to the overall sense of apathy that many students experience at U of T Scarborough—or, in other words, the belief that the campus operates in “silos.”
To help overcome this belief, student organizations should create diverse opportunities for participants and prospective participants to freely share their personal experiences, insights and values with their peers. Through these opportunities, participants discern the value of engagement and collaboration as well as the benefits of working together to find mutually-beneficial solutions to the issues and concerns facing our campus, the local community and the world.
Developing an inclusive framework requires an organizational-wide commitment to enabling participants to engage in frequent dialogue in search of understanding and common ground. Organizations that have successfully developed an inclusive framework did so with the intention of facilitating ongoing opportunities for participants to better understand each other through discussion on topics of universal interest or concern. As a result, participants have been found to develop a stronger sense of community with their peers based on perspective and opinion rather than because of specific culture, ethnicity and faith.
Additional resources on this topic can be found at www.equity.utoronto.ca.
WORKING WITH VOLUNTEERS
Leading an organization provides invaluable experience for students interested in advocating in support of a cause, forging meaningful partnerships, influencing important decision-makers, and contributing to positive change on campus. However, not everyone in your organization will experience the same realities as you. For example, the students who volunteer countless hours to support your team often are only exposed to the opportunities you provide to them. Indeed, sometimes volunteering can be a thankless task.
Check out the next page for strategies on how to effectively manage volunteers.
Looking to connect your members to volunteer opportunities on campus and in the community? The SCSU Volunteer Network Program (VNP) provides students with the opportunity to engage in meaningful activities while developing the essential skills and experience that employers are looking for in today’s workplace. For more information on how to volunteer, please complete a VNP sign-up form at the SCSU office or online at www.utsc.utoronto.ca/vnp.
