On Friday February the 14th, Valentine’s Day leadership students organised all the activities, decorations and marketing for this special and unique day. This day was enjoyed for all Pinetree students and much love was shared. We created a lovely environment which turned out to be perfectly successful! In addition, this event was smoothly prepared thanks to our point people management.👏🏼
First of all, we had to decide our roles to be managing this event. There was marketing, decorations and running the event day at lunch in the foyer. I helped with the event day and to set up and clean up everything. Also, I personally helped a little bit with creating the decorations and setting them up on the board. According to my role assigned, I didn’t have to do anything until Valentine’s Day but, as I said, I helped with the decorations. On the event day, people who had to set up had to meet at the foyer 15 minutes before lunch. I also helped organize the props so they could be visually easier chosen by those who wanted to take the pictures with them, so they could see all the options available. During the event, I was supervising the props and I encouraged the students to take pictures with them, kindly showing them all the options. After the event, I had to stay to clean up, and so I did. We finally had a post event discussion in which I didn’t say much because, for me, the event was pretty successful and I didn’t have enough experience in previous years to compare how it was this year. Even so, I agreed with some of the improvement ideas other leadership students said.
In the second place, the main competency I focused on for the preparation of this event was to work as an effective team member. This competency is quite generalized but I think is as important as the others because sometimes you need to make an effort to create this desired smoothness in your projects (everything goes properly and the final result is what you wanted). I actually wanted to act as a proper leader and I tried to help with tasks that were not even assigned to me, to share my pretty creative ideas on how to set everything up. My course goals were about acquiring basic leadership skills so in the future I’d be more prepared, I think this competency aligns pretty much with my course goals, here’s why:
- Working as an effective team member means that you need to make an effort and to think further, manage and share your ideas. These can make you acquire certain levels of a leadership personality and when you don’t even realize, this leader personality is your normal way of being.
- The key words here are: “to think further than you normally think”; this normally means that you have to be prepared and mentally active to come up with new strategies, creative ideas and, of course, know how to share them. One of my course goals was to improve my English communication so I can properly help people if needed. I think that being an effective member also means that you need to be active and capable of sharing and knowing 100% what to do. Being able to express yourself is an important point if you want to achieve this state.
For me, to be an effective member basically means to be active in your work; to be the leader of the leaders. Before and during this event I tried to use the best of myself to prepare the decorations and to creatively place them, even though it was not my assigned niche. Furthermore, in my opinion, doing good work also means sharing good vibes of yourself to the ones you are helping. During the event, I was supervising the props but I was also sharing the good vibes of the event by helping kindly and encouraging people to grab props for their pictures. I tried not to lose that Valentine’s essence.
Here you can see some evidences of my active participation, aligning them with the proposed competency:
- Sharing ideas on how to put the decorations on the board: Even though it was not my role, I was helping Ashlee setting the decorations and making them visually attractive on the board. I gave my proposals on how those could fit creatively better and, of course, I helped setting them. I think my point of view helped, maybe just a little bit, to the overall process and the final result. I’m actually proud of how it finally looked.
- Trying to help creating the decorations: I knew the decoration group were meeting to create all the stuff so, one of the days at lunch, I went to the class and offered my help to Rachel if they needed. I actually helped with basic stuff but I hope I could positively contribute with the final result at least a little bit. I am not talking about visuals but about efficient and effective help: helping to go faster with the preparation. I also saw there was a lot of stuff to be made and not that many people helping so I just wanted to contribute as I had nothing to do during lunch that day.
- Organization: I feel like another leadership skill is to have everything organized. When I was supervising the props, everyone using one was throwing them to the table as if order was not a thing. I tried to maintainan everything clean and attractively visible until the end so more people could just feel free to come and see all the options available. Sometimes something well-organized is more attractive than something that is messy. This is working effectively, thinking further.
Thanks for reading! I hope this event was enjoyed with much love…💘
Here are some attached pictures of our event participation:
(Me organizing the props)