Prepare for a Smooth Officer Transition

By Mike Selby, Eastern Michigan ‘02

Brother Mike Selby recently shared best practices for volunteers through a webinar. You can learn more about effective officer transitions on our website or contact your Regional Director.

For many chapters the end of fall semester means that the election season is upon us. Electing the undergraduate brothers who will lead us throughout the next year is a critical responsibility for all members. Ensuring our new leaders get off to a strong start is equally essential.

A well-organized officer transition enables our new leaders to coalesce into an effective leadership team that can chart the course to continued and new successes in the year ahead.

Officer transition can be done with an overnight retreat, a series of short meetings or an afternoon seminar. In any case, an effective officer transition is more than a hand-off of documents and other bits of written materials from an outgoing chapter officer to an incoming leader.

A great officer transition addresses four primary objectives:

• Promoting continuity
• Developing a cohesive leadership team
• Establishing a common vision and set of goals
• Building momentum

More than a hand-off
Continuity or institutional memory allows for materials vital to chapter operations to be passed from an outgoing officer to his successor. This is the typical function that springs to mind when we consider an officer transition. Important chapter documents like recruitment plans and member development materials should be shared with newly elected leaders. Knowledge and information that previous officers may have acquired through the experience is also vital. Examples may include emails that contain campus and key volunteer contacts, historical information from alumni, and previous invoices and other vendor information from past chapter events.

Tackling other objectives during officer transitions can have wide-ranging and lasting influence on the future of a chapter.

Leading together
New chapter officers may not have collaborated before. New leaders may have even competed in the recent elections. Now, after a hard-fought campaign, these brothers are expected to work side by side to serve our Fraternity. An officer transition is the best opportunity available for your new leadership team to become acquainted with one another’s leadership style and to set basic expectations of one another for the next 12 months. You’ll be surprised at how diverse our talents and experience can be!

Goal-setting at CLAs
The Carlson Leadership Academy presents a tremendous opportunity for chapter officers to assemble a powerful toolkit to execute an officer’s individual goals and the ambitions of the executive committee as a whole. But, what are those goals? The officer transition should also be a time where the newly elected leadership team identifies the major goals and plans of the chapter for the next calendar year.

Creating the push
Finally, the members of the executive committee have cause to celebrate – they have just been selected by their peers to lead SigEp at their college or university. This is a high honor. The officer transition should harness this excitement to propel our new leaders into the new year.

Good luck and continued success in the year ahead!

Top tips for officer transition events:

• Set a clear agenda
• Include former officers for half the transition, reserve the remainder of time for only the new executive committee
• Invite alumni or key volunteers
• Eat a meal together during the transition
• Hold a team-building activity
• Have a little fun!

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