There was an article not to long ago that wondered why all the leadership skills we supposedly learned in college vanished later.
Most management is bad, it relies on coercion: Do this or bad things will happen. Or keep doing this and you’ll get a pay raise and an office.
This is considered bad because it certainly doesn’t motivate, inspire, or make people feel warm and included. But it is the easiest way to approach a problem.
In college supposedly we are in volunteer organizations that don’t have access to such technique . . . except in Fraternities and Sororities. Here we have a lot of “or else’s”. Do this or else this will happen to you . . .
What GMUTEKE and Barbara says about by-laws is your best bet if you want change. If your Execs are fining from their own decision or chapter tradition that’s a simple vote. If it’s in your local by-laws you can draft a by-laws change, you don’t have to be on the committee to do it, anyone can propose a by-laws change. In either case, make sure you have a drummed up significant amounts of support before you present your option, even if the support is just “we hate fines”.
You will also need to propose something to replace fines such as the point system mentioned by AlphaSigLana and Shadokat, if you ask them maybe they will send you a copy? Maybe include a couple of those personal days Whitney (Laine4JC) mentioned so people can get points without attending certain events.
Here is an example from Kappa Sigma’s Idea page
http://www.kappasigma.org/ideabank/points.html. I haven’t seen enough of these programs to know how good this one is so please post some feedback!
I really like what Whitney said about the three groups, with two being required to attend an event, and if you get someone from the uncommitted group to take your place you are excused.
May I suggest we stretch the idea? What if we created teams in the chapter (the amount depending on the size) for the major categories of operations: Say fundraising, socials, philanthropy (the smaller stuff) presence at other events etc. And lets say we vary the team rosters from category to category: That way more people work together on different teams. And then just did it the way Whitney said above: Certain teams have to go; In order to not to attend you just have to find a replacement.
Also what Whitney said at the end of her post about confronting the underlying cause was very insightful! As she said, most of the time a few minutes conversation and some kindness will go a long way to defuse a problem, especially if its done early.