One reason why communities succeed is based on their leadership. A great leader can give you the greatest of opportunities. Among other things, communities need to be challenged and given the opportunity to evolve and expand.
5 processes to becoming a better leader are:
1) Model the way
2) Inspire a shared vision
3) Challenge the process
4) Enable others to act
5) Encouraging the heart
I found that these 5 processes can also apply to community development. Leadership is a quality that is contagious, once the way is modeled and a vision is shared, the process of changing needs to be challenged. The way things were "before" vs how things can get better is what Kouzes and Posner call challenging the process.
All 5 of these processes involve people and the community. Each member has to be on board and involved, because if one person turns into a negative attitude it can also become contagious and then it turns into a cancer that takes a lot of effort to squash.
Each of the communities I blogged about need to be active. All members of the community are essential for the success of their communities. Even though each community was based on separate values and goals, they each aspire to become better.
The Cougar community has the potential to gain support and get involved as role models and leaders as teams and individuals, whereas the Leduc community has the opportunity to learn and grow from each other and become a potential landmark community.
For these communities to be successful and continue challenging the process they must prioritize. Learn from past mistakes, encourage each other to get involved and gain the courage to try, try, try again, until finally you succeed.
Start looking at challenges as adventures and opportunities to become better; better as an individual, better as teams, better as communities.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Mount Royal Cougar Community
Communities are so essential for several different reasons; Social interaction, community involvement, change, success, challenging the process, enabling others to act, and the list goes on.
Each one of us is involved in multiple communities, whether we think we are or not. The one community I chose to focus on was the Mount royal Cougar athletic community. We are a large group, we strive to be leaders inside and outside of the classroom, and even though we may all be on different sports teams and working towards separate goals as teams and individuals, but as a group we are a community.
I have spoken with a few of my teammates, as well as a few athletes on different teams around campus.
Instead of looking at improving the quality of life for our community and chose to look at the quality of fan support, which has has its perks as well as its downfalls.
Fan support is a challenging part of athletics, especially within Canadian schools. As students we should be proud of where we went to school, and supporting your Universities athletics should give us a huge sense of pride, so why is it that it is so difficult to gain that support that we so desperately need. It comes down to a few different things;
1) Large cities, such as Calgary, have professional teams like the Calgary Flames and the Stampeders. Calgary is also equipped with junior teams like the Hitmen. Just competing with these 3 teams alone makes it difficult to gain that fan support at a Collegiate level. Take in mind that I didn't even mention the smaller clubs such as the Calgary Buffs, or Royals.
Universities in the United states for example are located in smaller towns (Not all of them but most are), for example Niagara, Cornell, Clarkson, Robert Morris, Mercyhurst, Colgate, New Hampshire. These Universities recieve massive fan support due to the fact they have no professional teams located nearby.
2) Media coverage and game promotion is considerably lower in Canadian schools than in American schools. With the lack of coverage, means the lack of knowledge, which pushes our students away from support rather than encouraging it. I believe that Canadian schools can do a better job at promoting Game days in Canadian schools.
3) Student-Athletes are rarely recognized in classrooms, which makes it "intimidating" for classmates to approach an athlete and relate to them. Whereas if student-athletes were known around campus and recognized it would be easy for students to approach them and become supportive of their sport which would make for a stronger fan base and even possibly a better over-all experience through-out a students University experience.
These are just a few examples of why Cougar Athletes have little fan support, other than family members or close friends of athletes, but there are numerous ways to improve this "quality of life".
One possible way would be to upgrade our facilities. The Men's and Women's hockey teams recently had an upgrade in their hockey arena and both received new dressing rooms, which is a huge draw for new recruits. But the simple fact that they play at the Calgary community arena's should be a huge draw in just due to the fact that there is a bar located upstairs between the two arena's. If there were drink specials offered for those students who are willing to come out and support their Cougars, as well as a bus provided after dropping students off at a local bar, or bringing them to and from the arena, these could be huge potential marketing schemes to create that fan support that our school so desperately needs.
I think that with the proper promotion of Games, facilities, and our athletes, we could improve our fan base, and essentially improve the "quality of fan life" within our schools across Canada.
Each one of us is involved in multiple communities, whether we think we are or not. The one community I chose to focus on was the Mount royal Cougar athletic community. We are a large group, we strive to be leaders inside and outside of the classroom, and even though we may all be on different sports teams and working towards separate goals as teams and individuals, but as a group we are a community.
I have spoken with a few of my teammates, as well as a few athletes on different teams around campus.
Instead of looking at improving the quality of life for our community and chose to look at the quality of fan support, which has has its perks as well as its downfalls.
Fan support is a challenging part of athletics, especially within Canadian schools. As students we should be proud of where we went to school, and supporting your Universities athletics should give us a huge sense of pride, so why is it that it is so difficult to gain that support that we so desperately need. It comes down to a few different things;
1) Large cities, such as Calgary, have professional teams like the Calgary Flames and the Stampeders. Calgary is also equipped with junior teams like the Hitmen. Just competing with these 3 teams alone makes it difficult to gain that fan support at a Collegiate level. Take in mind that I didn't even mention the smaller clubs such as the Calgary Buffs, or Royals.
Universities in the United states for example are located in smaller towns (Not all of them but most are), for example Niagara, Cornell, Clarkson, Robert Morris, Mercyhurst, Colgate, New Hampshire. These Universities recieve massive fan support due to the fact they have no professional teams located nearby.
2) Media coverage and game promotion is considerably lower in Canadian schools than in American schools. With the lack of coverage, means the lack of knowledge, which pushes our students away from support rather than encouraging it. I believe that Canadian schools can do a better job at promoting Game days in Canadian schools.
3) Student-Athletes are rarely recognized in classrooms, which makes it "intimidating" for classmates to approach an athlete and relate to them. Whereas if student-athletes were known around campus and recognized it would be easy for students to approach them and become supportive of their sport which would make for a stronger fan base and even possibly a better over-all experience through-out a students University experience.
These are just a few examples of why Cougar Athletes have little fan support, other than family members or close friends of athletes, but there are numerous ways to improve this "quality of life".
One possible way would be to upgrade our facilities. The Men's and Women's hockey teams recently had an upgrade in their hockey arena and both received new dressing rooms, which is a huge draw for new recruits. But the simple fact that they play at the Calgary community arena's should be a huge draw in just due to the fact that there is a bar located upstairs between the two arena's. If there were drink specials offered for those students who are willing to come out and support their Cougars, as well as a bus provided after dropping students off at a local bar, or bringing them to and from the arena, these could be huge potential marketing schemes to create that fan support that our school so desperately needs.
I think that with the proper promotion of Games, facilities, and our athletes, we could improve our fan base, and essentially improve the "quality of fan life" within our schools across Canada.
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