Austin, TX Bids for the D2 Championship Festival... Sort of

Today brought with it the culmination of one of the most challenging group projects I've had to complete since my undergraduate years.

Our task: To select a city to host the 2013 Division II National Championships Festival and create a bid presentation, a complete marketing and promotions plan, a participants manual and an accompanying Facebook event, which we were to invite our classmates and instructors to. Trying to complete a project of this magnitude when group members are 3,000+ miles away, immersed in internships and jobs requiring 40+ hours per week, proved to be quite a challenge in logistics and coordination.

As for what I learned about event management and marketing from this project, I can't say it was much new. I've been planning and marketing events since I was 8 or 9 years old. My Girl Scout troop and I used to plan, organize and put on a handful of events each year for other troops in our council, which hundreds of girls and their troop leaders would attend each day. Additionally, prior to returning to school, I worked at an advertising and marketing agency where one of our services was planning and managing events and another was creating and executing marketing and promotions plans often times in conjunction with a PR firm we partnered with. I like to think events are what I do; they're a part of who I am. I suppose you could say what I did learn was that an event like the DII Festival existed and quite honestly had there been more time to actively work on this project and give it the attention I used to give the events I planned at my previous job, there would have been no contest as to which city would have won the bid.

When we turn this around to look at what I learned about my leadership skills during the completion of this project, I would say that much of what I already knew was confirmed through this project. While I often happily jump into the leadership role because, unfortunately, I'm a bit of a control freak and like to have control over my own grades and outcomes, just as often, leadership roles fall into my lap by default whether it's because I have a solid understanding of what needs to be accomplished or because people feel comfortable with me working them through the process successfully. I think that my "position" as the go-to person for questions on projects and assignments all summer and autumn quarters put me in the position of default leader for the group because they felt that I could direct them in the right direction with this project, while hopefully taking them along the least painful path. Additionally, as a leader I like everyone to feel comfortable when working on a project, and so I had each of my teammates select something they wanted to do so that hopefully they would tackle that component with enthusiasm. I often take a back burner on this and end up working on whatever no one else wants to work on, even if it's not my specialty. I'm willing to tackle the difficult components, while having my hands in everything else by helping teammates complete their parts. My role tends to end up with me as the hub of the group with my team members each bouncing ideas off of me and using me as the one person who knows every other component and how they should all mesh together to create one solid final outcome. I would say it's almost as though I'm the traffic cop for the group, directing everyone with their individual parts to one common central goal.

One area I've been able to improve upon a bit since my undergraduate group work days is delegating tasks and letting go of some things. I've learned that I simply can't take on everything and I have to begin to trust my team members to help me out and complete their components well.

Lastly, I take pride in often becoming the default leader because to me it shows that somewhere along the way I've managed to instill a confidence about myself in my team and that they are confident in me taking the lead on something that will affect their success in a class or on a project. As a leader in any capacity, there's not much more you can ask for.