Monday, January 25, 2010

Locating Leaders: Choosing Committee Chairs

Once you draw your volunteers, you have several options: (1) run the whole body of volunteers as a single unit by yourself, (2) Split the volunteers into committees and lead each committee by yourself or (3) Split into committees and select committee chairs to run the committees and report to you. While you might be the Prom Chair, you may actually want to enjoy the process a bit. If you overload your own schedule, planning Prom, I’m sure, won’t be as magical as you might have liked. This is where Committee Chairs come in.

I chose to have Committee Chairs because I believe that the responsibility of the Prom Chair is to coordinate the event and ensure that the night has good flow. While it is possible for one person to try and do everything, I know from past experience that it is more fun to work with people who are just as excited as I might be. It precipitates more ideas, it’s more enjoyable and the end product is even better. Having committee chairs allows me, as the Prom Chair, to manage all of the details, coordinate the night and guarantee strong fluency.


Of course, to have Committee Chairs, you have to pick them. Your best friends you know you get along with? The other major event planners in the school? Totally new blood? People out of the “Popular Crowd”? Selecting chairs (in my opinion) requires some sort of impartial application process, compromise and discussion with those whom you think would make great leaders in the Prom making process.


Chairing a committee is a commitment. I find it very important to make that clear from the get-go. Once I had collected volunteers, I used Facebook and Word of Mouth to ask people to ‘apply’ for Chairman’s positions. I figured that only people who were genuinely interested in embedding themselves in the Prom process would bother to write a paragraph on why they believed they would be strong Committee Chairs. This worked fairly well - I have an extraordinarily dedicated Music Chair, for example. Additionally, I can pull out the paragraph and point to the reasons I picked my Chairs. This is very important as I was criticized for selecting one of my closest friends.


The last semester of Senior Year of High School is busy for everyone. Sometimes, the person you want for Chair may not have the time to dedicate him- or herself completely to the task. Now, you have to compromise and ask your constituents to compromise. A good solution is co-chairing. It allows you to infuse a greater variety of well-qualified individuals into the project AND have the person or people you want in charge of that division as Committee Chair(s).


Naturally, any Committee Chair position is contingent upon your selected person’s time and decisions. Don’t forget to ask the person to serve as that chair and to discuss the responsibilities with that person. It would suck to get to May and find out that your Tickets Management chair has no interest in designing and marketing the tickets that were supposed to go on sale at the end of that week.


Point of Fact: Some people will complain about your selections and criticize you as a person for them. At the end of the day, it’s your decision - you are the Prom Chair. You can’t please everyone. So pick the most qualified people and have fun. You can’t let the fact that some people won’t be happy with your choices bug the heck out of you. Remember - you are the Chair.


the prom chair

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