Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Getting organized
I held my first Presidency meeting on Thursday, and I feel a million times better. There is nothing like having an enthusiastic team of people supporting you to make the work load not so scary.
Because I had eight weeks to obsess over everything, I went into our first meeting a little overprepared. Our YW's board hasn't had binders or a ton of strict organization as long as I've been in this ward - through two presidencies, and because I am a planner that always stressed me out. So I set about making binders from scratch as my first order of business. Either everyone on my board is a great liar, or they really appreciated having a whole lot of information up front.
Here's what I included.
- A 12 month calendar that included all ward and stake events as well as upcoming responsibilities and school holidays.
- A thorough agenda for our first meeting that included goals to work on as a presidency as well as goals to help our girls achieve
- A list of all current class presidencies
- Bullet points (taken from this post) of things I'd like them to consider as they prepare lessons
- A list of every YW, their address and phone number,(soon to include emails and cells), as well as the info for each leader, the bishopric, and the incoming beehives
- A lesson schedule outlining which lesson will be taught each week and which member of the presidency will teach each fast Sunday (that's our ward's tradition - it allows us to address topics specific to our group). Since I had extra weeks, I combined a few skimpy lessons and excluded a few others.
- A list of responsibilities throughout the year, who's in charge of the combined activity and so on.
- Worksheets for calendaring future activities.
I just can't stand that feeling you get when you walk into a new position and know you have a million things to do but don't have the information you need to do it. So I wanted to make sure no one could accuse me of doing that to them.
What information have you found really helpful? How else could a president set you up for success? Does it look like I'm a total micromanager? (Don't answer that last one, we all know the answer.)
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There's nothing quite like a fresh start with crisp papers and a new binder. Love your list.
ReplyDeleteThis new orientation page is really good. http://www.lds.org/pa/yw/pdf/YW_Orientation_Handout_Mar2009.pdf
And I actually really like these activity planning sheets/calendars. They help keep class presidency meetings moving along. http://www.lds.org/pa/yw/YW_PlanMutual_Complete_BW_01648_eng.pdf
Ha! You totally sound like me when I was called as YW pres. My biggest struggle at the beginning was delegating enough, but I remembered being a counselor to a president who really didn't delegate and I felt so useless! So I really tried to include the other leaders in decision-making, delegate appropriately, and be there as a resource, trusting them to fulfill their responsibilities well, even if they weren't exactly the way I would have done them. When you have great counselors it really makes life less stressful.
ReplyDeleteOh, and we delegated A LOT to the young women. That was one of our presidency goals - to help them develop leadership skills enough that they didn't "need" us to run the program.
You'll do great!