http://www.observer.org.sz/index.php?news=34690

MOTIVATING YOURSELF, YOUR TEAM

25 January, 2012 11:56:00 SIFE Swaziland

 

“THE world needs more men and women who do not have a price at which they can be bought; who do not borrow from integrity to pay for expediency; who have their priorities straight and in proper order; whose handshake is an ironclad contract; who are not afraid of taking risks to advance what is right; and who are honest in small matters as they are in large ones.
“The world needs more men and women whose ambitions are big enough to include others; who know how to win with grace and lose with dignity; who do not believe that shrewdness and cunning and ruthlessness are the three keys to success; who still have friends they made 20 years ago; who put principle and consistency above politics or personal advancement; and who are not afraid to go against the grain of popular opinion.
“The world needs more men who do not forsake what is right just to get consensus because it makes them look good; who know how important it is to lead by example, not by barking orders; who would not have you do something they would not do themselves; who work to turn even the most adverse circumstances into opportunities to learn and improve; and who love even those who have done some injustice or unfairness to them.

The world, in other words, needs more true leaders.

Excerpted from the Eulogy for Joseph P. Overton, By Lawrence W. Reed

“Through Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) I experienced true leadership. I am now a more confident and capable individual.” - SIFE Team Leader.

As a team leader it is very important that you are personally motivated and in turn motivate others.
One of the key tasks as a team leader is to ensure a fun team spirit for your team. The success of your team will depend largely on how well it is engaged to achieve its stipulated goals. Naturally, there will be times when team members will feel unmotivated due to a number of reasons, but it’s important that the leaders of the team are able to feel its pulse so as to prevent a team breakdown due to lack of motivation.

Developing Team SpiritWorking hard and being successful with your SIFE team is certainly motivating, however breeding a fun team spirit amongst your team members is just as important in keeping people engaged. Being in a SIFE team should above all be fun!

Here are some ideas to develop team spirit:

• Put together a social team; this would be a group of people from your team who organise team-building activities or social events for the team.
• Make your meetings fun; plan to have dinner together after or during the meeting. Order or bring food and drinks to the meeting.
• Plan weekly or bi-weekly SIFE socials for your team.
• Organise a team-building day or even an annual team-building weekend for the team. Spending time together helps to build stronger relationships amongst your team members.
• Organise fun internal team competitions.
• Engage all your team members while making decisions and hear them out. You may also form small action groups with common objectives.

Recognising Team Members

To effectively motivate your members it is important that you reward hard work and creativity of your members.

• Organise a quarterly team meeting only for the purpose of recognising and rewarding your team. Invite your faculty advisor and key institutional administrators for this meeting. Give away a variety of unique awards like ‘SIFE Star of the Quarter’, ‘Helping Hands Award’, SIFE service pins, etc. Also think about gift cards and certificates of recognition.
• Explore the opportunity of using your campus radio or newsletter once a month to recognise efforts.
• Your team can also institute a hall of fame for deserving students once they graduate and become SIFE alumni.

Retention

Keeping people in your team for more than just one year is the key to the long term success and sustainability of the SIFE programme at your institution. Experienced members can share their knowledge with newer members and hence help the team to become stronger from year to year.

• Provide growth opportunities to members in your team. New recruits should generally not be in a leadership position but should rather gain some experience working ‘in the field’ on projects first.
• Develop a mentorship programme for the next year’s leaders to get them excited and to help build essential knowledge for the roles they will be taking on.
• Give your members an opportunity to develop themselves by being part of the team.

You can achieve this by inviting accomplished external speakers to talk to your members on topics ranging from leadership to communication to résumé writing.

Essential Steps to (Re) Start Your SIFE Team

http://www.observer.org.sz/index.php?news=34446

Getting started: Essential steps to (re) start your SIFE team

18 January, 2012 11:47:00 SIFE Swaziland

 

Welcome to the Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) leadership experience!
We at SIFE are delighted with your interest in using the positive power of business to improve the lives of people in your community. To assist you in your role as a team leader, we’ve developed this manual as a blueprint for establishing and leading your SIFE team and more so, to help you navigate through a few leadership tips.
So read up, explore and have a fun-filled as well as successful SIFE year!

Register and get access to resources Once your SIFE team has been officially inducted and recognised by the SIFE country office, you can register yourself online as a SIFE student and gain access to the unique SIFE resources available online.  To register, visit www.sife.org. Please contact your programme manager/country leader should you need any help in this regard. Upon registering, you will be able to access several valuable resources and tools which will help you get organised. Thoroughly read the SIFE Team Handbook and the Team Toolkits first, as these will provide you clarity on the next steps.

Understand SIFE
As a SIFE (team) leader you are an ambassador of SIFE at your institution. In order to lead your team effectively, you will need to ensure that you understand fully and completely what SIFE is about.
As a leader you should be able to help your fellow team members to fully grasp what SIFE is all about. Start by familiarising yourself with the SIFE judging criterion. The SIFE Team Handbook and www.sife.org serve as a good starting point to learn more.

Develop a structure for your teamBefore you can be effective as a team, you will need to ensure that you have a fully working team structure in place. Every SIFE team should have at least a very basic organisational model to ensure efficiency.  Refer to the SIFE Team Handbook for a sample organisation structure. The next section of this manual gives you a brief description of their core functions. Use this as a starting point and build a structure that would best suit your projects and team size.

Create job descriptions
Once you have an organisational model for your team, make sure that all members are familiar with their roles within the team. Whether you have 10 or 100 students in your team, every single member who joins SIFE should know what they are responsible for. In order to facilitate this, your team will need to develop individual job descriptions for leadership positions as well as group job descriptions for general team members. The SIFE Team Toolkit on www.sife.org offers samples and ‘best practices’ on how to go about doing this.

Evaluate your project portfolioOnce you fully understand SIFE and you have developed a structure for your team, you can now go ahead and start evaluating your project portfolio. As a new team, you will need to decide on the number of projects you wish to start this year.  As a rule, there is no maximum number of projects a SIFE team can do. However, in your team’s first year, it will be most effective if you focus on a smaller number of projects. Setting ambitious yet realistic and attainable goals is imperative for the success of your first SIFE year. If your team already has a project portfolio and you are taking over the role of someone else, make sure you evaluate your projects. Which ones will you continue again this year? Which others will you cease and how many new projects will you start?
These decisions need to be made at the very beginning of the year, to ensure that your team can start working and maximise on the academic year.

Structure team meetings
As your team will likely consist of several different project groups, you will need to ensure that each of the project groups is running effectively. On top of that, as team leader, you are also responsible for building a team atmosphere. Part of your role entails creating a team ‘feeling’ amongst different project groups within your SIFE team.

Use first meet for brainstorming Use your first team meeting not only as an opportunity to pass on information about your team but also as a brainstorming session. Ask those who attend the meeting for their ideas and about the kinds of projects they would like to be involved with.  The more your team’s activities mesh with its members’ interests, the more successful it will be. To encourage discussion inform members about the range of programmes offered by SIFE. Use the SIFE Team Handbook as your primary reference tool. Describe the team’s initial structure and service areas. Ask your members what kinds of programmes interest them the most and how those interests fit into creating effective SIFE projects.
For example, are they interested in programmes empowering disadvantaged groups, programmes involving inter-nation interface, etc? Many members will be interested in honing career skills. Encourage them to target a SIFE programme that will help them accomplish their personal goals.
Be creative and allow free-flowing discussions. You will be surprised at the ideas that will be generated.

Communicate with SIFE national officeDesignate one of your members (usually it’s the team’s president) as the primary contact with the SIFE country office. This student leader could provide reports to the SIFE office. The important thing is to make sure the lines of communication stay open between your team and the SIFE national office.

Designate central (online) location to store key team informationThe most important information your team will need to store includes the Active Team Sheet (an up-to-date list of all the active students in your SIFE team including their year, field of study and email address). In addition, you need to store the team data sheet for current year, team’s financial records, contact database, project /action plan documents, including any agreements with beneficiaries and project partners, project tracking and evaluation tools, other team organisational tools (hierarchy chart, tracking tool for hours invested, etc.)
Useful sites for storing information online include “cloud” storage sites such as Google Docs or Dropbox.

Fundraising Through Entrepreneurial Activities

Wednesday 11th January 2012, Swazi Observer Article


http://www.observer.org.sz/index.php?news=34194


AS was noted in Part 1, there are two ways to fundraise for your team’s activities.
One is fundraising through sponsorship (featured last month) and the second is fundraising through entrepreneurial activities. This month we will focus on the latter (fundraising through entrepreneurial activities).
Instead of relying on others to donate money to you, your Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) team can also choose to generate its own funds by engaging in entrepreneurial activities. These activities must not be confused with your SIFE projects, which are aimed at empowering others.
Hence, your entrepreneurial activities are not to be presented as SIFE projects as such, but they serve as a means to generate income for your SIFE projects.
Entrepreneurial Activities
Set up a small business:
Your team can set up a small business venture on campus that would satisfy a need on your institution. Delivery services, a small restaurant, photocopy services, language classes, tutoring services and internet cafés are all examples of ventures that have a tendency to generate a good profit.
Your team can also conduct market research for companies for a fee.
Membership dues and application fees:
It is also possible for your team to charge a small amount of dues per member; this will generate some money to cover basic team expenses, but will also ensure that your members value the programme enough to contribute to the upkeep of the team.
You may also choose to have students pay a small non-refundable application fee to join your team.
Career events:
Your team can generate some good revenue by creating events and charging the participants a fee to attend. You can think about organising career fairs, recruitment fairs and professional development events.
These all have a potential to bring in revenue for your team. Inviting a well-known and respected chief executive officer as a keynote speaker to any of your events can boost ticket sales.
Social events:
Theme parties, band nights, concerts and talent shows are events which can generate income for your team through the profit from ticket sales. Do make sure that you plan these events well in advance so that you can advertise and sell tickets beforehand.
Creative Fundraisers
Lottery/Raffles – People always enjoy getting a chance to win something, so organising a raffle/lottery is a very simple way to fundraise. Offer an inexpensive ticket for a chance to win a cash prize or a gift.
Your costs are limited to the ticket expenses and purchasing your prizes. As with any fundraiser, the better the items offered, the more funds you will raise.
Car wash – Organising a car wash is another simple way to generate income with your team members. Advertise the date and time, and either charge a set amount for each car wash or accept additional donations for your projects.
Auction – Consider organising an auction where people can bid on items your team has collected. Your team members can even get creative and offer their ‘services’ as an item in the auction. Depending on your team member’s skills, they could consider offering bidders a home cooked dinner, help with moving, mowing their lawn, giving guitar lessons, repairing/installing computers, etc.
Bake sale – Selling food/drinks is a very simple fundraiser. Ask local bakeries for donations or get your team members to bake some of their specialties and sell them at your campus in between classes or at lunch.
Market/Garage sale – Ask your team members to donate their unwanted items (clothes, furniture, books, etc) and resell them during a garage sale. Profits go directly to your team. You can even offer simple snacks for your shoppers and earn a little extra cash.
NOTE: When establishing entrepreneurial ventures for your team have in mind that such ventures are not the core of your SIFE work and as such should not be so time consuming to manage that you have no time for your SIFE projects!

Cartier Awards

Cartier Awards The application period for the 2012 Edition of the Cartier Awards is now open! Cartier seeks exceptional entrepreneurs heading initiatives with the potential to grow significantly in the years to come. Women entrepreneurs in the initial stages of development, in any country, of any nationality and operating in any industry are welcome to submit their application. The application period will end on March 13, 2012.

What can you win? Eighteen Finalists representing the best projects worldwide will be selected in the first phase of the contest. In the second phase of the contest, the Finalists will receive coaching and media exposure and will be invited to France for the Finale week which includes a presentation in front of the international Jury, entrepreneurship workshops and the Global Meeting of the Women’s Forum. The six Laureates nominated for the Awards will receive an additional year of coaching and US $20,000 in funding. http://www.cartierwomensinitiative.com/how-to-apply/

Eligibility and Evaluation Criteria The business project to be considered for the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards must be an original for-profit business creation, in the start-up phase: at least one year old and no older than three years. The leadership position must be filled by a woman. The Jury will then evaluate the projects based on criteria of creativity, scalability (potential for growth) and impact.