values and commitment

"Personal leadership is the process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with them".

When you are a part of a sorority you know that your values are not going to align with all of your sisters. Because of this you have to find a way to transform them into group values. Being the president of an organization does not mean that your values or ideas are always right it is stepping back and listening to other people's ideas and seeing their values as if they were your own. Using everyone's values a group can come together and set specific values and goal for the organization. When my exec board was first starting their term we had a retreat and everyone found out what type of leader they were and we developed goals of what we wanted to accomplish and what we valued as an exec board. One of the things we wanted to focus on was not pre gaming before events as an exec board. So because of this the exec board and I do not pre game for events and by leading by example we hope the rest of the chapter will eventually follow. Although the rest of the chapter may not value this as an exec board we have developed a group value of being responsible before social events by not pre gaming. 
I do not believe that it is possible to always be a person of congruence everyone always makes mistakes. You can be incongruent with your values once in a great while but it cannot be a recurring problem. Someone who is incongruent with their values on a regular basis will not be  good leader because no one will take them seriously. Being a leader one needs to realize they are held to a higher standard and because of this people watch and remember everything you say and do. As a leader you need to evaluate whether or not something you do is really worth being incongruent. I truly believe it is easier to be congruent if one person knows what they value in life. If you do not know what your values are it is hard to be congruent with them. 
To me commitment is giving something your all even when you are not required to. For example on a high school basketball team there are many players that all say they are committed. To me they are not all committed, the ones that play because they love it and give it their all no matter what are the ones who are truly committed. Ones that their parents force them to play and slack off in practice are not truly committed. This can be seen in our chapters. There is always that one girl not matter what you ask her you know she will do it for you because she is committed to the chapter, it means something to her. When I think of committed I also think of dedicated. When you are committed to something you are also dedicated to its cause. I am committed to my family, academics, Delta Zeta, and my health.