Responsibilities: Taking on Your Duty as a Leader or Member

The responsibilities of being a school club, student organization, or student body officer may get very overwhelming. Whether you're the president, vice president, secretary, or even the treasurer, they all bear responsibilities that help keep everything running smooth. It's important to keep in mind the big picture (which is of course the club, organization, or student body); the key: communication. It is also important to make sure that you do not procrastinate and put off duties until the last minute; it can lead to bigger problems that might affect even the advisor's job, making things more difficult. As an officer, it is also important to keep a positive attitude, as officers are seen as role models in the eyes of people outside the club, organization, body, or even the other members of the club, especially freshmen, who will follow your example.
Take into consideration big companies and firms who make business with other companies all over the world. Without communication, orders or happenings about the company might be misunderstood or worse, go unheard. The same can happen in a school club or student body. If the president doesn't tell the secretary when meetings are, nothing will be noted during the meeting or information crucial to the running of the organization might go missing. Communication among officers, definitely including the teacher advisor, is important to running things smoothly and may even get jobs done faster if information is relayed immediately. However, communication shouldn't just be among officers, but also to the rest of the club members, who need information in order to do their assigned job. For example, I personally have been involved in the VEX Robotics club at my school, which can be one of the most expensive and hectic clubs on campus. This is because in order to build something, you need an agenda, a deadline in order to get each part done that will result in a finished product required to achieve certain goals in the game of robotics. However, many of our team members in the recent year were freshmen, who, although had great robot ideas, had no sense of how to organize their ideas instead of just putting it together. Of course, they wouldn't know how unless the team leaders communicated with them and guided them to build a relationship of team work that will result in a winning robot. Going back to the cost of building a robot; it is very expensive. However, lack of communication with the teacher advisor may lead to a lack of parts which could have been purchased had the teacher known the team needed them. For those of you who may be part of the newspaper or the yearbook, you must also know how important organization is in order for everyone to complete their responsibilities, especially the editors and group leaders. Although the editors must communicate to the staff writers and photographers their assignment, the writers and photographers must in turn communicate with their editors and each other (photographer and staff writer) if they were able to get the job done, and on time too. For example, if a photographer fails to take pictures that a writer needs for his/her page, and fails to tell, not only does the photographer fail at his/her responsibility but also so does the writer as both of them miss the deadline. This also goes into the important factor of no procrastination, which is important to achieving the responsibilities set for not only club officers, but also other members of the team or student body.
The work load of not only the club leaders can get over bearing, but so can the responsibilities of the other members. That is why it is important not to procrastinate or put off the responsibilities set on you. It can result in a large pile up of work that can affect the work of other members. For example, if a programmer was assigned to test gear ratios for the wheels or test the new program to see if it works but didn't do so until a week later, this would delay the work of others who were assigned to actually build the foundation that requires knowing what gears or wheels to use. The idea is that the responsibilities of one person affect another, therefore it is called teamwork. Communication ties in with this. If members or officers do not communicate or take care of what responsibilities are set on them, the result would be chaos, misunderstanding, and at times useless arguments.
However, leaders of a club or organization shouldn't think of just their work, but should think about the team's well being as well. It is important for the leaders to maintain a positive attitude, which reflects onto the underclassmen that learn from their leaders because in their mind they think, "well he is the leader so he must be right…right?" However, showing frustration toward the underclassmen or even anger or "dislike" toward their position as a leader could affect what the underclassmen think about the club and might start questioning the credibility of that club or organization and whether it was worth it or not.
In other words, the quality of a good leader is not just about getting the job done but how it's done. Talking out your plans to the rest of the team, student body, or organization gives them an understanding of your actions and help them organize their own set of responsibilities and establish the priorities of the organization. Leaders cannot just work quietly in the background leaving everyone else in confusion, which may lead to unintentional procrastination of what needs to get done. He/she must put on an outgoing and positive attitude that will make communication much easier and set an example to fellow leaders and members. Taking on the responsibilities of a leader is no easy task. It isn't about power or control, it's about teamwork that in turn earn you respect as a leader and role model.