Fraternity

It is a sad reality that the movie Animal House shaped many people’s views of the collegiate fraternity experience. Though the film was released in 1978 and set in 1962, it has created a false perception in the minds of Americans that persists even today. While fraternity life is fun, the true experience is enriching in ways that wouldn’t sell very many movie tickets.

This weekend, I was honored to help initiate thirty-six new members of the rechartered chapter of Phi Delta Theta at Texas State University. I hope these young men embrace the teachings of the founders and enjoy the lifelong benefits of the brotherhood. College is a time of accelerated personal development, and the fraternity is one of the most valuable classrooms on campus.

During my senior year in college, I was elected president of the fraternity chapter. We had over 100 members and at least as many opinions about how I should do my job. This was my first real experience in leadership, and the lessons I learned in that role have stuck with me for forty years.  

The first lesson is that most decisions a leader must make do not have easy answers. If the answers were easy, the issue would most likely have been resolved by someone else. The leader gets to deal with the difficult questions and solve the most intractable problems. I often hear young executives complain that no one ever calls them just to say that things are going great. There is always a problem. This is the role and life of a leader. I learned that as the president of my fraternity.

I also learned to revert to values and principles to make those difficult decisions. When faced with a crisis, the process you follow to address it makes all the difference. A leader needs a decision-making framework and a moral compass to guide their thinking. Without them, you get bounced around by popular opinion or the loudest voices in the group. I learned to block out the noise and use the principles of the fraternity to make consequential decisions that often lacked popular support.

The motto of the founder of Phi Delta Theta was “To do what ought to be done but would not have been done unless I did it, I thought to be my duty.” You didn’t hear about that from Otter or Bluto.