Stevenson High Choral Guild Observation

Observation of the Stevenson High Choral Guild
Pamela Levinson
College of Lake County

Observation of the Stevenson High Choral Guild

The Stevenson High Choral Guild is the parent group for the three choirs at Adlai E Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, IL. The executive board is made up of nine members; the co-presidents, vice president, co-secretaries, co-treasurers and the two teachers. I observed one of their monthly meetings. There was a lot to discuss at this meeting including the upcoming trip to New York City and changes to the organizations bylaws. The executive board’s objectives for this meeting were to figure out which aspect of the New York trip the choral guild would pay for and to finish the revisions of the
I believe that the co-secretary that was keeping minutes for the meeting could have been a group observer, but she did not offer feedback to the group on what she was observing. I think that was a missed opportunity in the group.
There were a few self-centered roles that were hurtful to the group. The vice president was an aggressor at this meeting by undermining the co-presidents authority. pThe vice president was also a recognition seeker because she constantly pointed out all the positive things she was able to achieve since the last meeting. One of the co-treasurers was a blocker during the bylaw discussion because she did not want to move on from a bylaw change until she got her way. This hurt the group because it prolonged the process.
There are aspects of how this group functions that work really well, while there are aspects that I would change. Each board member is sent an agenda the day before the meeting, and then given a hard copy at the beginning of the meeting. Next to each section is an amount of time that will be allotted to each item. I think this helps the group stay on track. Given the agenda for the meeting I attended, the meeting should have gone a little longer than an
The group spent a large amount of time working through the issues of the bylaw revisions, making the meeting last two hours. The agenda only allotted 15 minutes to review the bylaw changes that the co-presidents and teachers did. I think they should have anticipated that this would take longer since the rest of the executive board had not seen the changes yet. I also would have created a bylaw sub-committee to revise the bylaws because a majority of the members on the executive board had a lot of opinions. Another way this could have been fixed, is if the co-presidents had been more assertive when going over the bylaw changes, instead of letting each member talk over each