AMA San Antonio Attends November Regional Leadership Retreat

On November 3 – 5, 2018, the Houston AMA chapter hosted the AMA Southern Regional retreat which included Austin, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, and Tulsa chapters. San Antonio represented with President CJ Craig, President-Elect Judy Razo, and VP of Membership, Heidi Proctor. 

It was a chance to pause, reflect on goals, facilitate issue resolution, and network with other leaders in regional chapters. As a premiere marketing organization, AMA provides training so that its leaders can be the best. Topics included delegation skills, conflict resolution, and succession planning.  Here are a few highlights from this year’s retreat.

Delegation Skills

If you are not delegating, you are not developing the future.

Typically people don’t delegate because:

• Trust

• Availability of the right person for project 

• High expectations

• Failure

• Bad previous experience

• Ego

• Waited until the last minute

• No one said that they would do it 

Why delegate?

• Multiply your value

• Bring in capability of others 

• People need to feel trusted

• Helps you have more time

• Develops your team and organization’s future

Effective delegation through task-relevant maturity

  Determine how long have they been on the job and how competent they are.

• Low – your preparation may be higher in order to delegate the task

• Medium – you indicate the end result and they do it

• High – you know that they can handle the task; the difficultly is not micromanaging

At a low or medium level more management may be needed. However, often people will rise to the expectation.

Delegate tasks to really motivated people as well as having the right skill set. When delegating have clear and measurable outcomes. Delegate with participation and discussion. Think through job; set performance standards; determine a schedule and deadlines to complete the task.  You are equally making a commitment.

You can delegate and include a small title with small responsibilities. The small tasks lead to larger tasks.

Conflict Resolution* (American Marketing Association, 2018)

Typical conflicts involve:

• Personality Conflicts

• Philosophical Conflicts

• Procedural Conflicts

Often what seems to be about one issue is about another. Open, positive, and proactive communication are always good.

Steps to Addressing Conflict: DEFUSE

• D – Try to Determine what the true issue is

  • E – Encourage conversation using clarifying questions and non-judgmental   statements ( “I” versus “You”)

  • F – Try to Find common ground where both parties can agree

  • U – Seek to Understand the other person’s point of view

  • S – Be Specific about what you think or want

  • E – Make sure Everyone has a say and be transparent

We participated in exercises in order to talk about resolutions to typical conflicts. It’s one thing to talk about resolutions, but another to re-enact this issue and potential resolution.

We were given a scenario that actually happened with the names changed. We discussed in our table groups how to handle the conflict. A table delegate shared our findings with the other attendees. Then, the conflict given was re-enacted by two volunteers, murder mystery party style. The volunteers were given an identity and background of the character they were portraying in addition to their role in the conflict. When discussing the issue in our table groups, we didn’t get the full background when we were asked to solve the problem. In reality, you don’t have all the background. The volunteers re-enacted the conflict scenario based on the information and motives of their character. You realized the importance of getting all the information and possible the motivation for the people involved in the conflict in order to better to resolve the issue.

This proved to be an excellent exercise with actual “hands on” experience!

Succession Planning

Three chapter leaders, including our President, CJ Craig, were on a panel to discuss what they did for successful succession planning.

The importance of role specific succession plans is key. Documenting the role and the responsibilities of the role so that someone can step in with little training. The person in the role should also find a replacement should they need to vacate the post.

How do decide? Pay attention to familiar faces and ask them to volunteer. If you can name the volunteer task, you can delegate it. Even provide a title for the volunteer task and see how they do before moving them to higher responsibilities.

AMA San Antonio president CJ Craig (right) on the leadership panel

Which leads us back to delegation!

AMA is not only a fantastic professional membership organization for marketers, but provides excellent training for chapter leaders as well as members. We can all improve in some way, and AMA can help. Check out the resources on the website, too. https://www.ama.org/events-training

*American Marketing Association. (2018). Leadership Development: Conflict Resolution. 2018 AMA Regional Retreat.