NFCA Meeting: Opening Ceremonies/Image Mapping

I'm home now from the first day of the NFCA Mid-Year meeting and I'm bushed. Today's meetings included opening remarks from representatives of Sons of Norway, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans and Catholic Aid Association as well as the election of new officers and an Identity Mapping session, followed by a lively reception for the attendees.

During the election portion of today's meeting the NFCA Fraternal Section elected a new slate of officers. I'm pleased to announce that Sons of Norway Fraternal Director Eivind Heiberg has been elected to the office of president of the NFCA Fraternal Section. Everyone in attendance was very excited with the results, so big congratulations to Eivind!

After the elections, there was an interesting presentation on the idea that in order to communicate effectively with individuals or groups you need to have an understanding of their respective personalities. As part of this discussion Thrivent Financial for Lutherans hosted an Identity Mapping session for the attendees.

This part of the evening was especially interesting to me because Image Mapping has the potential to be applied within a small group setting to facillitate more effective and fruitful communication. If you don't already see where I'm going with this, something like Image Mapping could be useful to a lodge in helping its board members communicate with one-another more effectively and improve performance and productivity, which is the foundation of a strong lodge and a strong future.

Just to give an example of this and how it works, tonight I learned that I was a Logical-Relationship-Action-Organized-Extrovert. What that means is that I am most comfortable in a work environment which is unstructured and creative while believing that there is a right answer to every question and that information is the key to that answer. It also means that I sometimes appear to be difficult to approach becuase I do not show emotions. People I work with, who know this information, are able to communicate more effectively with me. The reverse also applies when I know about their personality and communication style, too. Pretty helpful, don't you think? Imagine if a lodge board of directors were equipped with the same information about each other. Personally I think there'd be no limit to what they could accomplish.

If any officers are interested in learning more about it, don't hesitate to contact me and I can pass on some more information.

Ok, more to come tomorrow. Don't forget to check out our Twitter feed to get all the updates throughout the day!