EnactusOC: Motivating a Student Leadership Team During a Global Pandemic

EnactusOC is a student-led group that had attracted and retained students successfully for over 15 years. In the late spring of 2020, amid the global pandemic, Nicole Sapieha, the current President, found herself at the helm of an organization of students separated by space and time and lacking opportunities for connection. Through the summer of 2020, Sapieha and her team built online and limited face-to-face interaction (when and where permitted) with students from four campuses in separate cities. Early in the fall, it becomes apparent to Sapieha and her team that interactions will need to be virtual for the foreseeable future, and certainly for the 2020/21 academic year. In addition, the much anticipated and highly rewarding regional and national competitions were moving online. As the fall semester winds down and the Christmas holiday break nears, Sapieha recognizes that team morale is at an all-time low, there is little excitement for competitions, and motivation for leading community projects is waning. How could she engage students to participate when none of the usual perks of Enactus existed? This case deals with the challenges involved in motivating and organizing a geographically separated team of students to create meaningful and impactful projects without the usual social and emotional benefits of face-to-face connection. It also explores the difficulties that leaders experience when generating enthusiasm and buy-in when rewards have changed.