 In the News -
March 2008
Principles of Leadership
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Audio/Video Script:
Dr. Mark Peterson
Community Development Specialist
"The moral obligation of leadership is to think beyond our experience and
plan beyond our tenure." That’s a great quote by Edward Barlow. And he talks
about the importance of community leaders in Arkansas and other states to
understand what’s going on in the world and to take actions now that would
prepare a community for success in this new era.
There are five principles of leadership that are helpful to communities and
community leaders as we think about this new era.
Principle # 1 is: Leaders anticipate change - they see the big picture.
The changes that are taking place in our society - globalization, technology,
increasing diversity, challenges for the workforce, retirement of baby boomers -
all have huge impacts on communities; and the challenge, and I think the
opportunity, is to understand these changes and to learn how to harness these
forces of change for the good of the community.
Principle # 2 is: Community leaders understand the interrelatedness of
things.
Everything is related to everything else. It’s like a rock that hits a
pond and the ripples go out impacting the entire community. When the tornadoes
went through Arkansas recently, they had huge impact, not only on those
communities, but in the areas, the region, and the whole state. That’s why
strategic planning efforts make so much sense, because a community can identify
the issues with the greatest opportunity or the greatest challenges, and that
impacts the entire community or region.
Principle # 3: Leaders understand the development process and how to apply it
to their community or county or region.
The forces that we were talking about have a huge impact on a community and
understanding a community development process of thinking and acting
strategically, developing an action plan is just critical. Strategic vision is a
mental image of your desired future. It’s a simple statement that describes what
you want your community to become. And communities and regions that are
successful are able to describe their vision of the future in a fairly short
number of words.
Principle # 4: Leaders create, support and foster effective development
organizations.
An organization is a vehicle of people in a community or region to work
together toward a common vision. These vehicles are essential and they have a
shared vision, a common mission, and action teams to bring change about in the
development process.
Principle # 5: Effective community leaders have personal characteristics
worthy of emulation.
It means that other people respect them. Steven Kelly wrote a book called
"Business at the Speed of Trust", and gives all these great examples of
businesses that have high trust with each other and because of that they can act
very quickly and be very responsive because they have a high trust level. And
the same thing is true in communities and regions. And we’ve done surveys of
citizens asking them what characteristics they find most important, and honest
and dependability always come up near the top.
These principles can be helpful to community and regional leaders in Arkansas
seeking to be successful in this new era.
Announcer:
To learn more,
contact your county Extension agent, and follow the links in this section.
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