Community Building takes leadership and Leadership is not always easy

Building community is an undertaking that constant scrutiny by people who are willing to move from their comfort zone to spheres of leadership.  Community building is not easy. Being a leader is not easy.  One of the leadership principles that I have seen work over and over again is exhibited by gutsy leaders who are willing to own the problem. "It's not my fault" is the refrain we hear so often when a situation needs repair and rebuilding.

Leaders in community building generally are not all that interested in finding fault; they are interested in creating solutions.

The solution comes far more quickly when we decide it matters a lot less now about who caused it and why and a lot more about how do we fix it. There is only so much building energy to be tapped. A leader who comes in with a willingness to own the problem is likely going to have a team working on the solutions long before the manager who has a need to fix blame and punish shortcomings.

Michael Hyatt, whose platform is as a virtual mentor, had an interesting blog post this morning on key leadership characteristics written about by former Navy SEAL Team leaders.  The post is a quick read and well worth the read if you are into leading community building efforts.

Let's become "outcome focused."

One of the areas in which I try to do a lot of reading and learning is leadership. One of the philosophies of leadership that seems to carry a lot of weight is the idea that each of us should be thinking and acting like leaders. In community building it is important that there are people willing to take on the mantle of leadership. Look at our communities -- it is not difficult to see the crying NEED for more leaders and more leadership.

This past night term at Coker I had the opportunity to teach a course in Media Relations and Crisis Communication. In that course I used some material from James Lukaszewski, a management consultant out of White Plains, NY, and one of the top communicators in the field of crisis communication. He had an article in a magazine called "The School Administrator" in August 2008.

One of the key lessons from this article came through a quick anecdote he told about being involved in a very challenging issue in the mid 90s. Those involved sought out a minister who helped facilitate politically charged situations. This minister laid down "one ground rule."That rule:"The discussion was to be entirely outcome-focused. This meant that whatever happened among us prior to entering his living room no longer existed or mattered..." If we could focus more on what we need in the future than what took place in the past, we would, at a minimum, become much more efficient with our time.

In this article, Mr. Lukaszewski gave a snapshot of what he calls the most credible leaders and managers. These are his bullet points.
Lukaszewski says:
** Grow and learn every day
** Help those they serve to achieve some positive, incremental progress daily
** Identify and talk about those positive increments that those they work with, supervise or lead achieve every day
** Assess what they have learned, and then teach others to assess themselves

There is nothing easy about leadership and that may be why there is such an absence of this quality in many our communities today -- Leadership is hard work.

Information in this post comes from? "The Ingredients For Good Leadership." James E. Lukaszewski in the August 2008 issue of THE SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR, pages 16 - 19