CAPE COD TIMES - Tuesday, 24 February, 1998
Qualities that leaders should exhibit
Recently, I was asked with two colleagues, Joel Crowell of Cape Cod Cooperative Bank and Steve Lawson of Cape Cod Bank and Trust, to address the 1998 session of the Community Leadership Institute (CLI).
CLI, a program affiliated with Cape Cod Community College, has its own group of community leaders as directors. Its goal is to create a growing pool of graduates to "ensure that the public service-business sector will have trained people able to function as leaders for future community development"
The 1998 session brings together 21 emerging leaders from the business, town, and non-profit sectors on Cape Cod for 11 daylong sessions on topics ranging from communication and education to the economy and the environment.
We bankers were asked to address five questions, but found one particularly intriguing. "Who do you perceive are cur-rent leaders on Cape Cod and why? What skills do they Possess and how can we, CLI Participants, best learn these skills?"
In my view, community leaders must possess four important characteristics.
First, leaders must think for themselves. Anyone who always supports the Democratic or Republican party, or always adheres to the viewpoint of any other group is by definition a follower, not a leader. But many people do seem to follow blindly some point of view proscribed by others.
Second, leaders must see both sides of an issue. In any polarized conflict - everything seems polarized today - almost inevitably something will be right and something will be wrong in what each is saying. Community leaders find both, followers do not.
Third, community leaders recognize the difference between public interests and self-interest.
Everyone has a little self-interest in them - without it there would be no such thing as ambition - so perhaps this qualification should be modified. Leaders have the ability to align their own self-interest and that of their organizations with the public interest. Doing good often does sell well.
Finally, leaders have a positive program, trying to build or accomplish something, not just to resist change. Too many adhere to the status quo in the face of inevitable change. It is always easier to be against someone else's proposal than to initiate new ideas.
This was evident on Cape Cod in recent debates over the Land Bank and the separation of the Economic Development Council from Barnstable County government. Many organizations seem so much more capable of stopping some other group's agenda than of accomplishing anything on their own.
But, public opinion polls have long shown that the public prefers leaders who come across as positive, making them feel good about themselves, rather than leaders who are great at pointing out what is wrong, however accurate they may be.
Joel and Steve gave their own definitions of leadership. Interestingly, when it came to naming leaders, the two names which came up first, Malcolm Hobbs, former owner and editor of The Cape Codder newspaper, and Joshua Nickerson, former Proprietor of Nickerson Lumber (now Mid Cape Centers), are both deceased.
Hopefully, through the efforts Of organizations such as the Community Leadership Institute the Cape will have an abundant supply of living leaders in the future.
Elliott Carr is president of the Cod Five Cents Savings
