RYLA - Leadership and Community

Sunday 8 July 2007

Good Afternoon. I am delighted to be again invited to speak to the 21st Century Leadership in Action Conference on Leadership and the Community. This is a superb initiative by Rotary. There is a real need to get young people, like yourselves, involved and interested in taking the lead in issues affecting you and your peers.

Leadership and the Community, is a topic that is close to my heart. I know from experience that taking the lead in your local community, to get a project done, is a great place to start honing your leadership skills.

Once you get a feeling of responsibility for what happens in your community you will find it is a catalyst to get things done and to set goals and a vision for the future.

It can be something as simple as getting a tree planted or something as major as building new community centre.

The reason I got into politics was because I had a vision for the St Albans community that did not include a four lane highway slicing through its heart. As a result of this I stood for election and was voted in as a Councillor and a member of the local community board.

Community board members are elected to be community leaders. They have been given a mission, under the Local Government Act, to serve and advocate for the needs of the community.

A good example of community advocacy is the new Papanui Youth facility, this facility is a testament to the power that can be generated to achieve great results when a number of communities work together.

Young people told us that there were not enough facilities for them in the area. The local community board decided to support the vision of a youth facility. The community board, the Anglican and Baptist Churches, worked together with the Te Papanui Trust to build this facility for young people and the result is first rate. It’s got a coffee lounge and kitchen and a sculpted climbing wall. Computers are being installed and equipment will be installed for a recording studio and an arts and crafts room. This facility achieved through good leadership skills, having a vision and by working together to achieve that vision.

True leadership cannot be awarded, appointed or assigned. It comes only from influence, and that must be earned by each leader. It is not good enough to be called the Mayor, you also have to do the work and to earn respect to get things done.

Community leadership is about how you inspire and mobilize others to want to get extraordinary things done on behalf of your community. Its about transforming values into actions, visions into realities, obstacles into innovations, and risks into rewards.

I do not see leadership being about imposing my sole dream, it’s about developing a shared sense of destiny. In local government its not just about the skills necessary to maintain a sewer or organise an events programme. Leadership skills include those necessary for public decision-making, policy development, program implementation, and organizational maintenance.

Traditional autocratic and hierarchical modes of leadership are slowly yielding to a newer model – one that attempts to simultaneously enhance the personal growth of workers and improve the quality and caring of our many institutions through a combination of teamwork and community, personal involvement in decision making, and ethical and caring behaviour. This emerging approach to leadership and service is called servant-leadership.

As a politician I know that there is a very diverse range of voters who are going to make a choice on how they vote based on their values and their experiences. As Mayor I know I am not just leading people who are the same as me, I am leading people who are very different and possibly don’t even like me. I meet this challenge by being a leader who puts service first, in other words I follow the principals of servant leadership. In this kind of leadership, service, comes before financial reward. To do this well you first have to listen to what people want.

As a servant leader I keep my mind open to their ideas, especially ideas that align with the goals we have as a Council. I accept there will be conflict and aim for a consensus.

However, I am also there to make decisions on behalf of the city. Not everybody will agree with those decisions. The community is consulted and the Council must make a decision that benefits the whole of the city.

Good decisions are sometimes being drowned out by a tone of intolerance that has overtaken some of our community consultation. Anyone who doesn’t agree with a particular point of view can be savaged and ridiculed – especially people like me who often agree with the community’s position but sometimes disagree.

Don’t become cynical. The truth is you are not getting the full story of politics, particularly local body politics from the media. Get involved. Local body politics are as immediate and relevant as you can get. Politics desperately needs the input of your generation. Democracy can only be healthy and well, when at least some of the best and brightest of new generations choose to take part in it.

My best wishes to Rotary and Leadership in Action.

ENDS