This is one of my favorite times of year! The annual ILA Conference begins later this week. What’s better than four days of fellowship with others who live and breath leadership? The conversations are fantastic, the sessions thought provoking and the relationships invaluable. Depending on how “caught up” I get, I will try to post some thoughts/observations throughout the conference. Don’t have anything going on this weekend? Hop a last minute flight to Vancouver (one of the most beautiful cities in the world) and attend the ILA Conference! – Scott J. Allen

For the last year I have been pondering how people exercise, or don’t exercise leadership in civic life. By civic, I mean activity in the public sphere – people working to solve difficult community, state and/or federal challenges. I work for the Kansas Leadership Center, a new organization charged with cultivating civic leadership across Kansas. We have worked hard to get to the root of what exactly we mean by “civic leadership,” and as we study the topic and talk with people across the state and nation, a key distinction regarding authority is growing larger in my mind.

Authority figures in civic life (e.g. governors, mayors, state representatives, community foundation presidents, etc.) appear to have far less authority within the realm they are working in than their counterparts in private life (e.g. CEOs, general managers, etc.). For example, a rank and file state legislator has virtually no formal authority over his or her fellow legislators, but a CEO of a company has the power to hire, fire, promote and demote company workers. Even a governor, who may be the CEO of the state government, has little formal authority over other officials in civic life. A governor can fire a state employee, but has no formal power or authority to make something happen in the legislature.

So, does a lack of authority over others require civic officials to have different or additional leadership competencies? If so, what are those competencies and how can they be developed? - Ed O’Malley

I briefly checked some of the blog archives to see if anyone posted the link to Values Based Management but did not see it. So, check out the link.

Despite the fact that its title includes the word “Management” instead of “Leadership” I found it to be extremely helpful. It’s basically a collection of hundreds of resources, theory descriptions, and topic based searches that can be used to help start research or presentations. AND, no need to worry about copyright infringements because the site disables the copy and paste functions. I’ve also used it, on the fly, to show leaders and coaching clients a visual representation of models that can help frame their thoughts.

You can look up a theory or model, then type it into a Google search or look it up in scholarly journals elsewhere. Check it out!!

-Casey Gomes

So here I am typing up my blog while many people here in San Diego county are evacuated from their homes and unsure what tomorrow or tonight will bring. My mind has been running the past couple days on what my role is. I’m about 20 miles from the closest fires and if I didn’t have the radio on or notice the hazy sky I wouldn’t have a clue what is going on in this city. The university is closed to keep people off of the roads and I’m torn with this weird feeling of being excited to have some free days but guilty for feeling this way knowing what the reason is. So what is my part I ask? I went yesterday to Costco to buy some water, diapers, etc. to donate at the largest evacuation shelter. I added my donations to piles of similar donations wondering if this is where my help is really needed or was it just the most convenient way for me to contribute. I wanted to donate my time but the list of volunteers is endless and they were turning them away. I’ve put out many calls to evacuated friends to open up my house. But I feel this is all I can do- makes me feel very helpless in a time of crisis.

So despite my feelings of helplessness I have tried to soak in what is going on through immersing myself in the radio. Through this I have seen that small acts of leadership and kindness are making a large impact. With more than a dozen fires going on at the same time it has been hard for communication to flow from officials to the public. It is amazing how much information could be shared about different neighborhoods being evacuated and different roads being opened or closed just through people calling into the radio. People were calling in offering their property to hold horses that were evacuated. Kindness and help is all around. It is certainly needed but I wonder too where these random acts of leadership and kindness disappear to when we aren’t in a state of crisis. I deliver $50 worth of donations to a shelter yet hardly ever give a homeless person a dollar. A twisted view of situational leadership at its finest I suppose…. -Paige Haber

I respect the work of Bruce Avolio a great deal.  He, perhaps more than any other scholar, has influenced how I think about leadership.  As a result, I often pop over to the Gallup Leadership Institute website to see what is new.  I stumbled upon this story about “ownership.”  It is worth a read. – Scott J. Allen