About Leadership

In addition to Leadership Charlottesville, I'm engaged in other activities where I'm learning about leadership. One unexpected source of this is with my church. Recently, I was asked to be a confirmation sponsor for a friend of my son's. Our first meeting with the youth leaders introduced the sponsors to the idea of being "lamplighters" for these young people. The concept of leading by example, providing "light" to show the way, all while encouraging the youth to make their own decisions is all at once encouraging and daunting.

We're being encouraged to share our personal stories, as they relate to our faith, of course, but also to share our lives with our confirmands, as a way of providing them an example other than that of their parents, of adults living lives where the church plays a role. It's new and different challenge for me, as a leader. The parallels are interesting, though, and this new responsibility is making me think more about leadership roles and the way we grow, fall or step into them, sometimes unexpectedly.

Media and Communications

I've been decidedly under the weather. Wednesday's session of Leadership Charlottesville was a real effort for me to attend. Battling a cold and armed with tissues, cough drops and Dayquil, I showed up, determined to participate to my full capability.

This session's focus was media and communications. Since my field of work is public relations, much of the content was quite familiar, but interesting to me all the same. It's always interesting to learn about a local market's approach to public relations, get advice from newspaper, television and radio professionals about pitching the local media and gain tips for on-camera interviews. We met at the Charlottesville Newsplex and spent the afternoon in session that covered traditional media, new media and interviewing.

The new media session was of particular interest to me. Speakers Waldo Jaquith and Sean Tubbs talked about blogging; what it is, who is doing it, and what effect it has on journalism and news in general. Sean covered the topic of podcasting -- a concept growing in popularity and possiblities.

The entire day was very informative for the group, I think. As we're thinking about ways to lead in our community, and ways we can support and drive results for our efforts in our civic programs or nonprofit organizations, using the media to gain exposure for anything we're passionate about is important to understand. Our program director made a comment to me at the break about how I probably wasn't hearing anything I didn't already know; it's more about context -- while I may be very familiar with media and communications strategies and the process involved in achieving results, I'm still learning Charlottesville, and that is a topic I value very much.

History, Government and Politics

Today's session was very interesting, focused on Charlottesville's history, government and politics.

But I think I should back up a bit before I share.

Some people have asked what this is all about, what I get out of it and why I'm involved. Leadership Charlottesville's Purpose and Mission sum it up: "To serve our member enterprises' efforts to help build an active corps of engaged and dedicated civic leaders" and, "Leadership Charlottesville enables a diverse group of emerging and existing community leaders to enhance their community knowledge, expand their networks, and cultivate their leadership potential to effect positive community change."

It's about getting involved, learning to be better leaders, developing skills that will help us work together and make an impact on the community. I'm getting out of it a chance to learn about my community, find opportunities where I can be involved and make a difference (this is very important to me) and to network, developing relationships that can last a lifetime.

Those of us in the program will spend 11 weeks learning and developing those relationships. After that, we choose civic programs to develop/join and work toward improving our community. We graduate in June, but it's an ongoing commitment to the community, and to our team.

Back to today. We enjoyed a video that covered the history of Charlottesville; probably review for long time residents, but educational for the newcomers. The class before us had developed the video and did a fantastic job. We then were treated to a panel discussion that included Mayor David Brown, Leonard Sandridge, UVA Executive VP and COO and Dennis Rooker, chairman of the board, County Board of Supervisors. It was moderated by Bob Gibson of the Daily Progress.

From there, in small groups, we discussed issues facing the city and Albemarle County. These issues were passed to our next panel for discussion. This group included former and current city council members and delegates Rob Bell (R) 58th district and David Toscano (D) 57th district.

Following that was a panel discussion on getting involved, including a selection of commission and committee members. Finally, our city registrar talked to us about voting and the process used in Charlottesville.

I learned a bit but more importantly it got me thinking about ways to be involved and what I might do with the knowledge gained in this program.

Putting the "Treat" back in Retreat

Yesterday was a very full day! From 8:30am until 5pm we gathered together as a class for a full day retreat at the Falls River Adventure Course. I have been on plenty of retreats in my life, and this one, I have to say, far surpassed the others. First of all, we were outdoors all day in a beautiful wooded setting in Greene County and it was a gorgeous day. We spent the day engaged in Survivor-style challenges, each with a lessons about trust, teamwork, listening, being open to ideas, respecting one another and celebrating our success.

Did I mention I had just met these people the day before?

It was the most powerful retreat experience I've ever had. Our facilitators took 36 strangers and put them in situations that helped us form relationships, challenge ourselves and others to our limits, solve problems, help each other, cheer one another on and go home tired, sweaty and excited to continue on this journey together.

Oh, and, dig me, I climbed to the top of a 35' pole!

Fired up!

Today we went through orientation and met all 35 of our classmates. Our facilitators, Jann and Antonio, put us through exercises that helped us get to know one another and ourselves. Much time was spent exploring our Myers Briggs profiles, and learning what they mean.

The day was inspiring, exciting and fun. The four hour session went quickly, and was capped off by a nice reception hosted by the Leadership Charlottesville alumni association. We learned about what's in store for the next several months and how we will be working to become a team, actively committed to improving our community.

Tomorrow, we head out to Green County to do a little team building. We're going to a challenge course to perform lots of climbing and trust-based activities. We're all a little apprehensive, but that's the idea; to get us a little out of our comfort zones. We're going to be part of making a difference in Charlottesville and, as Antonio said, that will get a little uncomfortable at times, too.

The Night Before LC

Tomorrow is the first meeting of my Leadership Charlottesville class, or LC, as the cool kids call it. Tomorrow afternoon I will meet 35 new people. Well, 34. Thanks to an introduction by Jennifer, I've met one of my classmates, Jimmy, already. The rest of the group are total strangers to me.

Since moving to Charlottesville at the end of December, 2005, I've met quite a few new people. This will be the first cohesive group, however; a class of 36 that will spend 11 months together learning about our community and making a commitment to be involved. I'm excited but I have a case of the first-day-of-school jitters, hoping that a few, like me, will be newcomers. I'm hoping that the other 34, besides Jimmy and me, won't already be friends or have known each other since Kindergarten. Jimmy moved from Miami just a month before I moved from St. Louis. We've both made Charlottesville our new home and are eager to learn about our surroundings, meet new people and grow our respective businesses.