Community

Community Leadership Development: Preliminary Steps to a General Theory

Kenneth Pigg

To fully complete a general theory of community leadership and understand how it can best be fostered by interventions such as an educational program, we need to think about how such program efforts affect individuals and, subsequently, how those effects may be extended to produce community effects. For example, evaluations of community leadership development education (CLDE) programs often focus on what skills participants may have learned, such as how to manage a group meeting. How does that skill carry over into producing a community effect? Clearly there would be several intermediate things necessary to produce such an effect, such as a convening of a group with a shared purpose, the mobilization of resources necessary to accomplish this purpose, and the planning and implementation of an activity and its outcome. It is also clear that, while this specific skill measured might be very helpful, there are many other “variables” that would have to be included in reaching the final outcome. Any general theory of leadership must consider the link between the individual-level effects and the community effects.

Recent research that I have been conducting has demonstrated this principle and has produced a preliminary model for others to consider and examine critically, both in theory and practice. The specific elements of this theory are fully described in a set of short publications in this series.

The Vision Thing

Kenneth Pigg

Communities change for many reasons. The community’s new direction can be left up to chance or, if used strategically, can be full of opportunity. If managed intentionally, you will need to envision a better and brighter future for your community. Without this vision, “any old way of getting there” might be deemed appropriate and satisfactory to move forward. More often than not, there is a group within the community that generally agrees upon a direction in which they want the community to go. Quite often, this group represents the business community and the direction is called “economic development.” Generally speaking, this choice of a direction is known today as “developing a vision of the future.” There is a growing amount of research that verifies the effectiveness of intentional efforts toward the development of a community vision. This can be accomplished using a variety of available processes. It is important for community leadership development education (CLDE) efforts because the results express a sense of “shared purpose” (recalling our earlier definition of leadership from Rost, 1991).

How Committed to the Community are Your Leaders?

Kenneth Pigg

Community members can quickly detect leadership attitudes that are less than fully committed to the community and its future. If leaders are not committed, they should not expect others to be committed either. Such commitment (or lack thereof) is contagious and supports an action agenda and vision. Generally, people who are committed to the community express a sense of ownership for what happens in and a sense of belonging to the community. They demonstrate this by being involved in various ways, but especially by way of those organizations and activities that benefit the whole community. These people give of their time, energy and, often, their wealth to improve the community and provide support for local business and other elements of the social, cultural and economic aspects. They do things that get the attention of others and the media as well as the “little things,” such as staying late to clean up after a meeting is over. They are also the people who can be counted upon to hang in there when things are difficult.

Understanding Your Community

Kenneth Pigg

Being successful as a community leader in any civic activity requires knowing something about your community, its history, its culture and its political structure. Every community is different, so learning about your particular community is important.

This learning can be achieved in many ways. Libraries are good places to start as they may have special sections devoted to local history. Local history organizations may use the library as a meeting place where you could learn firsthand what others in your community may already know. The local newspaper is an important source of current community activities and issues that also provides a way to identify local leaders with issues of interest to you. Other sources are more informal such as long-time residents of the community and professionals or business people who work in the community. Here is where social networking becomes an important part of learning to lead as joining local organizations and meeting people gives you a chance to learn how citizens view the community and its goings-on.

But, what do you need to know? The following discussion introduces some of the basics.

Community Leaders: Confident and Competent

Kenneth Pigg

Research has proven that community leaders have a certain sense of confidence and competence in their abilities to handle various tasks within the community. This competence is important in civically engaging individuals, developing personal efficacy and maintaining the confidence in one’s capacity to perform as a leader in different situations in the community. Many residents, who feel they lack skill and confidence, are reluctant to take charge, but the overall success of communities depends on the development of both current and potential leaders. Specific items used to measure personal efficacy or competence, which reflect the abilities most useful to community leaders, include public speaking skills, working with different kinds of groups and needs, problem identification and analysis, consensus building skills, and commitment to personal growth. While other abilities may also be required, these provide an excellent starting place for leader development and education.

Of Heroes and Citizens: Where are the Barn Raisers When You Need Them?

Kenneth Pigg

America is a nation that loves its individualistic roots. It cherishes its heroes, some of Olympic proportions and some of comic book heritage. Americans relish the freedoms and rights granted to the individual in its Constitution, have fought international wars to protect them and conducted massive social insurgencies internally to secure them (e.g., Civil Rights Movement). Much of our individualistic thinking today has been reinforced by our growing reliance on professionals and experts and technocrats to solve our problems while we sit on our individualist couches and bemoan the inability of political leaders to work together to resolve pressing issues. Unless you are some fictional super character, barn raising is not done by single individuals.

Citizen Leaders for Community Betterment

Kenneth Pigg

Usually our purpose in conducting community leadership development programs is to increase the capacity of community leaders to engage in efforts to materially benefit the community, or, to enhance community development. Very often, however, these efforts may become entangled in conflict over objectives and approaches. The basis for this conflict is often differences in values held by different segments of the community. Thus, the solution to moving forward with some sort of action is a political solution. That is, community leaders must figure out a way to balance the different values with actions that can accommodate as much diversity as possible or invest in a broader process of collaboration than was originally planned. This engagement with politics or the involvement of citizens in the public sphere is also known as civic engagement. The following discussion outlines the nature of civic engagement as one of the important outcomes of many of our efforts to develop better community leaders through educational experiences and discusses why it is important for our communities.

Developing Leaders for Community Leadership and Civic Engagement

Kenneth Pigg

This series on Civic Engagement has been developed from a specific perspective derived from research conducted over the past twelve years and a growing literature on “community” rather than organizational leadership. Therefore, this series has emphasized the importance of context to leadership and its effects.1 Further, while one of the pieces in this series is titled “Toward a Grand Theory,” there really is not a single theoretical perspective here, but rather a way of thinking about leadership that is structured by social and political elements of human interaction. So, you will not find any endorsement in these pages for servant leadership or transformational leadership or any of the other popular “theoretical” perspectives. What you will find is a perspective based on a definition of leadership as an influence relationship among citizens collaborating about shared purpose who intend to make some sort of change.

Community Leadership Development Education (CLDE) Empowerment

Kenneth Pigg

Empowerment is a popular topic among those who are concerned about leadership development. This is largely because so many people in today’s society feel powerless and alienated from the institutions of democracy and those who operate them.1 At the community level, this may be less of a problem since most local officials managing these institutions are known to the public. They may be friends or neighbors, dentists or teachers, the local mechanic or farmer down the road.

The Benefits of Community Leadership Development Education

Kenneth Pigg

Community leadership development education (CLDE) programs are frequently sponsored by universities, foundations, chambers of commerce and other organizations across America on an annual basis, often at substantial levels of expenditure of cash and other resources. Some estimates have this level of support at several million dollars annually. How is this support justified? This support has not been justified by a corresponding effort to document results, even for the individuals involved. Only a few studies have been published that have attempted to measure individual effects experienced by participants and almost no reports of effects beyond the individual level have been published. While individual sponsors may have required some sort of documentation of effects, it is rare that this documentation produces anything that reaches broader public attention. So, little is known about the general effects and purported benefits of these program interventions.