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Looking for leaders
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Humble. Tenacious. Real. Ambitious for Whistler.

That's what voters should be looking for in leaders as they head to the polls to choose mayor and council on November 19.

So said local leadership guru Dr. Rosie Steeves.

She said there's a dearth of true leadership in the country and across the world from the highest levels in big corporations to the smallest rural businesses. That void is permeating throughout the citizenry, leaving employees ambivalent about their jobs, and people uninspired.

Research shows that in Canada, 58 per cent of employees are disengaged, "checked out" in one way or another. That disengagement comes at a huge financial cost for companies and organizations in lost productivity.

So how can voters pick true leaders? What should they be looking for?

"Certainly a leader that has a secure sense of self, they know who they are, they're not out to prove anything, the standard egoless stuff," said Steeves. "Humility but with a tenacity. Ambitious for Whistler, ambitious for their community. And willing to get over themselves, to accept that they may not have the answers but they are absolutely superb at bringing people together and finding the answers in a collaborative way. Being able to work in a world of not just right or wrong, or black and white, but somewhere else. And be able to find solutions that maybe nobody had ever thought of."

Steeves will be facilitating a workshop put on by the Whistler Forum on Monday Oct. 17 from 3 to 8 p.m. Part of the workshop will include a presentation on a leadership framework which will help participants do a personal leadership audit.

It has seven so-called frames from "diplomat" to "alchemist" - the former avoids overt conflict and rarely rocks the boat, the latter generates social transformations, Apple CEO Steve Jobs for example.

This week Pique asked the three mayoral candidates where they see themselves in this leadership framework and why.

Mayor Ken Melamed pointed to four areas in the framework: strategist, achiever, expert and individualist.

"Three of the best examples of my leadership have been the years in pursuit of resident housing, resort funding tools from the province and the delivery of the Games."

He added that Canadian mayors, unlike mayors in other countries, do not have unilateral decision-making authority.

"The skill set requires us to be good listeners, coaches and even-tempered. We lead by staying true to our values and vision, building trust, and the respectful inclusion of the members of the teams with which we work. Aside from a small number of staff, we do not get to choose who we work with, so it is important to be inclusive and diplomatic. Compromise is the art of government."

Former councillor Nancy Wilhelm-Morden, who is challenging the mayor's seat, said: "My primary leadership style is as an achiever. Owning a successful small business requires a focus on the market and actions taken in response to it.

"My business relies on all of us working effectively as a team. As a litigator, of course, I am goal-oriented. When a matter goes to trial there is no middle ground. On the other hand, my experience as a volunteer and councillor has elements of being a strategist. For example, when we founded the Community Foundation of Whistler, we followed a deliberate strategy of carefully setting up policies and procedures before we went into the marketplace looking for donors. It was painstaking in the short-term but has served the Foundation well over the longer term."

Councillor Ralph Forsyth, who rounds out the mayor's race to three, said he falls between an achiever and individualist.

"I am an achiever because I'm very much a goal oriented person," said Forsyth. "I believe in setting targets and having a plan to execute them. I'm also an individualist because I enjoy creating the strategies that will improve performance. It's no surprise to me that I fall into these categories - I love doing research into leadership traits and often identify with these types of categories. I do this as I'm always looking for ways to improve my own performance and the performance of my business clients. I always advise my clients that, 'if you know your goal, your role and your team you will succeed,' because it's worked for me."

Steeves said though just four per cent of the population in general are strategists, this is the kind of leader to look for.

"To be able to think about the good of society... how you balance the budget but do everything the community wants and how you do something more than just run the show, how you make a difference in the world."

And to effect major organizational change the leader has to be a strategist or joined at the hip with a consultant or CAO who is a strategist. If not, said Steeves, research shows the change fails.

The framework, and where a person falls in it, is developed through life experience.

Steeves said: "So what I would want to know from our mayoral candidates is: tell me about your life and your experiences? What have you done? What's the biggest mistake (you've made)? Tell us about that story and how you learned and how you became who you are."

Voters want their candidates to have all the answers.

"Personally I don't have the expectation that anybody who'll be our mayor knows what to do," said Steeves bluntly. "I think it would be quite refreshing if they actually came out and said, 'look, I actually don't know how we're going to go ahead but I have the confidence that we'll find a path. And this is what I'm doing to find a path.'

"I think it is actually a strength - this humility and humanness and vulnerability.

"So, going to back to what should we look for. We should look for people to be real and to have real emotions and concerns and a deep, deep honesty."