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Leading the way

Sea to Sky Leadership Grads 2005 put theory into practice

Depending on the things that keep you up at night, you may worry that the resource scarcity of most concern today is good farming land, or intact ecosystems, or potable water in Africa, or closer-to-home, your own diving-into-the-red bank account.

It may not have occurred to you that one of the scarcest resources in 21 st century democracies is good leadership, and that many of these other issues may be a derivative of that. (You’ll probably have to shoulder the blame for the state of your personal finances yourself.)

For William Roberts, Executive Director of the Whistler Forum, this scarcity of good leadership is a call to arms.

"Most survey and polling data asking people how much they trust leaders in various sectors show a precipitous decline in that trust, in almost every sector. There’s a real disconnect between citizens, and those leading them," he told Pique Newsmagazine, and the stats back him up.

Elections B.C. shows a declining number of voters exercising their most fundamental democratic right, since 1983, charting the decline of voting with a graph that looks like a slippery slide, dipping away towards a sandpit of apathy, silent protest and growing distrust.

Preliminary voter participation statistics from last month’s provincial election show that 45 per cent of the people who could vote, didn’t. Why not? These numbers align curiously with a stat from the Centre for Research and Information on Canada. Its January report, "Portraits of Canada 2004," noted that 52 per cent of Canadians claim to have little or no confidence in their political decision-makers. They trust their business and religious leaders more than their political leaders, which after Enron and the mission schools abuse revelations, is a staggering indictment against politicians.

At every level of government, people are complaining that they’re disillusioned, they don’t trust their representatives. Citizens become polarized, states are coloured in red or blue, ideology triumphs over dialogue.

Nothing new there. Race riots in Philadelphia in the wake of the Montgomery bus boycott, as Martin Luther King was becoming a national civil rights leader, prompted the development of a community leadership program there in 1959. This first program, Leadership Inc., spawned a smattering of similar programs throughout the United States, but it wasn’t until a 1969 plane crash in Atlanta, Georgia, that killed many of that town’s leaders, that the need to cultivate leaders, to train and develop them, rather than leaving their emergence and survival to chance, became apparent.

Today, the plane crash that launched 2,400 community leadership programs around the world has become a common scenario for corporate succession planning. Aspiring CEOs, managers and supervisors are increasingly asked to nominate their own successor, should they no longer hold their own post, ostensibly due to unforeseen tragedy, and not getting the steel-toed end of the boot. In-house myth from corporate giant General Electric gives authorial credit for the scenario to former CEO Reg Jones, who was often cited during his time in the hot-seat as the most outstanding CEO in America. When interviewing his potential replacements, Jones reportedly asked candidates who they would recommend as CEO, should they and Jones be killed simultaneously in a plane crash.

The Board of Directors of the Whistler Forum, who are responsible for the Sea to Sky’s inaugural community leadership program, have not been fantasizing about planes loaded with our regional leaders going down en route to the Torino Olympics. But, 10 months ago, they did select 15 emerging leaders to learn the fine art of leadership. The program involved several retreats, monthly seminar-style learning days and self-directed group projects that offered up some benefit to the community – obligations the participants fit in around their lives, careers, families and other commitments. And now, this crack squad of go-getters from all fields of industry and backgrounds, who allowed themselves to be guinea pigs, or the "inaugural beta group" as Roberts put it, are about to graduate.

Roberts boasts, "I really don’t know how to describe how proud we are of what they’ve been about. It gives us great hope and optimism."

Defining leadership

It’s easy to come up with a handful of names of powerful or influential leaders, but the things some of them urged their followers to do preclude them from winning the Pique Newmagazine Good Leadership Award. A good leader, for our purposes, is not just someone who leads successfully, but who leads us to a place we’re not ashamed to be.

William Roberts explains, in the context of our backyard, that "a good leader in the Sea to Sky region is someone who has spent deep time getting to know themselves, their own experiences, what’s shaped them and how to cultivate the self, because if you’re fooling yourself and you’re not grounded, you can’t be a good leader."

Being a good leader starts with being true to yourself. For Sea to Sky Leadership participant, Kerry Clark, issues of truth and trust are paramount. "There is an increasing need for people with strong leadership skills in our society," Clark said. "We’re in a time of crisis. We don’t trust our leaders."

Part of the success of the leadership program was the forum it provided for dialogue, for a group of diverse people to come together and grapple with the issues of the day. "Right at the beginning, we agreed that we came to the table as individuals. We left our organizations at the door. And that really changed the program," said Clark. "We became comfortable with each other. Trust was a very important thing. I could say things and know it wouldn’t impact on my job or my organization."

Clark, who is curator of the Whistler Museum, was part of a project group comprised of Shannon Gordon, Sustainability Co-ordinator for the Resort Municipality of Whistler, Ruth Dick, a Mount Currie band councilor, Denise Wood, a human resources manager at the municipality and Marla Zucht of the Whistler Housing Authority.

Having built a level of trust within the group, it was apparent to Clark that, in terms of broader community engagement, the level of trust has toppled. Gaining trust is a type of bridge building, and for their community project, Clark’s group decided to build a bridge to the region’s youth.

"We wanted to do something with youth, and we wanted to meet an existing need," explained Clark. As a key figure in developing Whistler 2020, Shannon Gordon could draw the group’s attention to gaps that had been identified by the 16 strategy groups during community consultation on the CSP. This data focused the group on delivering a leadership or careers program for high school students.

In consultation with Whistler Secondary’s guidance counselor, Kevin Titus, and principal, Bev Oakley, the group decided to bring local people in unique career paths into the high school to speak to Grade 10 students about their work. "We wanted to choose career paths where there was an actual opportunity for students to pursue that path, if they were interested, and that were outside of what they’d normally think of here," explained Clark. With input from the kids, eight careers that most interested them were chosen from a long-list of 21, and twice a week for two weeks, presenters shared their professional lives with students.

Fifteen year olds are a tough audience. And Whistler kids might have even tougher shells to crack, with their eyes set firmly on escape, the city, away… "We’re hoping," explained Clark, "that down the road, they’ll think back and see that there are opportunities for them in the Sea to Sky corridor."

Whistler Secondary was chosen for the pilot group because a majority of the project co-ordinators live here and have contacts here. Ultimately, the group hope the template they have developed, with the extensive body of supplementary material they prepared, including questionnaires, presentation notes and a collection of biographies, will be built upon by a future group, and extended to high schools throughout the corridor, helping to cross-fertilize various career paths and the different communities in the broad fields of 15-year-old minds.

Reaching out in all directions is an important part of community leadership. William Roberts said, "In the 21 st century, most of us are getting sidelined in our own areas of expertise, so to know at a pretty significant level what’s going on outside one’s immediate work and family (is important)." Clark’s group worked hard to understand the mind of a Grade 10 student: What do they find interesting? How do we hold their attention? It was a demographic in the community that the project leaders don’t have a lot of exposure to.

Similarly, Jerry Bauer, Mike Ciebien and Randall Lewis, developed a community project that targets the needs of a specific population, our seniors.

Lewis, of the Squamish Nation, Bauer, a corporate account manager at the North Shore Credit Union, and Ciebien, who works for Durfeld Log Home building and runs Rocky Mountain Motorcycle Tours, found their interests converged on health care, housing and caring for elders, so the three men became the arms and the legs of a project to be implemented this September by the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. The project, a one-stop seniors’ information line for the Sea to Sky corridor, plugs a hole that was revealed when the group reviewed the health authority’s senior surveys, co-hosted focus groups with corridor seniors and attended MAC gatherings.

Bauer explained, "One issue was access to information. Seniors were saying there’s so much going on but we don’t know anything about it." A one-stop seniors phone line in North Vancouver, providing a referral and information service, is the model. The phone line will operate from the Squamish hospital, and volunteers in Sea to Sky communities will be sought to oversee information racks in health facilities or seniors centres.

"We only have a small seniors population in Sea to Sky," said Bauer, "but it’s the fastest growing sector."

The leadership participants had been challenged by the idea that the definition of community was having generations of family in the same place. This stayed with Bauer, the youngest of 11 children, who wondered, "If you can’t help seniors age in place, and they leave, then are you really a community?" The life experiences and long-term perspective of someone who’s lived through major upheavals in history, like the Great Depression and World War II, gives many of our elders a hard-won wisdom.

"The thing our generation doesn’t get," said Bauer, "is respecting the wisdom inherent in that."

The insight offered up by Lewis brought home to the group the way different cultures honour their old-timers. "First Nations’ respect for elders means the community does a better job at looking after them, something we as a society could learn a lot from." As the Info-Line gets established, the group will be looking at ways to make it culturally relevant; to bridge to services within the First Nations communities.

For Bauer, community leadership is about facilitation. "I didn’t feel like getting together with 15 Captains of the Universe, but with 15 people with diverse backgrounds and a similar goal – to learn something and make our community a better place."

Instead of shooting off on their agendas, Bauer, Lewis and Ciebien listened to the community, and worked within existing programs to create the service people had asked for. To be community leaders they discovered they didn’t need to be trailblazers.

One group, however, is hoping to blaze a trail. And a lot of groups are watching Jordan Sturdy, Maureen Douglas, Nathalie Klein and Sheldon Tetrault’s Pemberton-Mount Currie Friendship Trail with interest. With CN Rail officers handing out $115 tickets to trespassers and conflicts between mountain bikers, hunters and other user groups, Pemberton’s trail access issues are mounting. The Sea to Sky Trail Society and Pemberton Valley Trails Association have expressed their full support for the official construction of a six kilometer trail linking the two communities, via a railway right of way.

For Tetrault, Administrator for the Mount Currie band, Sturdy, proprietor of North Arm Farms and a director of the PVTA, Douglas, Director of Community Relations for VANOC and Pemberton resident, and Klein, who works in Utilities and Community Services at the SLRD, this project is not just about building an actual trail. Explained Klein, "We’re trying to create a link with a physical, social and emotional value to two communities struggling with their issues."

Because the project is about community engagement, the group has taken a different approach from previous trail-advocates. "If I hadn’t taken this program," said Klein, "I would have written a letter to CN Rail, been rejected. Bang. That’s it." Instead, the group reconnoitred the route, and prepared a power-point presentation that they took to the PVTA, Sea to Sky Trail Society, the Village of Pemberton, the SLRD Board and the Mount Currie Band Council. "Our method is engaging the community, informing them, giving them all the facts, letting them know what the objectives are, getting our ducks in a row. There’s no sense in talking to CN if we don’t have some political clout. We want to sit at the table with CN and find out what is their problem, what do they need us to do? If we have to build six-metre fences along the tracks, fine. Just give us access."

From the program Klein has gained a deeper understanding for the process of community engagement, an understanding that she says makes her more sensitive to the public concerns she fields in her work. Less conflict-averse now Klein said, "Engaging is a real skill. It’s hard to get people to engage with things they don’t feel they have to deal with, or that are difficult to deal with." However, she’s come to see resistance and roadblocks as signs of something else.

"If people are feeling aggressive, it’s often because they’ve heard a "No!" and are feeling trapped, that there are no options or conditions. They’re missing something; they need to know the process."

For the Friendship Trail, hurdles aren’t shutting down the project. "If you believe in something, there are no obstacles. You keep climbing them."

Although the group secured the immediate support of most of the bodies they made presentations to, the Mount Currie Band Council didn’t endorse the project straight away. "We won’t go to CN without their approval," said Klein, exhibiting no frustration with this turn of events following the group’s presentation to the band. "They take everything to the people. They don’t knee-jerk. Their concerns are so humane. They say, ‘how are our people going to react if we do this without asking them?’"

Having worked extensively in local government, Klein has seen what happens when constituents don’t feel their representatives are listening to or consulting with them. He respects the different approach taken by the band, and the fact they have a different but valuable process.

Having assessed oneself and one’s community, and reached out to engage that community, a leader then gets down to business. As Squamish’s Economic Development Officer, Lee Malleau advised the group, "There’s a time when you have to stop talking, and start doing."

The community projects were conceived as the action component of the Leadership Sea to Sky curriculum, and all of the projects have been built upon an existing foundation – an identified need, a survey, existing community concerns.

For Mechthild Facundo, Jason Kawaguchi and Casey Dorin, their project grounds back to a 1995 proposal prepared by the Chamber of Commerce and Whistler Blackcomb that stalled and disappeared into the archives for a decade. The group, comprising of the events manager at the Chamber of Commerce, a real estate agent with a background in the restaurant industry, and the Dean of Capilano College, are taking this old idea, to start a culinary school in Whistler, and breathing it back to life with their personal passion. "The timing now seems right," explained Facundo. "In the 1990s, Whistler could be complacent because it kept growing just on the strength of the skiing."

The project addresses concerns that were relevant to Whistler 10 years ago, but are increasingly pressing: declining service standards, employee leakage, a lack of diversity in the product offered in Whistler, the growing trend towards cultural tourism.

The group’s action plan involves partnering with a recognized culinary school to deliver a range of culinary programs and courses in Whistler. The school would offer longer-term programs for regional residents, as well as destination cooking workshops for tourists, and broadens Whistler’s brand as not just the place to ski and ride, but the place to experience the best of West Coast cuisine.

The group has garnered the broad support of Tourism Whistler, the Resort Municipality and Whistler-Blackcomb, and discovered a potential location. Now, they are looking to the hospitality community for letters of support, so the established culinary schools can be approached and invited to set up a satellite school in the mountains. Explained Facundo, "It is really a community project, it’s not our project. If the community doesn’t support this, then it will die. But I really think that the time is right for this."

As the inaugural beta group of Sea to Sky leaders prepares to graduate they trail behind them, in lieu of flowing gowns, great visions for the region, some incredible friendships, and a deeper understanding of the corridor. "What you do with your leadership skills is very important," said Kerry Clark, admitting that the big question is to what end will you use your skills. "Here we are graduating, which is great, but what’s important now is what we do with it."

On the strength of the community projects that are underway, it seems they’re off to a flying start.

 

Sidebar

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For more information on the "Culinary Whistler" project, contact Mechthild Fucando ( jerry_bauer@nscu.com ).

Leadership Sea to Sky participants will be celebrating their graduation at an open lunch at the Westin’s Aubergine Grill, Friday, June 10 at noon. Ardath Paxton Mann, the Assistant Deputy Minister for Western Economic Diversification in B.C., will be the guest speaker and presentations will be made about the community action projects. Seats can be reserved on-line at >www.whistlerchamber.com



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