Leadership has Marion's attention

MARION — Leadership Marion! The Leadership Challenge. Leadercast.

The three programs represent a growing recognition of the importance of leaders to a community such as Marion.

Pam Hall, Marion Area Chamber of Commerce president, said leadership has become increasingly vital in a changing world.

"Any community can be strengthened by having more mature leaders within their community, whether those leaders live within the community or choose to work in our community," Hall said. "And we do all know that with recent economic challenges middle management has been reduced significantly in businesses of all sizes. It's probably more important now more than ever to groom and nurture our young people for the steps that they must take to lead our community in future years."

Leadership Marion!

She said the Chamber recognized the need to maintain local leadership and in 1991 established Leadership Marion!, a comprehensive program designed to prepare the community's next generation of leaders. The class meets one day a month from September to May, exploring the basic building blocks of the community, ranging from education to business to government to health care to social services.

Participants also have the opportunity to establish relationships and find ways to become personally involved in the community. To make an immediate impact, each class creates and organizes a service project.

Beverly Kuenzli, a benefits administrator at Ohio Heartland Community Action Commission, and Dan Claborn, shipping and receiving supervisor at Wyandot Inc., were members of the most recent Leadership Marion! class, which organized A Taste of Marion, a restaurant-oriented fundraiser for Downtown Marion Inc. and Rushmore Academy.

"Any community at this time, especially with economic reasons, they're going to have to be at the forefront of keeping their communities alive," Kuenzli said. "There are so many communities around us that are dying. They should have been doing something 20 years ago and they're starting to turn into ghost towns. Certainly, we don't want that to happen in Marion. And that's where the leadership group comes in. It gives us a new perspective about what's possible. ... We should be a more thriving community, and to do that everyone has to have insight and awareness."

Claborn, 27, said he'd heard about Leadership Marion! when the class organized a 5-kilometer race to benefit Marion Tallgrass Trail. He approached his employer about joining and received support.

He said the class introduced members to the area's history and heritage.

"We met not only industry people but people in education," he said. "With A Taste of Marion we talked a lot with Rushmore Academy, which was a new concept to a lot of people. It was nice because we got to build connections and relations with leaders with a lot of different aspects that make a community."

He said he joined the board for Marion Matters after learning about the program whose aim is to break cycles of generational poverty, in Leadership Marion!

Part of the community

Local developer Lois Fisher said growing the number of individuals involved in the community is a common byproduct of the class.

"I think it's a very important thing to be doing simply because even some people even in leadership do not live in Marion," Fisher said. "It helps educate them to the wonderful assets we do have. That makes them feel more a part of our community. And also a lot of those people that graduate from Leadership Marion go on to join a great many of the boards that are working to continue the progress of Marion."

She said she'd like to see the number of leaders of companies operating in Marion who also live in Marion increase.

"I do believe you take ownership of a community if you live in it, so therefore I think it is necessary for us to get the leaders of companies, the people that make the decisions, if they're rooted in our community they're going to be more apt to make decisions for the benefit of all. Whereas if you just come in they make contributions, but they don't have the same attachment because their children aren't in our community. Their children aren't going to our schools, where all of us who live in the community, it's important. It's us."

Myra Wilson, director for the Alber Enterprise Center at The Ohio State University at Marion, said the center will hold The Leadership Challenge — Executive Overview on Oct. 15 at OSUM in the Guthery Community Room to help employers from throughout Ohio. More than 800 have been invited. A $99 fee provides the registrant with a continental breakfast and hardback copy of the book upon which the event is based, "The Leadership Challenge."

Developing leaders vital

"One of the key pieces of important organizations is leadership development," Wilson said. "That is one of the three pieces we really focus on," the other two being "continuous improvement" and "infusing an innovative culture within an organization."

"The leadership gives the direction," she said. "The leadership gives the vision for the rest of the folks to follow. Without good direction everybody is going to go wherever they want to go, so strong leadership understands that everybody's important, everybody needs to be listened to, and leadership doesn't mean that one person has all the answers. Leadership listens to and gets the team excited and motivated to move in the direction and vision that the leadership sees."

A community's leaders don't have to live in the community as long as they are thoroughly involved in that community, she said.

"I think leaders of a community need to interact personally and professionally in all aspects of the community, so I'm not necessarily saying that they have to live there, but they need to be involved and immersed in the culture of the community."

Tom Toney, Current Family founder, said his organization successfully sought to be a host site for Leadership Cast 2016, a globally broadcast event that focuses on discussion of the leadership culture, to promote the importance of community leadership.

"Having been involved as facilitator of Leadership Marion! with the Chamber over the past four years, and leading many leadership training opportunities in our community, I am seeing a real surge toward this important facet of organizational and community health," Toney said.

jjarvis@marionstar.com

740-375-5154

Twitter: @jmwjarvis

The Leadership Challenge

The Leadership Challenge — Executive Overview, a four-hour workshop based on the book "The Leadership Challenge," will be held from 8 a.m. to noon Oct. 15 at The Ohio State University at Marion in the Guthery Community Room.

James Franks, who has more than 30 years of experience with IBM, Cisco Systems, Dale Carnegie, as a dean and partnering with the Alber Enterprise Center, will facilitate. The Alber Center sent out 800 invitations for the event, which has an admission fee of $99.

RSVPs are requested by Oct. 12 by calling Myra Wilson, Alber Enterprise Center director, at 740-725-6335 or emailing wilson.2025@osu.edu

Leadercast 2016

Current family will be an official host site for Leadercast 2016 on May 6, 2016.

The globally broadcast event is held annually in Georgia and includes sessions with authorities on leadership culture such as Nick Saban, Alabama head football coach; Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder; and James Brown, CBS Sports anchor.

It is a ticketed event. Details are available by calling Current Family at 740-751-3333 or visiting www.CurrentFamily.com.

About this series
This story is a part of our yearlong look into the five most pressing issues for Marion County. Other installments of this series include:

Closing the skills gap, which appeared in March.

Creating a drug-free workplace, which appeared in May.

Developing the infrastructure, which appeared in July.

Increasing education as a priority, which will appear later this year.

Find all of our content for this series at MarionStar.com/future.