Leadership is a process, so it’s time to start

Good leadership make a better community

Hamilton County needs you!

Webster City needs you. Every city in the county needs their residents to take up the charge to help make their city into a place where we all want to live.

We need new people to step in and learn how to become leaders in our communities. It’s the only way our communities can grow and thrive. We need to work together to find our younger leaders and recommend them for positions where they can learn to take on roles that are important to all of us.

This past week, we have run the lists of committees and boards that have openings in both the city and the county. Some of these boards have had the same names on them for many of the past 30 years. And there are boards, commissions, committees that have multiple vacant slots. Those positions need to be filled, and new people need to learn the way our communities operate. When we ask for individuals to run for offices, whether it is on city council, supervisors, house of representatives, the first thing we all need to look at it is whether they have any skills to perform the job we are asking them to do.

We need smart, talented, thoughtful individuals who live and work here, who see the issues, feel the impact, and want to work to get a solution.

It should not be about the political party they align with

This is how we get into trouble. We need people to learn how to work with others, how to understand budgets, how to identify and solve problems. But it needs to start on a smaller scale to start, or it is overwhelming. We need experience yes, but we also need new blood, younger people to start filling the voids. And then they can learn from those who have experience.

Some think leaders are born leaders. It isn’t about money or power. Real leadership, I believe is by working together, helping people become successful, by doing something with a positive outcome. A real leader isn’t standing there to take all the credit either. A real leader will share the success of the project with those who helped by putting real time and effort into it. It's a team effort, and our teams have many missing players right now.

We also need people who have some vision, who can see the future, see the growth potential, and the dangerous obstacles. They are making decisions with the public tax dollars we all help generate. So we need to find individuals who are helpful, positive, and willing to look down the road to see what the long term impact might be. It’s not about just sitting on the sidelines and being critical. It’s about digging into the hard work, and figuring out how to solve problems.

I believe leadership occurs when a small group of people determine a need and those people work together to solve the problem. Lift WC is one of the most recent examples of that effort. Even though the project took longer, and cost more than expected, that team did not give up. They might be a bit weary, but their perseverance is what is needed in many areas of our community.

JADE in Jewell, has several projects that maintain that same doggedness, determination that doesn't give up in the light of insurmountable obstacles. It's the people behind the projects that keep their eye on the goal, and keep inching it forward.

Our world has a lot of problems. We can all see that leadership doesn’t always work from the top down, it has to grow from the bottom up. That’s where we are, we are individuals who make up a community that has projects. It’s not all about job creation, it’s about making the quality of our lives the way we want it to be.

It’s the first step we need to determine our future.

If you don’t want to see buildings torn down, or certain industries in our industrial park, get on a board where you have a voice. Your involvement matters. Your voice matters.

Your friends need to get involved, your children. They can make a difference here. They may not be able to impact Ankeny or Ames or Des Moines or Chicago, but they can impact the lives of the people who are here in Webster City, here in Hamilton County.

This indifference needs to stop, if living here matters to you at all, we need to hear from you.

Go to the City Hall, or go to the Courthouse, get an application to get on a board, whether it’s the airport board, or the park and rec board, or one of nearly a dozen boards which have vacancies and start learning the process. Ask questions about what they do, and if they are inactive, why. There is a reason these boards exist.

And if the city and the county have your application in hand, and haven’t acted on it, then shame on them. This is their job. They need to fill those empty seats and then listen to the recommendations from those boards, who are able to focus on the problems and needs.

This is for your future, your children’s future, for Hamilton County’s future. It's time to get out there and act. You are needed.

Kolleen Taylor is the Community Editor for the Daily Freeman Journal