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Leadership is an issue I hear about wherever I go these days. The success or failure of a community project often seems to hinge on the presence or absence of good leadership.

What is leadership? In the business world it is often the CEO who plots a successful course for his or her company, creating a strong work environment while building capital. But what does leadership mean in our communities as we look at planning for future development, protecting resources, getting things done? Where do we find it?

Some communities lament the lack of leadership needed to get projects off the ground. But there are many communities where there is a support system that creates an environment conducive for people to speak out, take risks, run with a project -- in other words, become leaders. ...

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What makes a person a leader in their community? Were they born with such traits or did they develop them over time? How can you actively develop strong leadership for your community? These are questions often asked by members of a community. And there are answers.

American traditions and circumstances foster widespread leadership potential. The question of whether or not just one type of person can be a "leader" has been studied at length. Early research on human behavior was directed toward finding inherited traits that would distinguish between leaders and nonleaders. Most researchers today have concluded that inherited characteristics are not crucial to becoming a leader. Instead, they have focused on leadership as an ability, a process and a product. ...

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Salem, Indiana, once was headed toward the fate of many of the country's rural communities -- empty storefronts on Main Street, apathy among its citizens and general disrepair. But a handful of residents refused to let their hometown of about 6,000 people fall apart and assumed responsibility to stem the tide.

Through a leadership training program called Awareness Washington County, initiated in 1982 by the town's chamber of commerce, a new way of thinking has emerged: that people are trustees of their town and county. As the program's coordinator, Carmelita Jean, observes, with that concept in place, "we began to see the community differently." ...

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It's easy to sit back and wait for problems to arrive at the planning commission. All of a commissioner's time can be spent stamping out brushfires and processing standard reviews. But it is worth recalling that citizen planning commissioners were put in that position not to execute administrative chores for city council, but to provide insights into the problems and potential of the community, and to provide leadership in the solution of problems before they arise. Consider the history of the Cincinnati Planning Commission:

On January 4, 1914, a group of civic-minded individuals and representatives of the community development committees of a number of Cincinnati organizations founded the "United City Planning Committee." They banded together to exert pressure on a local "boss" system of government nationally known for its inefficiency and corruption. Through the medium of community planning, these Cincinnatians were seeking a more rational, publicly open, and less expensive system for the provision of needed capital facilities than the system of secret agreements, payoffs, and bribes that determined public development policy in Cincinnati at the time. ...

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