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Exercise 1: Leadership Self-Assessment Activity

Go to the following website and take and score the self-assessment
survey of leadership:
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/survlead.html.

This survey is designed to provide you with feedback about your level
of preference or comfort with leadership characteristics and skills.

Leadership in Transition

The importance of good leadership is not a recent phenomenon. Leaders
have been critical to effective organizations since people first started
working together. However, the nature of this leadership has undergone
some changes. The mobility of the nation’s population and the resulting

loss of a “sense of community” in the last half of the 20 century into the
th
beginning of this century have made it easier for people to identify with the
more highly visible political leaders than with the less visible economic
leadership in the community and region who so frequently played a key
role in the past.

A look at recent trends can also provide a common understanding of the
importance of leadership to nonprofit organizations such as local
government agencies, chambers of commerce, or economic development
organizations (EDOs). The shortage of effective leadership is evident in
just about every form of local organization. Thus, when we complain

about the scarcity of leadership talent in our communities, we not talking
about a lack of people to fill organizational positions, but rather a scarcity
of people who are willing and able to assume significant leadership roles.
The challenge for the economic development professional is to use existing
leaders effectively and to recruit and train new leadership talent for the

organization. The focus of the rest of this book will be on developing
leadership within and throughout the economic development organization.

David Kolzow 16