Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 27, 1994 TAG: 9403250205
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: John Levin
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Deaths this month of the founders of two major regional companies - Roanoke\ Electric Steel Corp.'s John W. Hancock Jr. and Advance Stores Inc.'s Arthur\ Taubman - have raised concern about the thining ranks of community leaders.\ Also, still fresh in mind are the loss of former Virginia Tech president James McCommas in February and of retired Norfolk Southern Corp. chairman Robert B. Claytor less than a year ago.
They were all men who rose during the prosperity that followed World War II, guided the growth of their companies and agencies and had huge impacts on this region's life and economy. Perhaps the significance of their contributions is best measured by how their companies and communities absorb their absence. "Throughout the years, Roanoke has always had one or two obvious leaders that we always depended on for direction and the resources to solve any question," said Daniel G. Oakey, vice president, of the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce. "We've gone through a big change and of the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce. "We've gone through a big change and maybe we're finding the leadership no longer is just one or two people."
Community groups, like businesses, are discovering an oligarchy, even a benevolent one, no longer suits the need for change and diversity.
On the theory that leaders are not simply managers of the status quo but rather those who make progress possible, the Roanoke region appears to be searching for people willing to take action. Indeed, a frequent measure of a community's quality of life is whether its leadership can develop and sustain economic growth.
As in the period when Roanoke Electric Steel and Advance Stores were being established, "we've got a whole flock of new companies springing up around here," said Steven E. Markham, associate professor of management at Virginia Tech. "Their founders should be tapped."
A main difference, he noted, is that this generation of potential leaders generally are not as wealthy nor working in a fast-growth economy.
Identifying the next crop of leaders, outside a few obvious and already anointed people, also isn't as easy because of the collective style of leadership in business today. "Business and industry uses a team approach and really is pressing for a collective vision," said Richard F. Harshberger, director of the management development center at Virginia Tech's Pamplin College of Business.
Virginia Tech, he said, has concluded the independent spirit personified by Hancock and Taubman, no longer fits the definition of the ideal leader for the university. A 1990 study said leader should have nurturing skills along with decisiveness, active listing skills as well as vision.
People with the need to control are being counted as too expensive in organizations where members are encouraged to work together in teams, Harshberger said.
W. Hope Player, a Roanoke accountant who has helped run the regional chamber of commerce's leadership development program and now is helping mold a leadership institute for the New Century Council, said the region needs more aggressive volunteers.
"If three or four people in any organization are willing to take the ball and run with it, don't the rest of us let them," Player asked. "We in Roanoke have had the benefit of people like that; now we have to scramble," to replace them.
\ THE IDEA LEADER\ Virginia Tech's University Task Force on Leadership Development, a study completed in 1990, listed these skills as the attributed of the ideal leader. Tech today is moving toward these criteria in selecting university leaders:\ \ Vision, the sense clearly articulated purpose.\ \ Personal integrity, considered essential in establishing relationships of trust.\ \ Nurturing skills, or helping followers seek respect for themselves as individuals and recognition of their self-worth.\ \ Decisiveness, or the ability to make timely and effective decisions and explain the basis for decisions.\ \ Intervention skills, and know when to trust followers in their work.\ \ Active listing skills, meaning being available, attentive, unbiased and responsive.\ \ Assertiveness, or the ability to deal with conflict in a straightforward manner and in a timely fashion.\ \ Delegation skills, focusing on performance and results. Team building skills.\ \ Advocacy skills, or being the point person responsible to the needs of followers.\ \ Situational leadership skills.\ \ Appraisal and feedback skills.\ \ Conscious leadership skills, meaning assuming a role of facilitating, building and serving without without creating a hindrance to achieving major purposes.\ \ Personal communication skills.\ \ Learning and renewing skills.\ \ Mediation skills.\ \ Political "streetwise" skills.\ \ Clearly articulated expectations.\ \ Championing skills.
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