Picking good leaders

In the Harvard Business Review article "Leadership That Gets Results," author Daniel Goleman says that of the six major leadership styles, four generally help improve the climate for success in organizations, while two tend to worsen the factors that affect performance. How well do you know effective leadership styles? Try this quiz:

You're the CEO of a large planning, community development and urban design consulting firm, and you have to pick a new vice president to lead the consulting divisions. You want to choose from one of six managers in the firm.

This is a new position created to address several problems in the firm: low morale, unproductive bickering among staff and high turnover. All of these factors are reducing productivity, increasing errors, and generating additional management costs.

All the candidates have similar experience and skills and manage similar groups and budgets. The key differences among them are as follows (candidates are identified by geometric symbols):

• Triangle employs a traditional, field marshal style of management. When Triangle is asked to sum up his/her leadership style, Triangle says: "Do what I tell you."
• Circle leads by encouraging staff to move toward a vision - for the project, organization, or client. Circle's one-sentence approach to leadership: "Come with me."
• Square is the kind of person who tries to get as much input and feedback from as many people as possible. Square's one-sentence approach to leadership: "People come first."
• Rhombus uses a democratic approach to decision-making by working to get consensus. Rhombus' one-sentence approach to leadership: "What do you think?"
• Oval, the firm's most productive employee, believes leaders should model the behavior they want from others. Rhombus' one-sentence approach to leadership: "Do what I do."
• Rectangle spends significant time sitting with his staff in their offices and coaching them. Rectangle's one-sentence approach to leadership: "Try this."

Which two would be the wrong type of leaders for your company's situation?

You probably figured out that Triangle would be a bully who would drive away your best employees, and that Circle would be more likely to inspire staff to perform to a higher level. And Square's affiliative approach - relying on mediation and promoting harmony - could enhance performance by managing tensions better.

Let's make this more interesting. Triangle, Circle and Square drop out as candidates. Who's the best candidate: Rhombus, Oval or Rectangle?

Were you thinking Oval? Oval is the most productive employee. Maybe Oval can set the pace for the managers, who in turn can do the same for front-line staff?

Sorry, wrong choice. Under most conditions, the "pace-setter" actually hurts the climate for performance. There's nothing wrong with being good, and highly-motivated staff can benefit from a manager they can look up to. Unfortunately, the pace-setter will likely expect that staff see problems and issues the same way he or she does - and then take over when the staff member takes a different approach. This tends to cause more friction - especially where the staff are diverse - and demoralize employees by making them feel inept or patronized.

Pace-setters can be successful - if they also adopt the visionary, relationship-building, democratic and coaching styles that Goleman says enhance organizational climate. The most effective leaders use a combination of styles - including, in extremely rare occasions, a coercive style.

I suspect the problems with the pace-setters start with the people who hire them. Too many people see production work, management and leadership as a simple progression. You know: Work hard for a few years, then become a manager. Work harder, move into a leadership position. Those who see work this way may not know that production work, management and leadership requires different skill sets. Being the smartest person in world in demographic analysis does not help you to motivate underperforming staff.

Another problem is that pace-setters believe, correctly, that they are being rewarded for their production skills. In their eyes, people skills are not as important as "getting the job done." As a result, staff become extra arms and legs of a favored production person. Would you rather be a whole person or an appendage? That's why pace-setters tend to demoralize their staff.

In knowledge economy industries such as urban planning, community and economic development and architecture, demoralizing workers is like putting ammonia in your machines instead of fuel.

Summary: With a few exceptions, pace-setters can do more harm than good in organizations. The people who pick leaders should be more familiar with the pros and cons of each leadership style. Pace-setters who master various leadership styles can succeed.

For more, read "Leadership That Gets Results," by Daniel Goleman, Harvard Business Review, March 2000. Click here to buy article

By the way, for those of you, like me, who can be skeptical of leadership articles: Goleman based his ideas on the findings of a study of nearly 3,900 executives worldwide.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Do you have a professional development tip you would like to share? Have a question that you would like to see answered here? Please send it to Leo at vazquezl@rutgers.edu

Why being smart is not enough in the new economy

A New York Times columnist recently wrote about a newspaper in Pasadena, California, that uses reporters from India to cover local news. Traditionally, reporters attend public meetings, meet with sources and work in the communities they cover. But these outsourced reporters watch meetings on streaming video, and never work in communities they cover. How can they get to know a place? Google Maps. Community blogs. Pasadena-based websites. The more that's on the web, the easier it is to learn about a place.

So what does this story mean for planning, public affairs, and community and economic development professionals? Anything you can do from your desk could be done by someone else anywhere in the world - and probably for less money.

Technical professionals - those who specialize in analysis and technology tools like GIS -- should be especially concerned. In order to expand their markets, technology companies over time make their products easier to use. A decade ago, there were many trained web designers building sites that can now be done by technophobes with templates. How many people still work exclusively as typists?

Even when the economy recovers, it doesn't mean that technical or desk jobs will be safe. The growing global market means increased competition - and more pressure to be more efficient. If a few firms save money outsourcing some technical functions, expect others to do the same. Nonprofits and government agencies, under pressure to be cost-conscious, will follow suit. (Government agencies may lag behind because of political pressures to keep local jobs. But they may contract out more services to firms that would then outsource their jobs.)

How do you protect yourself in a recession and the new economy?

• Build your leadership, management and interpersonal skills. Become more effective at leading groups, managing conflicts, getting others to work at a higher level, adapting to change and communicating effectively in diverse organizations and environments. These functions are much more difficult to outsource. Become more knowledgeable about budgeting, project management, regulations and other matters that help keep organizations running. This may make you more useful in your employer's eyes.
• Network, network, network. In our fields, where so much work is collaborative and done in the background, it is hard to distinguish yourself from other professionals. The more people with whom you have good relationship, the more opportunities you may get.
• Broaden your areas of knowledge - and make your peers and supervisors aware of your growing knowledge base. As with any ecology, when economic conditions change, specialists who fail to adapt get hurt. By the way, knowing more may help you be more creative and effective.
• Pay attention to office politics. The people who support you now may leave, or be removed from, their jobs. If you've got support from their supervisors, great. If not...
• Keep your resume fresh. Keep your eyes open for new opportunities. It's better to change on your own schedule.

For more reading: Maureen Dowd's "A Penny for My Thoughts?"

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Do you have a professional development tip you would like to share? Have a question that you would like to see answered here? Please send it to Leo at vazquezl@rutgers.edu

Finding the right job candidate

Imagine that you are on a commission to develop a major new park in a large city. You're tasked with hiring a park superintendent to manage the creation of the park. One of the candidates for the job is a 35-year-old travel writer and farmer who is also a struggling publisher. He has no training or experience in park planning, civil engineering or architecture. Would you hire this candidate? Would you even interview him? No? Too bad - you missed out on working with Frederick Law Olmsted.

Olmsted - urban public health leader and the catalyst for landscape architecture and urban planning in the United States - was, on paper, "unqualified" to become, in 1857, the superintendent of what would become New York's Central Park. His selection, and his success, is a lesson for anyone looking to hire "the best person for the job."

A candidate's experience and training are important, of course, but they don't tell you enough about how well the candidate will do on the job. Nor do the standard answers to the standard interview questions. (Every job candidate says he or she works well in teams.)

So how do you choose the best candidate for the job, and avoid overlooking the next Olmsted?

· Decide what characteristics are most critical for the position. Is it more important that the ideal candidate be more entrepreneurial or cautious? A motivating leader of teams or a hard-nosed bottom-line manager?
· Think about how you ranked the characteristics. What is it about the job or the workplace that make these characteristics critical? How do you envision these characteristics being used on the job?
· Strive to make your preferences known as clearly as possible in your job announcements.
· Design interview questions that will help you evaluate the candidates' strengths in the key characteristics. If you are seeking an entrepreneurial candidate, ask questions about how the candidate pursued an opportunity or led a program to completion.
· Get candidates to talk about how they faced challenges. Any team leader looks great when in successful groups. What did the candidate do when a team was underperforming?
· Be specific when communicating with a candidate why a particular characteristic is critical to the success of the position. Vague comments such as "fitting in well in the organization" could be perceived by a candidate as code for "we only hire people who are like us."
· Comb through the candidate's resume or CV. Look beyond what the candidate's job responsibilities. Look for information, such as accomplishments or volunteer experience, that tells you more about the candidate. Olmsted's background as a publisher and farmer showed that he had business and management skills. His experience as a writer showed him to be thoughtful and creative. The fact that he could pursue such different professional disciplines demonstrated that he was an entrepreneurial thinker with a broad knowledge base. All this made him a good choice for the Central Park job.

For more about Olmsted, please read "How Frederick Law Olmsted Got the Central Park Job," in Planetizen
There are plenty of free Internet resources on interviewing job candidates. Start with "Interviewing Job Candidates" from Georgia State University's office of Human Resources. If you need more information, look for materials prepared by human resources professionals.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Do you have a professional development tip you would like to share? Have a question that you would like to see answered here? Please send it to Leo at vazquezl@rutgers.edu

The power of handshakes

It's always hard to meet with people who don't like or don't trust you. It's even harder in open, public meetings, where your antagonists can merge into the crowd while you're in a fishbowl up at the front. You can't prevent people from being hostile, but here are tips to manage the conflict.

• Diagnose the hostility the way you would any other problem. Why is the other side angry? Is it because of what you did, or perhaps what you are? (If you're a planner in a neighborhood that has had bad relationships with earlier planners, you may be seen as a proxy for those others.)
• Identify those people who are leading or stoking the hostility. Try to understand their concerns.
• Go to the meeting early and seek out the antagonists. Say hello, shake their hands and make small talk. Do not try to resolve conflict there, or discourage them from speaking up at the meeting. If they want to express their anger there, encourage them to talk with you at another time. If you try to engage in conflict resolution before the meeting, you may lose your focus.
• Under the best of circumstances, your antagonists will find your actions disarming and be willing to think about you in a more charitable way.
• If the antagonists refuse to engage you, or even shake your hand, that's ok too. Remember that others might be watching. If they see you make an effort and be rebuffed, it might make you look better, and your antagonists look worse.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Do you have a professional development tip you would like to share? Have a question that you would like to see answered here? Please send it to Leo at vazquezl@rutgers.edu

Dealing with writer's block

It happens to all of us. You have great ideas and a lot of data. You go to your computer, put your hands on the keyboard, stare and the screen and... nothing.

Before you walk away in frustration, try this:
*Talk as you type. You may find it easier to put the words together if you feel like you're talking to someone.

*Pretend you're talking to a supportive but skeptical person. Here's what the person might ask:
-- Why is what you're writing about important?
-- Why should I care about it? How does it affect me?
-- (If you're asking for action) What do you want me/him/her/them to do? When?
-- What information do you have to support your arguments?
-- Do you have any charts, images or other graphics that might help convince or persuade me?

Another good tip: The best way to become a better writer is to write more often. Writing is like exercising; the more you do it, the easier it becomes, and the more you can do.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Responding to online attacks

Those nasty online comments by anonymous posters sting hard. It's one thing if they would simply argue the facts. But instead they attack your integrity, your competence, bring in distracting and irrelevant information, or just plain tell lies. You just want to get on the keyboard and tell those @#(*... Stop. What you do next could defuse the situation, or make it worse. Do not try to negotiate or argue with people online. People online tend to dig in their heels, which makes it more difficult to reach consensus. That's because in what researchers call computer-mediated communication (CMC), we lack the tools to help us communicate in a rich and nuanced manner. These include such tools as body language, tone and timing. If I say "Sit Down!" online, I am angrily commanding you to be quiet or happily inviting you o join me in a conversation? If you haven't heard the tone in my voice, you probably don't know. (Emoticons help, but don't fully replace facial expressions and tone.) If someone makes wrong or outrageous statements about your project, invite that person to go to a future public meeting or to talk with someone from your team in person. You may not change the person's mind. But you will demonstrate to others that you are open to criticism and dialogue. And most people aren't as rude in a face-to-face situation as they might be behind an online mask. If someone makes personal attacks against you, you can do several things: Take the high road and say you will not respond to personal attacks (although you may want to correct any errors offered by the writer). You can contact the moderator of the forum where the comments are to see if there are any rules against making personal attacks. You can also ignore the comments to see if they die on the vine or if they get picked up by other writers. This is risky. But I think more readers today realize that some people simply have an axe to grind, or are just unreasonable, and they tend to overlook outrageous claims. The comments to be most careful of are those written well enough to sound plausible. Take the friendliest tone possible when presenting information online or responding to a writer. If I'm responding to a reasonable argument, I like to say something like "I understand why you might say that, but here's why I see it differently." Avoid making comments that imply that the other person lacks knowledge or understanding. This is insulting, and I've never seen this strategy to work. If you honestly feel that the other person does not have "all the facts," ask if he or she has considered X or Y. And be willing to listen to their facts, even if you don't like what you hear. Feel free to invite your friends and allies to present their views as a way to counteract attacks. When defending your actions, do not repeat any malicious claims others say. Repeating the claims tends to cause readers to remember them more. One way to help minimize the problem of online attacks is to create forums for people to talk about your projects. In these forums, set up "netiquette" guidelines that give you the freedom to delete any comments deemed as personal attacks. (If you work in the public sector, check first with your agency attorney to see if deleting comments violates First Amendment guidelines.) Develop a thick skin. I remember somebody telling me "If you raise your head above the crowd, someone's bound to throw a tomato at it." Final thought: Don't email angry. An impulsive mistake can cause you and others a lot of pain. --Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Selling and sharing your vision

You've got a great idea to do something somewhere. You can make it happen, if you can get enough "buy-in," support, or enrollment from the right people. How do you do it?

Simply informing others isn't enough. You need to let your audiences know what you would like them to do. That depends on whether you're trying to sell or share your vision.

Selling your vision is like selling any other product. The audience either buys it (in other words, supports it) or doesn't. Selling is useful if you're trying to get financing or need support from a government agency.

Sharing your vision is more complex. Audiences don't just support it. They get involved with it. They may even modify it. Sharing is useful when you want to build long-term relationships or motivation. Successful plans need the ongoing support of the people who are affected by them. If those people are sold a vision, and there are unforeseen problems -- as there always are -- people can change their minds quickly. (Think about toothpaste. If you start to dislike the taste, the price, or the company that sells it, do you wait for it to change? No. You buy another brand.)

When you're selling, the vision tends to be more detailed and constructed. When you're sharing, the vision is more vague and open-ended. The more detailed the vision is, the more it seems "finished" or "closed." Most people don't feel comfortable trying to change a finished product.

Let's say your vision is to build a supermarket in a low-income community. You probably have a sense of how big the supermarket should be, what it should look like, and maybe even who should run it.

You would probably sell that vision to a bank. The banker would want to know that your vision is a safer investment for the bank's money. More details can help your credibility.

You would probably share the vision to community groups. They may have different ideas about the mix of products in the store and who should run it. If you simply try to sell your vision, they may say "no thanks."

Be prepared to sell and share. In today's world, the bank might feel more comfortable buying your vision if the community shares it.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Keeping your ear to the ground online

Blogs, discussion boards and interactive websites are great places to find out what's being said about your program, plan or project. Unfortunately, there are so many, it is hard to keep track of them all.

A number of online tools can help. Mashable (which offers "social networking news") provides a list of tools that help you scan blogs.

I use Google Alerts. It sends me emails whenever a website, blog, video site, news site, or other online source publishes something new about a topic that I selected. Since it searches by words or phrases, I sometimes get updates that are irrelevant. (BOCEP, the acronym for the Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program, is a phrase or acronym used by other organizations.) But otherwise I find it easy to use and useful.
--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Protecting yourself in a down economy

Tough economic times can lead to job cuts - in every sector and type of organization. Here are some things you can do to protect yourself.

*Do not assume that a government job - even a civil service one - is safe from recessions. Firing a civil servant is difficult; but savvy supervisors can cut or "reorganize out" a position.

*Build good relationships with as many people as you can. The supervisor you like working with may be a few votes away from being replaced. Plus, if more people like working with you, you will get more things done quickly, and make yourself more valuable.

*Network, network, network. The more people you know in and outside your agency, the easier it will be to find a new job.

*Market your successes. Doing a good job is not enough. You have to let others - especially your supervisors -- know.

*Your organization probably has a stated mission. Know it. Your division, department, or office probably has one too. Show how your work is crucial to furthering the work of your organization's and unit's mission.

*Increase your visibility. Staying on someone's radar screen for good reasons, can help you look more committed and valuable.

*Be aware of what's going on financially in your profession, industry and organization. When you hear about across-the-board budget cuts, keep your eyes and ears wide open.

*Be more flexible about taking new assignments. Pursue opportunities to do more and heighten your visibility. Volunteer to engage in projects, especially those that most interest your supervisor.

*Keep a positive attitude. Do you like working with people who constantly whine or complain? Neither do supervisors.

*Offer suggestions to cut costs or increase revenue. If supervisors are looking to trim costs, give them some things to think about other than your job. For every problem you identify, try to come up with at least one solution.

*Update your resume and keep your eyes open for new job opportunities. Look for a new job well before you need one. It's better to have opportunities you can say no to than situations you have yes to.

There are other strategies that work. The ones above are those that a number of writers on career strategies agreed upon.

Making good career choices

A lot of good, smart people make the mistake of waiting until they're fed up or burned out by their jobs, and then jumping at the next good thing that comes along. Soon after, they're ready to jump again. How do you know if where you are is where you should be? Try out Career Anchors, a workbook developed by Edgar Schein, one of the world's leading thinkers in leadership and organizational behavior.

Schein argues that we all have a few distinct qualities that we look for in our careers. Some of these "anchors" include the freedom to make our own choices, opportunities to be creative, and the ability to make lots of money. (There are eight distinct career anchors.) Since few jobs will offer equal amounts of everything, we will be happiest -- and probably do best -- in jobs and careers that are closest to our career anchors. The workbook consists of a number of statements that ask for your response. Those responses determine what your career anchors are.

If you manage staff who continually underperform in their work, you can use Career Anchors to find out what would most motivate them. Or they can see whether they should stay in their jobs. (It's better to have a happy alum than a disgruntled employee.)
What if you find you're in the wrong job, wrong sector, or even the wrong career? That's ok. Plenty of people are career switchers. Frederick Law Olmsted. William Whyte. Ebenezer Howard. Catherine Bauer. If they had stuck to their first careers, you might have never have heard of them.

Learn more about Career Anchors

Benefits of stone soup: Maximizing limited resources

Budgets are tight. Everybody's stressed. Nobody seems to have enough time, money, energy or resources to share. How do we make the best of what we have?

Here's how: (But first a little story from old Europe)

A poor hungry traveler in a time not that different from ours came upon a place where there were people not unlike the ones you know. He asked for food, but was told no one could spare a morsel. "Could I at least borrow a pot and take some well water to make stone soup?" he said. Somebody lent him a big cauldron. He went to the village square, filled up the pot, lit a fire, then dropped in a clean stone he had found. Curious, the villagers gathered to find out what this strange man was doing. "Have a taste," he said. When they did, he said, "with a little salt, this could taste a lot better." Someone brought salt. Everyone took another sip. It did taste better. Another villager said the soup could taste better with carrots, and took them from her garden. The soup was better still. Another brought greens, and so on and so on. In the end, everybody shared in one of the best soups they'd ever had.

How did this poor traveler, with nothing but a stone, make a great meal that fed everyone?

*He got others to bring together their few resources to make more than the sum of their parts.
*He offered a clear vision - a great soup - and showed how to achieve the vision.
*He was the catalyst, but he let everyone else bring what they could to the soup. A lot of cooks actually made the broth better.
*Others saw success - the soup continued to get better - and shared in it.

If the stone soup story sounds familiar, it's because the same story could be told through asset based community development, a successful and influential strategy to revitalize low-income communities. Or the story could be about a group of people working to build a new program with little start-up funding. Or it could be about the revitalization of the South Bronx in New York.

If you were teaching a college course, you might talk about game theory concepts such as "assurance games" and "coordination problems." You might want to have your students read Rational Ritual by Michael Suk-Young Chwe.

But I like to call it stone soup. It's what I make when, as often happens, there is a lot demanded and little money available. Try starting some stone soup. Just remember to be open-minded about what others bring to table. And if someone else is making soup, please share.

The difference between facts and truths: Why we see the same things differently

Imagine you are watching a juggling act. The performer is juggling three balls. One of them lands on the ground. You probably want to know what happened and why. What happened? There could be at least three explanations: The juggler dropped the ball. The juggler allowed the ball to fall to the floor. Or some force -- wind? ghosts? -- caused a ball to leave its trajectory and escape the juggler's hands.

Ok, that's simple enough -- if we were to leave it there. But it's part of human nature to want to know more, to know why, to construct a story that connects actions and motivations. Even if we were to follow one line of reason -- the juggler dropped the ball -- there could be at least three reasons why he did so. Maybe he was distracted. Maybe he was drunk. Maybe he couldn't move his hands fast enough.

And of course, we wouldn't leave it at that. We want to know more about why any of those three things happened. And as all of us follow different storylines and add layers of meaning, we come up with at least dozens of "truths." (In this case, we could get to 81 different interpretations of the facts by going through 4 levels of inquiry.)

Which truth is the right one? Any of them could be. Facts -- like objects or numbers -- may be objective. But truths about relationships are socially constructed. Consider a romantic relationship you may have been in. It existed only as long as the individuals believed that there was a relationship. Your sense of various relationships -- involving people and situtations -- impact your sense of truth and your actions.

This helps explain why it is so difficult to achieve consensus in a diverse group, even when everyone is looking at the same facts. It also demonstrates why simply giving people more information -- the old "tell and sell" approach -- by itself doesn't help to get consensus.

Building consensus is one of the biggest challenges in our work in planning, policy and community development. Getting people to nod their heads in agreement is one thing; getting to a shared understanding is far more difficult. It takes time and a commitment by leadership to a process that allows people to get and reflect on new information, and share what they believe. Under the best of circumstances, the participants create new "truths" that become the foundation for a group action.

For the professional leading the consensus building effort, perhaps the most difficult challenge is accepting that his or her truth is only one of several valid interpretations. If you're not willing to do this, you're not building consensus, you're selling your ideas. And if you have improper assumptions, or if participants get wind of what you're really doing, you run the risk of getting into uncomfortable and stressful situations.

Here are some tips on managing multiple truths:

• Seek to understand before seeking to explain.
• Work to help others understand your views. Understand why you might see the same facts and come to different interpretations. Then share your views.
  
• Many professionals assume that when others disagree with them, it's because "they don't know." This thinking is often wrong and, frankly, insulting to our clients and colleagues. If we're going to have effective conversations, we need to have the courage to look into our blind spots.

Making a public participation toolkit

Having a toolkit ready for almost any type of presentation or public participation event will save you a lot of time and reduce your stress.

The first part of the toolkit is the toolbox. Use something with several pockets or compartments. I use a medium men's travel toiletry case. It is light and easy to carry because it folds up and has hooks for hanging onto a door (or the clip of my work case).

Inside the toolkit, have at least the following tools:

• Dry erase markers, four colors
• Whiteboard eraser and small bottle of whiteboard cleaner
  
• Flip chart markers, four colors and labeled to avoid mistaking them for the dry erase markers
• Large index cards, multiple colors
• Draft dots, multiple colors
• Sticky paper, such as Post-Its or similar paper
• Flash drive
• Laser pointer
• Box of pens
• Box of pencils
• Masking tape
• Household tape
• Stick-on badges
  
• Fine point markers, in standard land use colors
  
• Other small props you regularly use

Building effective relationships with reporters

Developing effective relationships with the media is a good way to help your cause, organization or yourself. Being a favored source for newspaper reporters helped Robert Moses become the foremost figure in planning in 20th century New York. "Rebuilding Communities," a landmark study by Avis Vidal, showed that funders were more likely to give support to community development corporations with greater visibility.

Here are some tips on building effective relationships with reporters. (By the way, I was a newspaper reporter for five years and still write for online publications and magazines.)

First, ensure that you have the appropriate permissions to speak 'on-record' to the media. Many governmental agencies and organizations, having been stung by bad publicity, limit who can talk to the media and in what capacity.

Reporters are like police officers; once they identify themselves professionally, everything you say or do can be used for their purposes.

Cultivate relationships with reporters who ask good or difficult questions. This often demonstrates that they are attentive and have prepared for the interview. Reporters who ask you for basic information that they can find on your website might be lazy or unconcerned with the story.

Reporters look for stories that have any of the following qualities: new information, unexpected information, clear impacts on their readers, and conflicts in which the issue and the opponents are easy to identify. For example, most reporters wouldn't be interested in writing about a capital improvements plan. But they would be interested in writing about new roads or street improvements that would reduce flooding.

Look for or create photo opportunities. Stories that have 'art' (the journalistic term for photos and other images) are more likely to get published and to get better positions within the publication.

Unless you are a whistleblower, there is almost never any need to go "off-the-record." If you decide to go off the record, understand what the reporter means by that term. For some, off-the-record means they can use the information without naming you as a source. (This is what other reporters call "on background.") For other reporters, off-the-record means they can't use the information at all in a story. In either case, you should expect that reporters will share what they know with editors, who are responsible for the content in their publications.

Good reporters are busy, especially in today's 24-hour news cycle. If you call a reporter, ask him or her if she is on "deadline." If so, ask about a better time to call back.

If a reporter calls you, call back within 45 minutes. Give the reporter all of your contact numbers, and be prepared to take calls at night or on weekends. Be patient and pleasant. A reporter might file a story at 5 pm, but has to respond to an editor's question at 9 pm.

"General assignment" reporters and those new to a beat are usually not experts in the subjects they cover. The more useful information you can provide, the more valuable you become to those reporters.

Remember that the story belongs to the reporter and his or her editors. They choose what goes in and stays out of the stories. If you want to control what goes into a publication, take out an ad.

When writing press releases, try to adopt the writing style of the publications you are trying to influence. In some cases, especially for shorter stories, reporters may simply lift or slightly revise what you wrote.

If you want to be quoted, speak in short sentences and a little more slowly. Most quotations in newspaper and magazine stories are only a sentence or two long.

Leadership versus management, part II

In this article, we continue describing the differences between leading and managing.

• Professionals who manage are afraid of making mistakes.
• Professionals who lead see mistakes as learning opportunities.
  
  
• Professionals who manage seek validation.
• Professionals who lead seek understanding.
  
  
• Professionals who manage see diversity as a threat to the pursuit of the harmonious and orderly development of plans.
• Professionals who lead see the zealous pursuit of the harmonious and orderly development of plans as a threat to building great communities.
  
  
• Professionals who manage tell and sell.
• Professionals who lead explore and influence.
  
  
• Professionals who manage think cultural competency is about "being nice to people different than you."
• Professionals who lead know it's much more complex than that.
  
  
• Professionals who manage think emotions get in the way of good planning.
• Professionals who lead know that how people feel about places, planning and the professionals who make the plans impact the quality and success of plans.
  
  
• Professionals who manage assign blame.
• Professionals who lead assign responsibility.
  
  
• Professionals who manage direct and command.
• Professionals who lead persuade and support.
  
  
• Professionals who manage need the power of their positions to persuade.
• Professionals who lead can persuade from anywhere in an organization or community.
  
  
• Professionals who manage take credit.
• Professionals who lead share credit.
  
  
• Professionals who manage are usually ignored after they leave the room.
• Professionals who lead have lasting impacts on others and the communities they serve.

For more on leadership, check out:
Learning to Lead, by Warren Bennis
Good to Great, by Jim Collins
John P. Kotter on What Leaders Really Do, by John P. Kotter

Leadership versus management, part I

One of the keys to being an effective leader is to understand the difference between leading and managing. The differences can be subtle, but profound. Experts have used many ways to explain the difference. Warren Bennis says that managers do things right, while leaders do the right things. Edgar Schein says that leaders build and change cultures, while managers sustain them.

Many professionals in planning and public affairs manage groups, projects and organizations. What's the difference between a professional who leads and one who manages? I hope this listing helps shed some light.

• Professionals who manage follow agendas and scopes of work.
• Professionals who lead make strategic choices that most effectively further goals and missions.
  
  
• Professionals who manage are cautious and worried.
• Professionals who lead are careful and thoughtful.
  
  
• Professionals who manage are scared that "someone is going to say something."
• Professionals who lead welcome the opportunity to hear different perspectives.
  
  
• Professionals who manage prepare plans and studies.
• Professionals who lead pursue positive growth and development using plans and studies.

• Professionals who manage avoid conflict and risk.
• Professionals who lead manage conflict and risk.
  
  
• Professionals who manage do things a certain way because "that's how it's done."
• Professionals who lead do things that will best achieve lasting results.