Leadership Matters: Leadership Golden Belt Program Cultivates Community Leaders

When Cory Stelter wants to commiserate with someone about how to tackle a community- or business-related project, he knows he can call on his old school chums.

Not the ones from his formal-education years – the new ones from the first-ever class of Leadership Golden Belt (LGB).

Stelter is an account executive at the Larned branch of Office Products Inc. (OPI). He and 16 other area residents graduated last year from LGB, a joint effort of the Golden Belt Community Foundation (GBCF), the Great Bend Chamber of Commerce and the Larned Chamber of Commerce.

Applications are now being taken for the LGB 2009 class, which begins in August. It is open to residents of Barton, Pawnee, Stafford and Rush counties.

“There are people out of the class that I talk to weekly,” Stelter commented. “The quality contacts you make, the new friends you meet can help you in your leadership abilities, your leadership roles in life. These are huge benefits.”

Leading the Blind – Blindfolded Leadership Golden Belt participants work together to complete an activity during the 2008 Leadership session. “Exercises we do during our sessions help the participants to see why collaboration and leadership are so important,” Golden Belt Community Foundation Director Christy Tustin says. “The lessons they take away from their experiences are invaluable.”

For example, Stelter noted, when it was his turn to lead an OPI sales meeting, he contacted a classmate to knock around ideas. They reviewed what they had learned and talked about ways to put it into practice.

“We discussed ideas about how to facilitate the meeting and came up with questions that would get others to thinking,” Stelter said. “We can always learn from one another to make a project go better.”

Not only is the class helping Stelter on the job, he also relies on the LGB experience in his role as a member of the USD 495 Board of Education in Larned.

“I am very community minded and want to take advantage of anything like this that can help me learn,” Stelter said. “The networking and getting to know other leaders in the community is so important. Not just in Larned and Pawnee County, but the whole area. It benefits my business and I get to know more people.”

LGB is the first leadership class in the state to think regionally. And Stelter believes that is one of its more important features, especially since the class allows a more progressive view of how communities can help one another.

“People are leaving for bigger communities,” Stelter said. “We have to pull together and show them what we have available here. If we don’t, we will be fighting a losing battle.

“As a class, we asked if we had a goal, what would that goal be,” Stelter continued. “The answer was to bring these four counties together.”

Time to Tour – Leadership Golden Belt participants soak up their surroundings as they tour a business in Central Kansas. Community Foundation Director Christy Tustin says, “The Leadership Golden Belt program gives class members exposure to a lot of businesses they would know little about if it weren’t for the program.”

In his business and community-service roles, Stelter said one LGB highlight for him was the class that brought together representatives of governing bodies from the region.

“This opened our eyes to how much it can make a difference to start talking with one another,” Stelter said, noting that school boards, county commissions and city councils can help one another. “We can share ideas instead of pulling in three different directions. If we don’t band together, we are standing alone and we won’t make it. That is pretty much a given.”

Because Stelter wants to give back to LGB, he will serve as co-facilitator of the second class with Carolyn Dunn of St. John; Dunn was co-facilitator with Audrey Miller in the first class. Dunn became involved because she is GBCF board member.

“We saw an opportunity, came up with the idea and approached area chambers of commerce,” Dunn recalled from a 2007 meeting. Lynette Lacy of Leadership Reno County was called on because of her experience with a number of classes; she helped LGB develop its skills-based curriculum.

“When we took the lead, we made it a regional program with a different type of format,” Dunn said. “We learned leadership skills on how to work with groups – improving the way groups function in a community-based context.

“A lot of industries, such as ag, develop their own leadership programs but this one is in the context of the whole community. It is a collaborative program. I like to think the concepts come in handy every day, whether working with the city council or just working with people on the job.”

The fringe benefit, Dunn added, is the personal satisfaction of working with others to better the community. “If you care about the place where you live and have a genuine interest in how you can make things better, and it comes from the heart, the program can get you started,” Dunn said. “The dynamics of the class help people think in a more forward way.

“They can start thinking ‘hey, this can maybe work,’” the co-facilitator continued. “And as with any leadership program, you are exposed to places you wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to go to.”

More than Just the Facts – Leadership Golden Belt participants listen to community leaders as they present information on various programs going on around Central Kansas. “In addition to providing tours of area facilities and organizations, we like to present class members with information and connections they can use in their careers,” Tustin says. “If nothing else, Leadership class members can know that they will develop lots of networks within the communities we partner with.”

For example, the class toured a variety of area businesses and became acquainted with governing entities. Equally important is meeting other classmates, Dunn commented.

“The retreat at the beginning of the class is where everyone meets,” Dunn said. “This is our first contact with one another; it is a highlight.”

LGB is especially helpful for smaller counties that do not have chambers of commerce or the ability to sponsor their own leadership programs, Dunn said. It provides an avenue to learn new ways to help communities prosper.

“The thing is, we didn’t have a program and we wouldn’t have ever had the critical mass to get something started,” Dunn said, referring to Stafford County. “That was another impetus for this.”

Christy Tustin, executive director of the GBCF, couldn’t agree more. “The smaller communities can now have the benefits of a leadership program without having a chamber of commerce,” Tustin said. “We all went in and pooled resources. Why should we all do the same thing?”

The need for skilled local leaders led to the development of LGB, which is dedicated to making the Golden Belt a great place to live, work and play, using a “grow-your-own approach,” Tustin said. Class members are trained using 21st Century leadership skills such as community visioning, group facilitation, learning styles, collaboration, consensus-building and advocacy.

In addition to classroom lessons, LGB includes several tours, each relating to important community topics such as economic development, health care, the arts and culture, Tustin noted.
 
“Participants will meet in various locations throughout Stafford, Rush, Pawnee and Barton counties,” Tustin said. “The LGB program and the relationships the participants develop will provide the skills needed to work with others to address current issues and find opportunities for the future.”

The leadership effort began with a $23,890 Kansas Health Foundation (KHF) Recognition grant, which provided seed money. The GBCF recently received a $100,000 KHF grant to help endow the program.

“We received the grant because we could prove to the KHF that we adopted a new curriculum, a more comprehensive leadership program,” Tustin pointed out. “This grant will ensure the future sustainability of the program, which, with its unique regional approach, is poised to become an example for other rural communities looking to create similar regional leadership programs.”

The class can accommodate up to 35 students; those in the first class ranged in age from the low 20s to retirees.

“I have heard very positive feedback,” Tustin said, referring to comments from first-year class members. “They are no longer thinking just of their own communities; they are thinking on a broader scale. I really like to hear that.”

Enrollment Now Being Accepted for Leadership Program

The 2009 Leadership Golden Belt class will begin with a two-day, overnight retreat on Aug. 20-21. The other seven sessions are scheduled for Sept. 3 and 17, Oct. 1, 15, and 29, Nov. 12 and Dec. 3. These regular classes will meet from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Applications are available at www.goldenbeltcf.org and www.greatbend.org.

For more information, contact:

Leadership Golden Belt
c/o Golden Belt Community Foundation
1307 Williams
Great Bend, KS 67530
620-792-3000