County Lacks True Leadership

The Dec. 28 editorial “Running the County” stated that a clear, strong role for the chief executive officer is important. It also stated that the county supervisors “shouldn’t be micromanaging, but they should be supervising.”

While I agree that the CEO should manage and the supervisors should supervise, a very important ingredient to governance was conspicuously missing: leadership.

[Jan] Mittermeier earns her paycheck managing, and the supervisors get paid for supervising, but leading is something they must all do on their own.

This is not to say that our top elected and appointed officials do not have the qualities and capacities for leadership. They do. Are they perceived as inspirational and dynamic forces for progress, constructive change and innovative problem-solving? I would submit that they are not.

The reason that county government is not leading, and the reason that many county constituencies are not following, is that the shared processes of communication and collaboration have not yet been firmly established under the county’s new regime. This contributes to the perception of locking the insiders in and of locking the outsiders out.

Exercising power is not leadership. Carrying out duties and responsibilities is no guarantee of leadership. One-way direction and communication hardly qualifies as leadership. Bringing people together by inspiring trust and confidence in the shared abilities of all our societal sectors (public, private, community, academic, religious) to move forward and succeed in conducting civic affairs shows leadership.

Leaders need followers to get involved and must be willing and able to involve them for true leadership to take place. True leadership is influence-based, not authority-based.

TIM GEDDES

Huntington Beach