Your opportunity to lead.

The opportunity to serve as the volunteer leader of a trade, professional, or philanthropic association is a significant lifetime honor that carries many rewards. Although your tenure of office may be relatively brief, you will long be remembered for the quality of leadership you provide.

I have had the privilege of working with several outstanding elected leaders, quite a few very good leaders, and a few who were less than successful in attempting to lead their associations. One thing I have learned from my 25-year career in association management is that the best and most admired leaders did not try to move mountains, redirect rivers, or turn dead forests green. What they did was inspire their volunteers and staff to be more visionary and to reach higher and work harder to address the strategic issues confronting the association. They understood that the journey to the destination is as important, or more important, than the landing. Those who were less successful focused simply on the final destination.

Many articles and books are available on leadership and the characteristics that one finds in great leaders. Some of those characteristics are critically important to elected leaders of associations, where one must achieve results through others without the power to hire, fire, or financially reward volunteers. How do these leaders get the best from volunteers and staff?

* They work hard to make volunteers and staff feel important; that is, they make them feel the work that they do is significant.

* They bring clarity of purpose and vision to members.

* They stay focused on the strategic goals and issues of the organization.

* They achieve consensus by facilitating well rather than using the gavel.

* They build strong partnerships, beginning with their relationship to the chief staff executive.

* They set the bar high for acceptable behavior by volunteer leaders.

* They provide public and individual recognition for work well done.

* They stay in touch with their volunteers.

Last, but not least, great association leaders are generally passionate people who not only care about the measurements of success during their year but also care about the future of the organization, the mission, the members, and the world in which we all live.

You have been elected to a leadership role at a time in which the state of the economy has adversely affected the revenues of many associations. We find ourselves wanting or needing to do more but having fewer resources. For visionary leaders, this may be an opportunity. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, associations were adding new programs, meetings, and other association projects; rarely did any association prune older programs, regardless of how they were performing.

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Indeed, few things are more difficult than eliminating an existing program in the nonprofit environment. Every program seems to have some historic significance and a past chair who is willing to go down fighting. But think what service the leader of today does by helping the association to do a full-scale assessment of programs and meetings; providing the type of leadership that enables the organization to rid itself of underperforming and no-longer-relevant services; and focusing the association's resources on what members consider to be of strategic importance.

The American Society of Association Executives is a wonderful resource for you during your term as an elected leader. You will find that ASSOCIATION MANAGEMENT magazine provides great insights on many topics. This special annual Leadership Issue is specifically written for volunteer leaders and covers the scope of good governance. As a chief staff executive, I see that the annual Leadership Issue is distributed to all national leaders of my association, and they always find it beneficial.

I congratulate you for having been elected by your peers to head your association. Their respect for you makes it possible for you to enhance their world and the world around them. Can there be a greater honor than where you stand now?

ASAE Chairman, 2003-2004

Executive Director and CEO, American School Food Service Association and the Child Nutrition Foundation,

Alexandria, Virginia 

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