# Presentation: 171059

## What Makes a Representative and Productive Community Board

- Presented By:
- Yvonne “Bonnie” Gonzalez
- Chief Executive Officer
- Rio Grande Valley Empowerment Zone Corporation

## Pieces of the Puzzle

**Integrity**

**Leadership**

**Advocacy**

**Commitment**

**Success**

## What is a Representative Board?

- Operational Values
- Integrity leads to credibility
- Process oriented
- Leadership
- Risk Taking

## Key Concepts Critical to Success

- Understanding of Key Principles: *economic opportunity, sustainable development, community participation, strategic vision for change*
- Community/grassroots driven
- “Bigger than we are”
- The “big picture”

## Operational Structure

**Regional**** ****Board of Directors**

**Administration**

- Cameron County Subzone Advisory Committee

- Hidalgo County Subzone Advisory Committee

- Willacy County Subzone Advisory Committee

- Starr     County Subzone Advisory Committee

**U.S. Health & Human  Services (Fiscal)**

**United States  Department of Agriculture  (Programmatic)**

**Texas Department of Economic Development (Fiscal) **

**Project Review and Evaluation Committee**

**Executive  - Budget and Finance Committee**

## LEADERSHIP.......

*THE VISION....THE CHALLENGE?*

## Leadership:  A Definition

- Leadership is taking the_** initiative**_ to _**marshal resources**_ _**toward end results**_.

_**Initiative:**_  leaders must have ideas and start people moving.  These leader consider the impact of their actions, yet they don’t spin their wheels.  They are decisive and willing to take calculated risks without having all the answer beforehand.  Leaders must be perceptive enough to take the lead to get people and resources together  to meet the need.
_**Marshal Resources:**_ leaders need organizational ability to bring needed resources together. Some of these resources are people.  A leader identifies and gains the cooperation of people.  Leaders must help see the importance of their contribution toward meeting the need.  A leader must supply the coordination so that all the individual parts come together as a unified whole.
_**Toward End Results:**_ Effective leadership is oriented toward goals.  Leadership is not a personal characteristic, but rather a dynamic process that works toward goal achievement.

## Leadership Challenges

- APATHY
- DISTRUST
- POWER TRIP
- CARING
- VISION

## Leadership: Costs

- Leadership is not always a** positive** and **rewarding** experience.
***1.  Some people find it easier to criticize the actions of others than to take risks themselves.***
***2.  It’s more comfortable for some people to “wear rose-colored glasses” and to believe that problems are exaggerations that don’t affect them directly.***
***3.  Leaders will always face resistance.  Overcoming resistance is part of leadership***
- Leadership involves sacrifice. At the very least, one must sacrifice a great deal of time to serve in a leadership role.  Leaders often sacrifice what they would like to do, or how they would like to do it, for the good and cohesiveness of the group.

## Leadership: Rewards

- Despite the costs of leadership, it is a rewarding activity.
- Leadership takes us out of selfish concerns to identify with something larger than ourselves.
- When we accomplish a goal, we experience a satisfaction that counts for something.
- It gives significance to our lives.
- Leaders deny themselves to help other.

## Famous Words on Leadership

- It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.  The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again; because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumphs of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.
***                                                        ******Theodore Roosevelt (1910)***

## LEADING FOR Tomorrow...

- ....TODAY