COMMENTARY — Sen. Jeff Sessions holds many roles for our state in Washington, and he has accepted a strong role of support to the Pre-serving Rural Alabama agenda, which offers communities like ours technical assistance through the USDA for development as an ACE community. Area leaders attended the conference recently hosted by Jacksonville State University to learn more and work to bring that message back to our area.

An ACE Community (Alabama Community of Excellence) targets populations of a size between 2,000 and 18,000 for 11 specific points of developmental focus to include: Leadership development, strategic planning, comprehensive planning, commercial business development, education enhancement, infrastructure requirements, health and human services, tourism, economic development, recreation opportunities and QOL.

Presenter Nisa Miranda, director of the University of Alabama Center for Economic Development, helped the group of over 100 attendees understand that to make an ACE community thrive it must have clean partnership with the mayors office, any economic development entities, the chamber of commerce, and of course schools.  According to Ms. Miranda, and speaking to a diverse audience of business leaders, chamber leaders, city leaders and institutional leaders, “Who drives this in an area?” She continued, “It is not the mayor, or city council, but you.” Success of an ACE community will be driven by a depth of involved leaders within a community appropriately trained and focused.

The goal of attendance at this meeting was to bring this information to the broader north Jefferson area to capture synergistic growth opportunities for all of our communities. Several communities across the state have graduated from this three-year leadership program, but only one from our area, Graysville. This is an ongoing process with recertification requirements to an ACE community three years after initial training completion.

We seek to learn more about these leadership training opportunities, and to move forward with participation. The ultimate purpose of this program is to expand the base of evolved community leaders assisting with the management of multiple community projects in the 11 specific points of focus. Ongoing leadership development is at the core of building an ACE community. Through the ACE process, there is an effort to create a new vision of growth which forms a combined effort between city government, businesses and citizens to make the vision of growth a reality.  

Participation in ACE leadership training will help our communities achieve much more as both distinct towns and community partners. Other ACE communities have accomplished industrial park developments, receipt of grant awards, completion of comprehensive planning, down town revitalization, Brownfield cleanup, disaster planning, improved waste water management and the formation of historical societies to name a few.

If you sit on a city council, serve as a mayor or hold a position on a chamber of commerce, economic or industrial development board, planning commission, or zoning board then this note is for you. ACE community development begins with the end in mind whereby leadership training can build the foundation for strong and defendable decisions built around sustainable regional collaboration.  

Speaker and professor Cheryl Morgan of Auburn’s Urban Studio summed it up beautifully by stating, “A community with a plan is more competitive. She can channel resources to the best advantage of everyone and can leverage resources for the best long term benefit.”  

 

 — The study of emotional intelligence is often dated to the early 1990s, when scientific articles suggested that there existed an unrecognized but important human mental ability to reason about emotions and to use emotions to enhance thought. The basics of Emotional Intelligence, or EI, include knowing your feelings and using them to make life decisions with which you can live. In business, emotional intelligence can work to impart a strategic advantage when times get tense or tough.  

Being able to manage your emotional life without begin hijacked by it or allowing yourself  to become paralyzed by depression or worry, or worse, swept away by anger, is key in today’s volatile and changing workplace.  

Cultivating your EI can provide the support that you need in the face of setbacks, and a positive channeling of your impulses can be critical to keep you on target and on track as you pursue your goals.  

An emotionally intelligent person has empathy, not sympathy, for the other person without them having to tell you exactly what they are feeling or going through.  In today’s work place this skill is critical in light of privacy laws, and issues of work place harassment. A skillful handling of emotion and feelings in the workplace is critical for the diverse personalities and skills that allow all to move in the same goal direction in some form of harmony. Emotional Intelligence allows the unspoken pulse of a group to work to get things done, sometimes the impossible, given all of the differing ideas, skills and agendas that sometimes come together.

There are multiple and daily examples of challenges in the work place that command high emotional intelligence.

Consider the dynamics of a colleague who steals your idea and discusses it publicly as if it were his own, the challenge of dealing with a difficult customer, the impact of a poor work review, someone who tells a racist joke or a sexually explicit joke. How about observing road rage, or riding with someone who is a driving aggressively? Ever been in a shouting match or a turf battle at work? Or sometimes we need to dig deep and sharpen our emotional intelligence as we work to inspire our team, nudge an indecisive or apathetic leader, or even work to inspire our own self.  

Generally speaking, emotional intelligence improves an individual's social effectiveness. The higher the emotional intelligence, the better the social relations. Emotional Intelligence is described as a combination of personal competence and social competence.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, previous Chairman of GE Jack Welch stated, “A leader’s intelligence has to have a strong emotional component. He has to have high levels of self-awareness, maturity and self-control. He or she must be able to withstand the heat, handle setbacks and when those lucky moments arise, enjoy success with equal parts of joy and humility. No doubt emotional intelligence is more rare than book smarts, but my experience says it is actually more important in the making of a leader. You just can't ignore it.”

The high EI individual can better perceive emotions, use them in thought, understand their meanings, and manage emotions, than others. Solving emotional problems likely requires less cognitive effort for this individual. The person also tends to be somewhat higher in verbal, social, and other intelligences, particularly in understanding emotions. The individual tends to be more open and agreeable than others. The high EI person is drawn to occupations involving social interactions such as teaching and counseling more so than to occupations involving clerical or administrative tasks.

According to research on the topic, the high EI individual, relative to others, is less apt to engage in problem behaviors, and avoids self-destructive, negative behaviors such as smoking, excessive drinking, drug abuse, or violent episodes with others. The high EI person is more likely to have possessions of sentimental attachment around the home and to have more positive social interactions.  Such individuals may also be more adept at describing motivational goals, aims, and missions.

Got EI? Psychologists Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves designed a test that assesses the four pillars of EI: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management. “Emotional Intelligence Appraisal” was published in 2003, and more than 500,000 people have taken the assessment so far… even the Chinese.  Interestingly, the research showed that when data matched Chinese executives to American executives, the Chinese outscored the American on the two key EI measures of self-management and relationship management. In a nutshell, this very compelling research suggests when it comes to the pursuit of economic success these two less developed elements of EI leave American Executives lacking in some of the discipline needed to compete best in a global marketplace.

Getting back on track will require our good, old fashioned “making business personal.”  The tried and true “management by walking around” technique that helped build our industry and fuel our factory floor.  

Teresa works for Sanofi-Aventis Pharmaceuticals and supports the Fultondale Chamber of Commerce.  You can find additional readings on her blog at http://businessadvise4u.blogspot.com. Contact at her by email at visemedical@bellsouth.net.

 NORTH JEFFERSON — Is it the chicken or the egg? Is it a symptom or the problem? Governor Dr. Bentley will appreciate the value echoed in the difference between treating a symptom and missing the care of the underlying problem. Think about this for a moment in the context of the Limited Home Rule Vote and how it plays out here in Jefferson County.  Is the problem that Jefferson County, according to Leadership, does not have enough money and must lay off workers if they cannot raise taxes?  Or is that just a symptom of an underlying deeper problem?  The money is perhaps available, but the real problem is making the hard choices of keeping employees, letting employees go, keeping projects, or letting projects go.

Back in March, The Alabama Supreme Court threw out the county's previous occupational tax, which generated $66 million in revenue last year. Losing the tax led the commission to cut more than $30 million in spending and close the county's satellite courthouses.  (Now is a time to ask you if that was a huge inconvenience, a simple yes or no will do.)  By state law, we must have a balanced budget.  In order to balance the budget now, and without these additional funds from taxation, there are now some hard decisions to be made. Jobs will be reduced. Services will be lost. A three-part plan was developed to address the loss of revenue and it looks like this:  

• Aggressively cutting the county’s budget by an additional $25-30 million  

• Implementing replacement revenue of $45-50 million

• Unearmarking at least the one-cent general county sales tax.

Number one was taken care of a few months ago.  Number two which would have replaced the $50 million that is needed died on the vine with the failure of the Limited Home Rule, and number three is still in play and very viable.  

Our State Senator Beason said that instead of talking about raising taxes, lawmakers should have passed laws to unearmark Jefferson County revenues.  This would allow the Jefferson County Commission to spend its revenues where the commissioners felt the needs were greatest. Several unearmarking bills, including one by Beason, died in the regular session.

“Unearmarking is the answer to the county's problems,” Beason said. “There are millions of dollars put in other places that could be moved to use to pay for the essential functions of county government. I think it's crazy to even talk about raising taxes when unearmarking would solve the problem” In the mean time, Beason said the county has a $90 million reserve that could be tapped by commissioners until lawmakers meet again to consider unearmarking bills. According to Beason, eliminating earmarks will give county officials the authority to use money from one cent of the county's two cents in sales taxes to meet financial needs without raising taxes. “I think we should give them some flexibility and freedom to reprioritize their spending and do what they need to do,” Beason said.

“I think the county, and the state, really, to a large extent, are hamstrung at what it can do to rearrange its budget when so much of it is earmarked,” said Beason. Jefferson County levies a two percent sales tax, with each penny tax raising about $86.4 million in 2010. One percentage point is dedicated to retiring $1 billion in bonds for school construction, while the other – the portion Beason's bill addresses – is used in several ways.

More than 65 percent of that penny sales tax is earmarked for areas other than the general fund, which is used to pay for law enforcement, family and probate courts, roads, inspections, zoning and other functions.

With the alternative choice being whether there will be a layoff of workers   or a reduction of services the question remains, is the money there, or do we just need to shift it around.   “There comes a time when government has to live within its means. We have the same problem on a state level, which we are addressing, and the same problem on a federal level- completely out of control spending and debt. Eventually you have to put the brakes on that,” Beason said of his reason to block the Limited Home Rule bill from a vote. The proposed reductions include up to 282 employees in the roads department; 156 in the general services department; 148 in the sheriff's office and 61 in the revenue, finance and budget management departments, according to county figures.     

Beason says lay-offs and cuts don't have to happen because of 90 million dollars in the county's reserves.  

If government efficiencies were like those in private industry, there should be a shift in personnel over time as roles change, the skill needs adapt and change, and progress moves us forward. Do you have the same number of employees doing the exact same thing that they did 10 to 15 years ago? Have they learned new skills that have made them better, faster or smarter and therefore better contributors? Have you let any employees go? Most likely the answers to each of these questions is yes, and government entities, if they are progressing and creating value, are and should be no different.  

 COMMENTARY — You do not have to look far here in the north Jefferson area to find plenty of post tornado recovery work. Now would be a good time to assess where the recovery falls with respect to the formal comprehensive development plans that exist. A bit troubling may be the realization that those plans are several years, and in many cases decades old, and have never been revisited or revamped. Now is a perfect time to take an assessment of those comprehensive development plans and view them in light of the community mission and vision. Indeed, if you don’t know what you are aiming for, then you may hit just about anything. All of this plays into the ideas of your brand, your image and ultimately how you are perceived by your customers. Or in the case of a city, or the entire north Jefferson area, how the growth, recovery and stability are viewed by local citizens and outside supporters. Is our leadership trusted? Do we have a credible and believable reputation?

 COMMENTARY — We had a packed house at the Fairfield Inn here in Fultondale this week as our North Jefferson community welcomed a visit from our senator, Jeff Sessions.