Wanted: The next generation of leaders

April 5, 2008
Chris Satullo
Inquirer columnist

It's a simple thought, really.

If you want to see more of a behavior, praise it.

For years, the common view was that Philadelphia lacked leadership. Liz Dow didn't buy that.

She trains leaders for a living, with a nonprofit called Leadership Philadelphia. The native Minnesotan (they put optimism in the water up there) thought her adopted town had plenty of leaders. They just didn't always come in the shapes and sizes people in this intensely political city expected. So many leaders flew under the media radar.

A couple of years back, Dow decided to identify Philadelphia's most trusted leaders. Working with ideas culled from The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell's book on social change, Dow and volunteers persuaded thousands to answer a survey meant to identify our community's most respected "go-to" people.

It asked questions such as: Whom do you call when you need to brainstorm? Whom do you call when you need moral support? Who in your view is really good at following through on ideas?

Thousands of questionnaires later, Dow had the 101 most-cited names. She issued that list in 2006, calling the group the 101 Connectors, after Gladwell's term for the people-oriented optimists who serve as a community's civic glue.

(Somehow, my name ended up on the list. I can testify that its validation had meaning; it taught me some things about what I was doing wrong, and what I was doing right.)

Dow's team also interviewed dozens of the Connectors, distilling what they heard into a list of habits of trusted leaders, including:

Following through on commitments over and over.

Having a strong appetite for continuous learning.

Valuing variety, being comfortable in many settings.

Routinely factoring the common good into your decisions.

If you want to see more of a behavior, teach it. Working with the Philadelphia Youth Network, Dow drafted a curriculum on leadership for young people; it's used in a program that links youth with mentors from the Connectors list.

Now, Dow is back at it. (They put stick-to-it-iveness in that Twin Cities water, too.) She wants to compile, praise and learn from a new list of Young Connectors, local leaders under 40.

You've heard laments about Philly's brain drain, how too few of the bright people who come to the city's great universities and medical schools stay to make careers.

If you want them to stay, Dow thinks, you have to recognize and praise them. If the public dialogue about young Philadelphia is mostly about Manayunk noise and South Street booze, if the message to young idealists who hate settling for the old ways is "Settle down and wait your turn," don't be surprised when they skedaddle, sheepskin in hand.

We need to hear more about the young adults who volunteer so enthusiastically with Greater Philadelphia Cares, who work so hard to address social ills, who bring energy and art to long-dowdy city corners. People such as Anne Mahlum, who founded Back on My Feet, a nonprofit that helps the homeless through exercise and counseling, and Wyneshia Foxworth, co-director of Philadelphia's irrepressible City Year service program.

Recognition is not all. Connection matters, too. "If we want these people to stay," Dow says, "beyond a little recognition, we have to show we're willing to listen to them, to invest in them, to weave them into the fabric of community."

The original Connectors list had a sprinkling of thirtysomethings, but was weighted toward people with a long time in town, who'd built up trust over decades. It was also heavy on the nonprofit world.

"I expect we'll get more young entrepreneurs this time," Dow said. "I imagine they'll be less Philadelphia-centric." Many of the original Connectors expressed deep commitment to the city, even though (perhaps because) more than half moved here from somewhere else.

"I'm sure they'll be different in ways I can't imagine," Dow says. "That's what's exciting about doing this."

No matter how old you are, you can help in this effort to identify, praise and learn from Philadelphia's rising generations of leaders. Go to www.leadershipphiladelphia.org and click on the link to "Connector Project." Fill out the questionnaire asking for the names of young adults you trust, with whom you enjoy working.

You may be taking a small step toward ensuring that a talented young leader commits to our city for the long haul.