In Session is a video series from the Aspen Institute featuring conversations with leaders across its network as they reflect on their personal leadership journeys and share practical insights grounded in their experiences. In the latest episode of In Session, Co-Executive Director of Aspen CSG, Bonita Robertson-Hardy, shares leadership lessons learned from a career working with and in community, and emphasizes the importance of finding your “why” as a leader. Below is a transcript of the session:
Trust is so critical, particularly in communities that you’re working with. One primary example was some work that I was doing at a community foundation in New Orleans and really leading a workforce development effort to get folks employed into jobs in the healthcare space. We were getting questions from folks around, why are we doing this? Why is this important? How is this going to be any different from any training program that I’ve done before? And what we as partners had to do was take a step back and realize that we had to do more explaining. We had to host more community meetings around why this was critical and why this was important and why this was a different opportunity. And that also helped transform the recruitment process. The program is still in existence today, and people really got jobs at the end of it. And so using your own credibility, your own trust as a leader that you built up is really important.
Hi, I’m Bonita Robertson-Hardy, co-executive director of the Aspen Institute Community Strategies Group. And here are a couple of things that I’ve learned about leadership. One of the things that I’ve learned about leadership over my career is really understanding your why. Your why as a leader. Why is this important to you? What fulfillment do you get out of this? Why is this particular community or region really important and the work that you’re doing in this particular community or region important? Because what I’ve learned is that the community that you’re working in is going to ask these questions of you. It might sound a little different, but they’re going to want to know why you’re there. And so really figuring out why this is driving you and what’s important to you as a leader and how you want to show up is critically important to the work that you want to do.
Relationship building takes time. There is not one way to do it. And you have to be patient while thinking about building relationships, particularly amongst your team and particularly amongst the work that you’re trying to do with a community. Working alongside a community is one of the best things that you can do within your career. But also you have to understand that relationship building does not happen overnight and you might have stumbling blocks along the way. So, being patient and going at the speed of the community is critically important to building the relationships that you need and the trust that you need to get the work that you want to get done.
