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Leadership and Its Challenges
By Bailey Hudson, ISA Vice President
As a newly elected officer, I would like to share some thoughts on leadership.
The assumption I am making is that we are all--or can be--leaders in some capacity. Until
several years ago, I didn't understand the nature of leadership, and then I stopped focusing
exclusively on established, nationally known leaders. I began to look more closely at the
various types of leadership and all the leaderlike acts required to keep organizations
functioning in a vital way. These acts of leadership apply to the military, to large and
small private companies and corporations, to governments, and most certainly to ISA.
Probably the most visible and critical elements of leadership in ISA are the
Board of Directors, chapter presidents, committee chairs, and the hundreds of chapter
volunteers. To keep ISA moving forward, leadership functions are--and must continue to be--
widely spread throughout the organization.
Another critical component of leadership in ISA is the paid staff at the
headquarters offices in the United States and England. These staff members are too often
taken for granted. I had an opportunity recently to interact with ISA staff and found them
to be a dedicated, enthusiastic, self-motivated, empowered team of workers, and, yes--
leaders in their respective areas of responsibility. They are doing a wonderful job for
ISA!
As our organization continues to grow, the elected leaders cannot adequately
move ISA forward without the help of the many other formal and informal leaders throughout
the membership. Responsible action to improve ISA and keep us moving forward must be taken
by leaders at all levels and in all segments of the Society. Keep in mind: We are all
leaders in our own right and everyone has something to offer. Certainly we all share the
same commitment to quality professional tree care.
I want to encourage the general membership to see themselves as part of a
dispersed leadership in the organization. If we accept that challenge, then I would go a
step further and suggest our active, international leadership reach out even more to
private citizens in our communities and to leaders in related professions and involve and
interest them in the work of ISA. Recent research involving urban tree benefits and services
is beginning to attract the interest of urban planners, realtors, and developers. These
professions are prime candidates for membership in ISA and would further diversify our
organization. I believe that diversity in organizations is vital and strengthens and
stabilizes them in the same way it does ecosystems.
If we are to exercise this dispersed leadership philosophy, we must rely on
ISA for new research information and we must keep ourselves fresh and vital by attending
educational meetings. In other words, we all must continue to learn, and we must remember
"it's what you learn after you know it all that really counts!"
The confident leader exercises dispersed leadership by practicing the concept
of "you don't work for me and I don't work for you; we work together to accomplish our
mission."
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International Society of Arboriculture
