What distinguishes leaders from the rest of us?

Maura Gast and Rafael Anchia are classic examples of civic-minded individuals who, through education, experience, skills and specific events, chose to become leaders and turned out to be successful ones.

Both Gast, executive director of the Irving Convention and Visitors Bureau, and Anchia, state House representative from West Dallas, were among those who were guest speakers at one of my government class’s Summer 2005 Leadership seminars.

Their motivational speeches, questions, and answers sessions focused on a fact known by most leadership researchers: leaders are made — not born! Whatever born traits a leader holds, two attributes, according to Gast and Anchia, distinguish a successful leader from others: to be a true leader, indeed, one must have a vision and act upon this vision.

By sharing their distinctive life experiences with the students, Gast and Anchia sketched their views of what leaders are made of, and they sketched them along three key verbs: do, be and know.

Do provide direction, motivate, and implement. It all begins with a dream, a vision. Without a vision, there is no drive to go on. Yet, the leader’s vision of a “better way” requires action; therefore, the dreamer must become a strategist to make its realization possible.

Be a professional at what you do and what you say; be able to communicate your vision; make your vision that of your followers’. In “vision communication and activation” the “we” is more important than the “I.”

Know resources are scarce and declining; therefore, build a power base and use it carefully; recognize your constituency and develop their trust in “you”; understand the significance of negotiation and compromise over conflict; understand how important interest groups are, each with its separate priorities; expect the unexpected to occur, that nothing is going to work out exactly according to plan. In short, understand your political reality and successfully deal with it.

And that’s what Gast and Anchia are: True leaders who shared their vision with the students, shared with them their strategies, explained negotiations and compromises taking place within a political reality, to see their dreams come true.

—Gabriel Bach is a government professor at North Lake College.