Sue's Place

Went to the leadership forum this morning (thanks for the carpool, Sandy – we saved gas and parking and had a great chat). High Point University and its president were more than gracious hosts, from ease of parking to Starbucks coffee, to a live jazz band. The program was thorough and touched on a lot of subjects, including some N&R crit that I’m sure they’ve heard before (the N&R “mis-decides” what divides us).

The missing vision for Guilford County was the meme of the morning. I disagree: we have so many visions and missions from so many groups that we are a bit over-visioned albeit with too many points-of-what’s critical and missing a global region understanding of how to get out of our economic slump. We feel good about the area; however, the numbers aren’t always on our side. There’s only so much that quality-of-life gets you these days.

Some were turned off byEd Cone’s recent column (and Ed re-explains what he meant). Becky Smothers made an plaintive point: Guilford County isn’t just Greensboro. Terry Grier and Sheriff Barnes noted that we have a serious issue with what’s happening to African-American males (poverty, lack of educational achievement, crime), one of Allen Johnson’s often-visited topics. Props to Al Barnett, Jr., who gave us much to reflect upon, including how a white teacher changed his life by simply helping fill out a college application. John Alexander did a memorable wrap-up with a great paradigm: what he heard and what he didn’t hear discussed and reiterated the value of storytelling as a leadership tool.

The attendees were as varied as they were numerous, although one walking companion noted with me that it was a fairly white crowd. The call for “what next?” was issued almost as a challenge – who will pick up the ball and host the next meeting? It was hard to digest that only one meeting seems to be planned when, to be effective, we need a substantive agenda-building session. Yet the idea of closed-door, small-group moving forwardism doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

HPU is a beautiful campus; so many of us reflected that we had never been there before today. A worthwhile morning.