AAR Leadership Conference 2006

I did have more on my agenda than meeting with a fellow blogger while I was away in Phoenix.

I finished attending my fourth AAR Leadership Conference earlier this week. Each one has been different, all have been good, but this years was the best so far. I might be a little biased because the process has become rather familiar by this time. In other years I was simply running back and forth from the installation dinner event to wherever I could find the score of whatever playoff baseball game that may have been on the TV. There was a game on this year, but I wasn't interested (and I had a fellow dinner attendee check the score of the game on his cell phone a couple of times so I didn't have to leave).

Seriously, these events have been instrumental in helping me with leadership at the Association level. This year's leadership speaker actually gave new meaning to instrumental because he actually played an instrument during his presentation. Dave Timmons was the speaker and he led the audience thorough what he calls the Six String Leadership program. Mr. Timmons was brilliant.

He shared with us three core beliefs; that our purpose is to serve, the highest form of service is leadership, and if you can influence one or more people YOU are a leader. The six strings of leadership included; courage... to stand up for a belief system, trust... reciprocating respect, truth... it is simple and it works, connection... making meaningful relationships, inspiration... motivation with passion and knowledge, and action... basically to just do it (to borrow a phrase).

Mr. Timmons spent the entire day giving us the program and I believe it was well worth it. At our lunch break David Fitzsimmons an editorial cartoonist from the Arizona Daily Star presented... no... rather entertained us. I missed the first 20 minutes or so, but what I did catch was hilarious. His point was about injecting humor into issues, and apparently he has no difficulty doing so. He used an overhead projector and produced cartoon drawings in an impressively fast pace. He even selected various members and made cartoon images of them, again it took about 30 seconds for him to accomplish this, all the while breaking up the room with the cartoons and the things he said. He was simply great, plenty of belly laughs were enjoyed by all.

Later that evening was the installation dinner, where our very own Rita Zumwalt (still without a linkable site) was installed with the other local Association presidents for 2007. Rita is going to do a great job next year and it will be easy to forget about any success I may have had in 2006 as president of KGVAR. Once over, then it was time to race back and catch the end of the baseball game, but of course I was too late and I had to settle for highlights on SportsCenter.

On Wednesday we had our regional break out meetings and each Association reported on issues that face them locally. I might be handling that meeting in the future as I was asked again to be the Regional VP in 2008-09. Luckily I'll be following a great example set by the current RVP, Michelle Pepper.

Because this year I was the president of KGVAR it meant that I was a member of the State Board of Directors for AAR. The executive panel gave their reports. At this meeting the RAPAC Chairman for AAR handed out Association awards and I am proud to say that our little Association won the award for highest percentage of Members that donated to the Realtors political action committee. Won it for at least the second straight year in fact. We did it without having our own local RAPAC Chair either. To ensure we win this award again next year (and maybe some other awards) I have volunteered to be RAPAC Chair for KGVAR in 2007.

The biggest news while I was in Phoenix was the way the NFL team the Cardinals managed to lose the game on Monday night, but other than that... smiles all around. Overall it was a great event and I hope to attend again next year.