What it takes to be Mayor

So much talk right now: Who is running for mayor? Who do you think would be best? What do you like about so and so, and what do you think is... so I figured I would write down my thoughts.

I think there are four key things that are important for someone running for any office, let along for mayor here in South Bend. My suggestions here will be focused on the replacement though for Mayor Pete and why some of my main four things, desire, experience, skills and timing will impact this election maybe more than others.

DESIRE 
This is the no brainer, but someone has to want, or at a minimum be willing to do it. There are a lot of people who want to do it, but don't have the experience, skills or good timing... and there are a lot of people who would make a perfect mayor, but lack the desire. You can't get voluntold into a role like this, you have to want it, BUT most importantly, you have to want it for the right reasons. The KEY here is the difference between desire and a dream, a desire is something you want for the right reasons, and those reasons motivate you to do the job well for those you serve.

EXPERIENCE
It is important that the candidate for any role be able to articulate how they will handle the specific tasks related to the job. Here many people confuse similar roles to the needed experience. Being a good city council member doesn't mean you can be a good mayor, the roles are very different. Being a business owner doesn't mean you can be a successful mayor. For the same reason many assistant directors, when promoted to director fail, they think they understand the job but don't, or the things that made them a good assistant made them a bad director. The KEY to watch here is most politicians spend time explaining to you how much they care about improving ABC, but give you no ideas on how they will make that change, usually cause they don't know how. So watch for boring answers with details, not fancy replies that emotionally excite you.

SKILLS
Now here I mean skills or personality traits, like the ability to handle loneliness (its lonely at the top), the ability to see differing perspectives, the ability to fight for someone you don't like, the ability to balance getting blamed for things started before you took over and knowledge that you might not be around to see the actual fruits of your labor and ideas. Those types of skills, yeah using email, tech, knowledge of neighborhoods, etc. are all also good skills. The KEY here is not to confuse experience with skills... there are a lot of people who have done a job for a long time, and don't have the skills to do it well. This is also were people discount age (too young, too old), but skills are skills regardless of age.

TIMING
Maybe one of the most important to be honest... someone can have the desire, the experience, the skills to do it, but if the timing is off it doesn't work. Either they won't run, or they won't do a good job because of distractions. The KEY here is that jobs are like relationships, timing matters, timing matters a lot in terms of potential personal success.

Over the next few weeks we will see a lot of people jumping in to run for mayor. It will not be easy to fill the shoes of Mayor Pete. I'll be honest, when he ran he lacked experience, but the timing was spot on, his desire true, and as we know his skills in handling the city were well matched to the job. It will be hard for candidates to be compared to him, and I think it will be a loss to try to find a someone most like him. We need to find the next Mayor of South Bend, with the skills we need to continue the momentum we have started.

So let's ask good questions of those wanting to run, to those supporting candidates, and lets make sure we get out the vote...