Got Governance? Public-Focused Governance: That’s What It’s All About

Special districts function in a public capacity to serve an intended purpose for the greater good of their constituents. The way a board of directors and the executive team work together is called governance. The most effective boards work together as a unified team, providing guidance designed to facilitate discussion, promote inclusion of the many perspectives that make up the “public” as a mixed group, and ensure operations, finance and district leadership happen with transparency and measured leadership.

The California Special Districts Association’s Board of Directors and Executive team is comprised of seasoned special district leaders of varied backgrounds who are active in a variety of types of special districts. Their experiences working on boards striving for unity of purpose enables them to lend wisdom to those who may be new to public service or who may be experiencing difficult challenges. They provided some thoughts on governance, the public interest, and how to keep both in focus as leaders. We caught up with CSDA Board Members Vince Ferrante from Moss Landing Harbor District, Lorenzo Rios from Clovis

Veterans Memorial District, Patrick Ostly from North of the River Sanitary District, and CSDA Board Secretary Don Bartz from Phelan Pinon Hills Community Services District before the April CSDA Board Meeting to get some tips on leadership and governance.

Special district leaders are called upon to make decisions that affect services the public relies on. Essentially, a board member or general manager of a district is making decisions about a service or space that a member of the public views as “theirs” – a park, a public pool, a recreation program, the water they drink, etc. District operations are personal to each member of the public and can be interpreted and valued differently based on each person’s perspective.

Inevitably, decisions will be made that do not please everyone. This is why governance constructs are so critical: the Brown Act encourages open meetings to include public perspectives; principles of transparency allow the public to understand operations and develop trust in fiscal responsibility; district policies provide guidelines for behavior and planned response to circumstances that arise.

When dealing with an upset constituent, Don Bartz advised, “When someone is unruly, if they come to you angry, upset or emotional, they are often looking for a reaction. It is important to be measured in your response to take the emotion down a level.”

Patrick Ostly added, “You have to develop the skill to speak to them personally, relate to them as people themselves. When we reconvened, the room was calmer, and we were able to continue with a productive meeting.” The rules that are in place for public meetings should be looked at not as restrictions, but as guides. Taking the viewpoint that the structures for public inclusion are not limitations, but rather facilitations, helps leaders avoid situations that cause problems. so they feel heard. If you react emotionally, you’ll lose in that situation.”

“When we act in our official capacity, we are not acting as individuals. The community is with us, and the public wants to know how to participate. Any time we are tempted to have a sidebar conversation, or make decisions without keeping the discourse public, we are at risk of creating an echo chamber and open ourselves to errors of judgement from a lack of diverse opinions,” advised Lorenzo Rios.

Vince Ferrante recalled a situation at a board meeting over which he presided, “At my district, Moss Landing Harbor, we had a man who was upset and making it difficult to move forward in a meeting. I decided to call a break for refreshment, have everyone take a pause for 15 minutes to collect

All agree the Brown Act reinforces the idea that special district leaders serve the public, providing guidelines that keep public discourse open to encourage the expression of viewpoints and allow special district leaders to better represent their community. Although it can be tempting to push through decisions in the name of progress, it is more important to act with faithful representation of the broad public interest with inclusion and transparency to be effective stewards of the public.

Stress

General Manager Leadership Summit Keynote Spotlight Command Your Mindset with Dr. Jannell MacAulay

What is your stress response? Do you push it away, tamp it down and ignore it? Do you rev up, move faster, check off the To-Do list in rapid fire order? Do you shut down, paralyzed by the enormity of the tasks at hand, unable to determine an order of operations to begin?

Dr. Jannell MacAulay

Stress is a physiological response recognized by all organisms. The response is a physical manifestation designed to elicit an action for self-preservation. Survival of any species requires response to stressors, from predators, to hunger, to all things in between. The human condition is not immune to physiological responses to stress. The heart rate increases, breathing becomes rapid and shallow, we may break out in a sweat, muscles become tense, our focus narrows to address the perceived threat.

This stress response in the workplace, or in most instances people encounter in their personal lives, is disproportionate to the type of stress modern humans encounter. An interaction with a frustrated customer, an unreasonable teenager, or an uncollaborative coworker do not require the heightened fight or flight response evolution has hardwired in the human brain. But how can we decode it?

Our day one keynote speaker for the CSDA General Manager Leadership Summit has keys to help us unlock the code. Dr. Jannell MacAulay is a combat veteran who served 20 years in the U.S. Air Force as a pilot, commander, special operations consultant, international diplomat, and professionalism instructor. She currently serves as a leadership and human performance consultant for the Department of Defense, government sector, and corporate America. She is the co-founder of Warrior’s Edge, a highperformance mindset training program she developed with Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks, and high-performance sports psychologist Dr. Michael Gervais.

According to Dr. MacAulay’s website, she “takes leaders and teams on a transformational journey of self-reflection, leaving you with actionable skills to master your internal environment, command your mindset, and elevate your performance.”

“Most of us spend a lot of our day not clearly paying attention. That can lead to poor decision-making from misreading situations, a lack of communication, or not clearly being aware of your employees’ or coworkers’ struggles and frustrations,” explained MacAulay.

Her emphasis on training awareness by doing what she calls “mental pushups,” enables people to pre-load a better response to stress. Importantly, this work also makes people more aware of the situations, circumstances, and people around them, so they are better prepared in their actions and responses.

One aspect of the mental training involves finding oneminute moments, every day, to practice mindfulness. At a stoplight, instead of reaching for the cell phone, take a minute for some long slow breaths. While stuck in line at a store, waiting for an appointment, during a TV commercial break, these are moments the brain can be trained for calmness. Literally breathing calm into the body will train the brain to access the calm response in times of stress. “Stress is actually a perceived emotion. We have the power to shift a threat to a challenge or opportunity in a high-pressure moment, if we practice mindful breathing skills. That’s why it’s difficult to just tell someone with an untrained mind to ‘take a deep breath and calm down’ because they don’t know how to access that response in that environment,” said MacAulay. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly for our purposes, when leadership learns a new skill, it can in turn be infused into the operation to result in an overall operational improvement. Dr. MacAulay noted sometimes audiences find it counterintuitive to build time into the day for mindfulness, but in the long run it garners efficiency and productivity.

“In the Air Force special operations world, we have a motto: ‘slow is smooth, smooth is fast,’” she noted. Building the psychological skillset she teaches will empower staff to operate with calm efficiency that is coordinated and collaborative. The result can be enhanced cohesion as a team, reduced instances of mistakes caused by taking action without enough forethought, increased customer satisfaction and ultimately improved overall efficiency.

The CSDA General Manager Leadership Summit is the premier conference for special district leaders to come together to learn about emerging trends, best practices, new laws, human resources, budgeting, risk management, and more. But first, attendees will come together, with Dr. Jannell MacAulay, in a space to learn to be present in the moment, with a calm mind that is ready to absorb information and inspiration for the betterment of their district.

Dr. MacAulay’s website offers a free downloadable leadership guide as well as an inspiration video explaining her outlook and teachings. She can also be followed on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.