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Step into a leadership role

How many times have you caught yourself upset with what’s happening in your hometown? How many times have you been angry at decisions made by leaders at one level or another? Ever shook your head in disbelief at the statements or actions of those charged with representing your interests and those of your neighbors?

Then perhaps it’s time to step up and offer your services in a leadership capacity. You’re probably already acting in that capacity in one way or another within your family, at work, church or civic organization. It is not such a great leap to step up to community leadership via elected office. There are few qualifications to run for office. By now, you have probably noticed that one can run for even the highest offices in the land without any encyclopedic knowledge of policy or law. Leadership is born in a desire to serve, in honesty and compassion, in vision and humility not in great wealth or government experience.

One of the wonderful aspects of living in Minot is that, like many small and mid-size communities, it presents the opportunity for any resident who wants to run for office to make a go of it. Qualifying is relatively easy and with the support of one’s friends and neighbors, one can end up a serious competitor and then, a city official.

With the election season warming up and some already announcing plans to leave office, and others announcing their runs for office, it’s a good time to consider running yourself. Do you have ideas for improving the city, fixing problems, addressing challenges, bringing people together? Then consider being part of the city’s official leadership.

After all, as Teddy Roosevelt asserted, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

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