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Guest Speaker: President Ingrid introduced the Right Honourable Kim Campbell by first referring to Doug MacDougall's comments about Robbie Burns being a "ladies man". Ingrid found a quote from Robbie Burns written in 1792 "the rights of women merit some attention". She then referred to Rotary International where of 1.2 million members only 200,000 are women and that women around the world still encounter challenges in many areas including education and leadership. Kim has met many of these challenges and succeeded to overcome them by becoming an excellent Minister of Defence and the 19th Prime Minister of Canada. Her education includes an LLB, she has taught at Harvard in addition to many other universities and holds 9 honourary doctorates. She promotes democracy by talking to many world leaders and has received a personal coat of arms from the Queen of the British Commonwealth. Kim Campbell is a lady of many firsts.
Kim advised that she is delighted to be talking to the Rotary Club of Edmonton West and in being a part time resident of Edmonton. The residency is because her current major employment is as founding principal of the Peter Lougheed Leadership College at the University of Alberta. A rule of law is needed to help countries transform to equality for all and a strong grass roots level of residents is needed for cultures/countries to survive. Kim then thanked Rotary International for all their programs around the world, especially the international scholarship programs.
There has been a huge growth in the teaching of leadership skills over the last couple of decades but the seminars over a weekend don't do the job. The student cannot become a leader in that short of an exposure. All that the short term programs can do is give the candidate an awareness of need/opportunities. In the past, it was assumed that if a person was good at some employment skill that they would also be good at leading a group of people that were working in that field together. It is not true. You cannot automatically be a leader based on skills of production or research endeavors; you need training in leadership. Leadership is not about you, the individual, but the interests of the whole group. Kim is involved in "an institute of policies" where retired leaders of various business and cultural organizations meet to talk. She taught at the Centre for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School of Business at Harvard about dynamics of leadership which included courses of gender in power. This was more about attitudes than gender. It is possible that older learned values are in conflict with the new values being learned. She found that diversity improves the ultimate outcome, just look at the success of Rotary with the many faceted classification system of membership. The process is enhanced when you are dealing with people not exactly like you as you learn to express yourself more clearly about your views and approaches. A recent study looked at how symphony orchestras search for conductors, among other positions. The person involved in the audition performs behind a screen. The premise is that the people performing the search will hear/see more clearly without coloured opinions (gender, colour, religion) caused by seeing the applicant. People have views of stereotypes having lack of ability for certain jobs by certain types of other people. Another study looked at the success of Asian girls succeeding in studies. With math for instance, if the girl proceeds on the premise that she is a girl it is likely that she will do poor in math since girls do poor in math. However, if the girl proceeds as an Asian she will most likely have better success at math since Asians' are perceived to be good at math.
Preconceptions are part of being human and certain preconceptions are part of different cultures but they need to be modified. Preconceptions are helpful in how we approach reality but can cause us to underestimate some people based on those preconceptions. You need different skills to optimize decision making. For example, the City of Edmonton involves their employees in leadership training in groups to try to improve individual success. Careers can be saved if the individual is properly trained especially in soft skills like communication and team building.
Currently at the University of Alberta 12 students participate in a certificate leadership program per year. However, the student years are optimal for self awareness learning so, in September, 2013, the Peter Lougheed Leadership Institute was created at Banff Centre and the Peter Lougheed Leadership College was created at University of Alberta to provide increased access to leadership training by undergraduate students. In 2015, 250 such students (at U fo A) will be able to add additional learning to their original degree. The pioneer class will involve fifty percent third year and fifty percent fourth year students. Plans are in place to create a leadership college building including a separate residence. The program is unique in that it accesses undergraduates, not graduates. There will be collaboration with the Banff Centre classes. The first year will provide foundations of leadership and the students will hear from current leaders. The last year will involved workshops with time in between being used to expand experiences. Kim expects the University of Alberta to become a centre of excellence partly because of the exclusive draw of 250 students for this program out of 30,000. The school can become the premier leadership campus.
Kim was jointly thanked, very elegantly, by Kirsten (our youngest member) and Doug MacDougall (our most senior).
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