You do not want to return to normal. You want real change in the direction that you move.   

You will have interests and positions when it comes to restarting your community your community coming out of COVID.  

Interests are the needs, concerns, and values that motivate each person. They represent why a person wants something, and they get at underlying issues – the problem behind the problem.   

Positions are the actions a person will take to meet their needs. A position represents the outcome a person wants.   

How will you talk through those issues to move into rebuilding mode?

Community Prosperity rests on individual development that enhances community capacity. 

Through our Successful Community Engagement, three primary areas of community growth and engagement are impacted through Collaborative Leadership:  

 People - Demographic Renewal Every community must renew itself demographically to survive, let alone thrive.  

 Place - Quality of Life Placemaking Every community must optimize placemaking to offer competitive quality of life amenities.  

 Economy - Opportunity & Diversity Every community must create economic opportunities for their residents that enable them to make a living and pursue their dreams.  

When people truly live in healthy relationships, their personal environment will change, impacting family, neighborhood, and community perceptions one person at a time.

In America, every community is responsible for its own development and prosperity. Our Community Prosperity Institute provides an impactful resource for community foundations and their partners.  

What You Will Learn:  

Discovery.  Our team will share their nationally field-tested Community Prosperity Institute.  This development framework can be customized by communities to vision, develop and implement impactful community economic development investments leading to greater community success, vibrancy and prosperity.  

Team Visioning.  This intensive two-day institute will provide your county an efficient and effective opportunity to fine-tune your prosperity vision and agenda.  Your team will have opportunities to work on your “game plan,” network with other teams and tap the expertise of the e2 team.  Community Foundations.  This Institute will help your Community Foundation to begin the process of identifying its strategic niche roles in supporting your communities.  

Roadmap Development.  By the end of the Institute, you will have a development roadmap that can be taken home, refined with other stakeholders and used to guide action planning for moving forward.  Additionally, as part of roadmap development, your team(s) can explore and fine tune the foundation’s possible role within this overall development initiative.  

Community Prosperity rests on individual development that enhances community capacity. Through our Successful Community Engagement, three primary areas of community growth and engagement are impacted through Collaborative Leadership: 

 People - Demographic Renewal Every community must renew itself demographically to survive, let alone thrive.  

 Place - Quality of Life Placemaking Every community must optimize placemaking to offer competitive quality of life amenities.  

 Economy - Opportunity & Diversity Every community must create economic opportunities for their residents that enable them to make a living and pursue their dreams.   

When people truly live in healthy relationships, their personal environment will change, impacting family, neighborhood, and community perceptions one person at a time.  This is crucial for successful community development, where people feel they belong and can contribute to their community and its economy.

Civility is an action. Building civility is getting along. Designing Family-Friendly, Youth-Centered places that attracts people is the goal.   

Give the gift of giving always.

When you go to a funeral, there is often a chance for people to stand up and tell how much the deceased person meant to them or what they did. It is a story about how wonderful a person they were when they were alive. 

The sad part of that is the person will likely never have heard all of the wonderful things that were said about them.  

Wouldn’t it mean more if all of the good that you wanted to tell about that person were told to them while living? Try it. Stop right now and think of someone still alive, someone that if you were asked, you would write a eulogy about them.   

Now write it for someone that has done you wrong. Maybe and ex, or a former boss, or a parent that abandoned you.    

The ART of getting along begins with you.

The Pillar is Collaboration.  

The Step is Appreciation.  

The Action is expressing Gratitude.   

When we express gratitude for another person or for the blessings in our lives, we need to be specific.  

Gratitude is a warm feeling of thankfulness towards the world, or towards specific individuals. The person who feels gratitude is thankful for what they have, and does not constantly seek more. 

Gratitude is an important action. In positive psychology research, gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships. People feel and express gratitude in multiple ways.  

The benefits of practicing gratitude are nearly endless. People who regularly practice gratitude by taking time to notice and reflect upon the things they're thankful for experience more positive emotions, feel more alive, sleep better, express more compassion and kindness, and even have stronger immune systems.

Collaborative Leadership is Behavior in Action. it is leadership focused on appreciating the individual gifts and talents of people and creating opportunities for them to work together across functional and organizational boundaries toward a collaborative vision.

A collaborative vision is a picture of the future you wish to create. It organizes people and resources to common actions that leads to prosperity for rural America. It is time to organize to the more than 60 million people that live in rural America to create a vision that will help them build a prosperous community and future.

We talk with Mindset coach, inspirational speaker and best-selling author, Kelly Mishell, who empowers heart-centered entrepreneurs to break free of self-limitation, rediscover their inner spark of greatness, and achieve the Clarity, Confidence and Courage to become the successful leaders they desire to be.    

Through her powerful teaching & transformational coaching programs, Kelly inspires others to believe in the power within and that all things are possible when you embrace your truth.   

In addition to being the owner & founder of Kelly Mishell Coaching, Kelly is an expert instructor for Inspired Living University. She is frequent guest on the “Awakening to a New World” online series as well as a variety of podcasts and radio shows. Kelly is a contributor to Aspire Magazine and a contributing author to the international bestseller, SHINE! Stories to Inspire You to Dream Big, Fear Less and Blaze Your Own Trail.

What do your five senses have to do with who you are? How do you discover why another person thinks the way they think and acts the way they act?  There is an ART to getting along with others and getting along leads to civility. Listening is a skill that you need to develop.  So we ask, "Do you actively listen or do you just wait to talk?"