How A Mayor Leads, with Tom Stevens
Tom Stevens is a professional facilitator, artist, and former mayor of Hillsborough, NC. He is a connector who enjoys bringing local leaders together to create a community. In this conversation, he shares how he became mayor and what that role entails leading a team of public officials. Tom Stevens is a 1994 Leadership Triangle Goodmon Fellow.
“There is a creative tension that applies to any public official, but that’s especially relevant for the role of mayor. You have the mantle of speaking on behalf of everybody in your community. As mayor, you speak for everybody, but there are few situations where everybody gets what they want.”
Owen Jordan: What brought you to Leadership Triangle?
Tom Stevens: I was referred by a colleague. I was the Executive Director of a social work agency. He called me up and said he just did the program. He said it was something that I would enjoy. And I thought that’s precisely the kind of training that I would like to do. I really believed in how different agencies can work together. And I did a lot of networking between all the social service programs and the nonprofit sector in Durham. And to do something like that in the Triangle was very appealing to me. So, I signed up for the class of 1994 and found it thoroughly enjoyable and immensely beneficial. I made some excellent contacts, some good friends and learned a lot about the Triangle that I hadn’t known before. I feel like Leadership Triangle is a big reason why the region is more connected now.
Owen Jordan: Excellent. Thank you for saying that. What brought you to running for mayor of Hillsborough?
Tom Stevens: My wife and I moved out into the rural area of Orange County, and the closest place to go shopping and get breakfast was in Hillsborough. We ultimately bought a house downtown. After being connected in Durham, I really wanted to get involved in Hillsborough. And so I decided to run for mayor! I thought, “I run a leadership consulting company. How hard could it be?“ Let me tell you; it’s very different! How hard could it be?“
Tom Stevens: I had connections with many public sector officials while serving as a non-profit executive, through Leadership Triangle, and in my consulting business. Although I had never served as an elected official, I felt like this might be in my wheelhouse as a professional facilitator and through my time with Leadership Triangle. At the time, there seemed to be little attention on regionalism in Hillsborough. And so, I thought running for mayor could be a way to help bring us all together. It was quite an eye-opener to see what was really involved. But I also found that I loved it and eventually proved to be reasonably successful in the role of mayor.
Tom Stevens: My personal and professional values as a professional facilitator led me to want to do better than local politics’ “divide and conquer” approach. I wanted everyone to agree on what we were trying to accomplish, and seek alternative solutions that more often than not led to decisions by consensus rather than simply a majority vote. In Hillsborough, the Mayor is a non-voting member of the board. So they are well positioned to encourage agreement or at least a problem-solving approach to issues. This job required establishing a sense of trust between board members and appreciation that we’re all working for the greater good of Hillsborough.
Tom Stevens: Early on as a mayor, I didn’t know much about the inner workings of the city, but we had a great town manager. We have very committed people. And thanks to facilitation, we ended up having probably 90% of our decisions by consensus. Not that we went into discussions with agreement, quite the opposite. But we often would move to a place where we could all agree on a decision.
Owen Jordan: You’ve mentioned a lot about facilitation diplomacy. What is the mayor responsible for in a town or city? What does leadership look like as the mayor?
Tom Stevens: Well, the interesting thing about being a mayor in North Carolina is that the mayor is the head of government. The mayor is the top dog, the king of the hill, the big cheese. Yet, as mayor, there’s not one person I can tell them what to do. A mayor chairs a board. And it’s the board as a whole, not individual members, that makes decisions. Some different communities do it differently in North Carolina, but in Hillsborough, the mayor doesn’t even have a vote, except to break a tie (which I think happened once in my 14 years in office). The Town Board makes policy decisions, and the Town Manager puts those decisions into action. As a mayor, you have very little power. But there is enormous deference and attention paid to the mayor’s office. So the leadership objective is steering conversations of other leaders to work together coherently in the service of the entire community.
Owen Jordan: What has been most challenging about being the mayor of Hillsborough or mayor in general?
Tom Stevens: There is a creative tension that applies to any public official, but that’s especially relevant for the role of mayor. You have the mantle of speaking on behalf of everybody in your community. As mayor, you speak for everybody, but there are few situations where everybody gets what they want. It’s difficult to say no to people or deliver bad news. At the same time, you have to acknowledge fundamental differences in values or approaches and show leadership in promoting a particular view over another.
Owen Jordan: Yeah. Leaders have to say no. What has been one of your most successful moments as mayor where you thought, “Wow, we did it did a great job.”
Tom Stevens: I was lucky to come in at a good time, as Hillsborough was an up-and-coming town with many good things in the works. And I think we had a good sense about when to stay out of the way as a government. We were all on the same page creating the feeling of connectivity, getting Riverwalk done, getting the signage consistent throughout the town, infrastructure for connecting neighborhoods like the Nash Street project. Some considerable accomplishments happened on my watch that make me feel very, very proud. My favorite is just contributing to Hillsborough being a place where people love to live. I love it when I hear someone who lives in one of our newer neighborhoods, one that perhaps went through a very controversial approval process, say they love living there, that they love the town. If we’ve created communities where people love being there, I believe they’ll continue to take care of this town in good ways.
Owen Jordan: Curveball question. And I’m personally curious about this as a creative myself. Do you see any connections between art and leadership?
Tom Stevens: I’ve wanted to write a book about this! It would talk about the art of leadership. As a painter, I’ve got very basic materials to work with. I’ve got a canvas, certain paints, and different pigments, different brushes, and tools to apply the pigments. There are endless possibilities of how you can use these common elements.
Leadership is similar in many ways. There are common elements of leadership that are universal — who we are as a person, how we handle relationships, the official role we occupy, the organizational context, and the situation. How you mix those things is a creative act. And I think that is the real art of leadership
Owen Jordan: What is your dream for the triangle?
Tom Stevens: I would want everybody in their neighborhood to have the opportunity to live in a safe place where they have amenities and resources that are easily accessible. I think that comes down to walkable roads, transportation, and how things are priced. I also hope that every community and neighborhood in the Triangle could have a sense of belonging in a place of distinction. I want the region to be for the good of everyone. The Triangle is a wonderful place for many, but we’ve got a long way to go to make it wonderful for everybody.
