Lead by Example: Why Local Leaders Must Model the Behavior They Expect, Episode 4
If you’re a local leader,on staff or on the board of a chamber, Main Street, economic development organization, or tourism group,you are setting the tone for your community whether you realize it or not.
In this episode of Marketing From the Car, I’m challenging local leaders to do a very simple thing: stop telling businesses what to do, and start showing them.
Because if you’re not doing it yourself, no one else should be expected to.
Model the Behavior You Expect
Local organizations often talk about collaboration, participation, and better marketing.
But those words don’t mean much if your own organization isn’t practicing what it preaches.
That means:
Following basic digital marketing best practices
Making sure your content is readable on mobile
Using text alongside graphics so people (and search engines) can actually understand them
Paying attention to accessibility, including alt text
You don’t need to be perfect. But repeated, obvious mistakes erode trust fast.
Local businesses are watching what you do, not listening to what you say.
Collaboration Has to Be Operational
Most local organizations say they value collaboration.
In practice, that collaboration often stops at meetings and shared missions.
In the real world, community partners hang each other’s flyers in their windows.
Digitally, that same behavior should show up as:
Sharing each other’s events and content
Making updates once instead of in five different places
Letting partners benefit automatically from each other’s activity
If collaboration requires extra work every time, it won’t happen consistently.
And when leaders say, “I didn’t have time,” what businesses really hear is that it wasn’t a priority.
Watch the Board Member Blind Spot
This is where things usually break down.
Most chambers and local organizations have boards full of business owners, people who genuinely care about the mission.
But take a look at their business websites.
Do you see:
Mentions of the chamber or Main Street?
Support for the nonprofits they sit on boards for?
Visibility for the organizations they help lead?
Usually, the answer is no.
That hurts the organization.
It also hurts the board members, who are doing real work but getting no recognition for it.
And when those organizations ask other businesses to participate, the response is predictable:
“If the board isn’t doing it, why should I?”
Set a Minimum Participation Standard
If you want participation, you have to define what it looks like.
Start by answering two questions:
What is the minimum level of participation you expect from partners and businesses?
Are leaders and board members actually meeting that standard themselves?
When leaders go first:
They prove it’s not complicated
They show it doesn’t take much time
They become real-world examples
That’s when momentum builds.
Instead of chasing people, participation becomes the norm.
Leadership at the local level isn’t about having the right message.
It’s about modeling the behavior you want others to follow.
If you’re going to ask your community to collaborate, participate, and market better, you have to go first.
That’s how trust is built.
That’s how momentum happens.
And that’s how communities take back local.
Related Marketing From the Car Episodes
If this way of thinking makes sense, these episodes carry it a step further:
👉 Next Steps
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