With short notice we held the February Tweet Chat yesterday.  The topic of conversation: "How can we help each other build character-based leadership in our communities?"  Because of the short notice and the holiday, participation was down but ideas shared were meaningful and worthwhile.  Like <a title="JohnDWatt on Twitter" href="http://twitter.com/johndwatt" target="_blank">John Watt</a> said late in the hour, this was the "fastest moving hour" of the day.

So what were the ideas?  <a title="Phil Gerbyshak on Twitter" href="http://twitter.com/philgerb" target="_blank">Phil Gerbyshak</a> had a great idea early that got everyone re-tweeting. We need to model character-based leadership personally.  <!--more--><a title="Tara Gotwalt on Twitter" href="http://twitter.com/taragotwalt" target="_blank">Tara Gotwalt</a> talked about Leadership Bartlesville (Oklahoma) and some of the things they do to advance character.  They (like my own <a title="City of Owasso" href="http://www.cityofowasso.com" target="_blank">town of Owasso, OK</a>) utilize material by <a title="Character First website" href="http://characterfirst.com" target="_blank">Character First</a>.  For me the conversation had a lot of good ideas, but few were personally actionable.  Then <a title="Monica Diaz on Twitter" href="http://twitter.com/monedays" target="_blank">Monica Diaz</a> and suggested that we find "a local paper or radio show that is also a biz of character."  The idea was to get them to run interviews or panels to talk about character-based leadership.

Then an idea hit me: why not find a local business that I can do a post (or even a series on) related to their character-based leadership (CBL) and how they apply CBL or use it in their business.  What makes them different as a result?  What problems do they avoid?  What challenges do they encounter?  Several people (and I have your names) retweeted that idea, so I'll be looking for your posts!

There were many other great ideas in the chat as well, but we definitely need to chose a different time an place as the number of people participating was about half last time.  Stay tuned for changes in March.  Meanwhile, you can <a title="Tweet Chat summary on Box.net" href="http://www.box.net/shared/jxh61ngv4l" target="_self">download the transcript here</a>.

But don't let the fact that you missed the chat stop you.  What can you do?  How can this group help you take action to encourage character-based leadership in your community?  What will it take?