After a hiatus in 2020 due to the pandemic, the American Rental Association’s (ARA) annual Leadership Conference — one of ARA’s premier invitation-only conferences — was back as a live event Nov. 18-20. To the industry volunteers who gathered at the conference, it was a welcome return to a forum where they could gain skills and make connections to enhance their service to their respective ARA chapters.
The conference, held at the Loews Chicago O'Hare Hotel in Rosemont, Ill., welcomed more than 50 ARA state and local leaders — many of whom serve as presidents, vice presidents and officers of their state chapters. In addition to these, current and incoming members of the ARA Board of Directors were in attendance to lend their insights on association leadership.
The event opened Thursday, Nov. 18, with a presentation titled “Develop Your Comic Vision,” by Tim Gard. Gard, a member of the Speaker Hall of Fame, delivered laughs through his message that focused on harnessing humor as a skill to prevent or cope with stress.
The conference continued Friday morning with opening comments and association strategic updates from ARA CEO Tony Conant. Attendees then heard from guest speaker Tim Dixon, who launched into the first of four leadership-themed sessions held during the conference.
With a master’s degree in sports psychology and 13 years of coaching experience — including time spent at the U.S. Air Force Academy — Dixon brought with him the credentials to provide a high-energy and challenging, yet good-humored, message that offered a perspective on leadership on a variety of personal and professional levels.
Updates on ARA initiatives — including RentalU, industry economic research and government affairs — also were provided Friday by ARA staff members between Dixon’s sessions, as was a greeting from conference sponsor ARA Insurance.
Friday afternoon concluded with a presentation from special guest Karen Layng, national president of the Girl Scouts of the USA. As a tie-in with ARA’s Women in Rental initiative, Layng discussed the many rental-related professional roles for which involvement with the Girl Scouts prepares girls and encouraged ARA leaders to partner with local Girl Scouts chapters to introduce rental as a viable career path for girls and young women.
Friday evening, all were invited to participate in a networking session that featured a dueling-pianos show starring talent from Chicago’s “Howl at the Moon” venue.
The conference concluded Saturday, Nov. 20, with a final leadership session from Dixon and additional ARA national updates, including a look at the consumer-facing, professionally produced media commercials that are part of ARA’s rental marketing campaign and progress made in the workforce development arena through the ARA Job Board.
First-time conference attendee Steven Herring, president, All About Events, San Luis Obispo, Calif., who serves on the ARA of California board, wanted to attend because “any opportunity I get to fine-tune my leadership skills, I want to take advantage of it,” he says.
He took away valuable tips from all the speakers. “I feel the speakers were really good. Tim Dixon, in particular, was awesome. I found that many aspects of his presentation were a confirmation of what I have worked at implementing at my operation,” says Herring, who has attended many other types of leadership training conferences.
“I know that we as leaders have to listen to our employees, get our employees engaged, understand what empathy is, use it within our organization and open our eyes to adapt and overcome difficult times. COVID was a perfect example. It is pretty easy to lead when everything is going well, but leading through challenges and challenging times is a whole different mindset. The pandemic was the ultimate test of leadership. I know with myself I could have fought, flown or froze. I chose to stand behind my corporation and fight for it. My employees saw me stand up for our local industry, fighting for and trying to figure out how to open up safely. I feel my employees have more respect for me from what I did during the pandemic. At this conference there were a lot of influential business owners who are state leaders from all different states and Canada. It was nice being surrounded by individuals with the same goal and mindset of how to learn different leadership techniques and take that back and implement them in their organizations,” he says.
That sharing was extremely beneficial, Herring notes. “Sitting around the table and hearing how others got through difficulties and how they overcame those difficulties was refreshing. It opened my eyes to see that I wasn’t the only one dealing with all of this. Everyone was coping with it in different aspects. Having those roundtable discussions with everyone was great,” he says.
Herring is grateful he was able to attend and believes it will help him engage even more rental operators in the state chapter. “ARA has been so supportive of myself and others. It offers us so many opportunities. That gives me more talking points when I am with other operators and vendors. When I am on a board, I always ask what value this board is adding to our industry. I feel ARA really adds value to all its members,” he says.
Jared Medaris, CERP, president, Expo Party Rentals, Fresno, Calif., who serves as ARA of California president, also is glad he had the opportunity to attend.
“A big part of why I wanted to go was to reconnect with others in the industry, to find out what other state chapters have been doing during the pandemic and what plans they have for the coming year. We experienced a lot of change in the last year and a half. It was a great opportunity to see what other states are planning for the future,” he says.
Medaris said Dixon’s message of figuring out what your gaps are as a leader and what you can do to fill in the gaps resonated with him. “That was really cool. A lot of that I can apply to what we are doing as a board as well as in my own business,” he says. “I also liked his presentation on supportive leadership. It made me think about a situation at our business in which I was considering letting someone go. Instead, in talking with this employee, I could hear his side and empathize with what he was talking about. I put him on a work suspension and set some goals for when he came back. Now that he is back, he has done an amazing job. If I had gone into that meeting without feeling empathy, I could have let him go. Instead I feel we worked together and are now in a better place.”
Dixon also asked participants to think of a resolution that each person could take back and implement after returning home. That was a powerful revelation for Medaris.
“Before the pandemic, things in our business were running smoothly. We hit a big growing phase. It all fell apart when events started canceling. I assumed I would take a lot of responsibility for rebuilding our business and our structure. My thinking was coming mostly out of this flight-or-fight mode I was in — that I needed to make all the decisions for myself. But after listening to Tim Dixon, I realized that I was limiting our business’s capacity to grow if it just depended on how far I could take the business and not looking at our team and how far our team could take the business. He helped me break that mentality. What I took away was to delegate, automate and eliminate — delegate my responsibilities more, automate certain processes that don’t necessarily need my attention and eliminate details or some parts of our processes that could be let go of,” he says.
Layng’s presentation also was “eye-opening,” and the networking sessions were “very valuable,” he adds. “I even received good tips during the member networking on a solution for our business that has been struggling to keep up with the demand for our linens.”
Medaris says the conference gave him a needed boost. “I love this kind of stuff. This conference helped me recharge my batteries. I haven’t had an opportunity to focus on anything but the day-to-day challenges of running the business. It was great to break out of that shell and gain a more big-picture view. We have been in survival mode for the last year and a half. It was nice to gain a global view and also gain ideas for my business and our state chapter. It makes me grateful that I have become involved with ARA and helps me encourage others to get involved and take advantage of these opportunities,” he says.