Jeff Carter, owner of Southstar Shuttles and NZ Trail Solutions and national president of Mountain Bike New Zealand:
What was your first job and what did you learn from it?
My father would leave me with a big list of jobs every school holidays - mowing, pruning kiwifruit, cutting firewood,
painting the house etc.
I mostly worked alone and had to motivate myself.
It taught me to persevere - sustained effort would eventually get the job done - and how to find fun in jobs that aren't always much fun.
What benefits are there to the Rotorua mountainbiking community from having a local as the national president?
Rotorua often gets the opportunity to be the test-bed for proposed national programmes, because it's easy for me to monitor the effects while living here.
This keeps Rotorua at the forefront of mountain bike development in New Zealand.
What have you gained from experience/involvement at this level?
I'm really starting to understand the need for governance versus operational management.
I like to role my sleeves up and get involved, but I'm starting to see the benefits of stepping back and taking more of a strategic view and more of a wider "is this good for the sport as a whole?" view.
What qualities/skills do you see as most important for leadership of an organisation such as Mountain Bike New Zealand?
National organisations in any sport tend to draw in people with a particular passion in one area, so managing people's personalities, recognising their strengths and their conflicts is a big part of the president's role.
Getting the right people to join the executive is also a big challenge as they are typically heavily involved in their own mountainbike clubs and have business and family commitments.
Listening to all views presented and being able to firmly direct the executive to form a consensus.
Having the vision to get past the daily issues and direct the organisation to a brighter future.
