RVBusiness: The RV Industry Association Cultivates The Industry’s Next Generation Of Leaders

This article originally appeared in the January/February issue of RVBusiness.

Currently, industries face an unprecedented number of challenges in a changing world where disruption and uncertainty, brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, have become the norm. A shift toward remote work has afforded young professionals with broader access to a wider range of opportunities and career growth. In fact, the Deloitte Millennial Survey found up to 63% of Millennials report that their leadership skills are not currently being fully developed.

With any challenge there comes opportunity. And tackling this new reality for the RV industry means cultivating an environment that will attract, retain, support and engage future leaders in the long term.

The RV industry has a rich history of working together in that cutthroat competitors will come together to collaborate for the betterment of the overall industry. Manufacturers, suppliers, aftermarket, finance firms, dealers and campgrounds all take off their company hat to serve a growing industry.

This unity is directly responsible for some of our industry’s biggest successes. It’s what helped us get through the pandemic, with the creation of the Industry Relaunch Task Force, and what has led to industry-defining programs like Go RVing and the RV Technical Institute. Not to mention our industry’s critical self-regulation, which we have built and maintained working together as an industry, earning the respect of government regulators.

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To that end, the RV Industry Association has recently embarked on a new journey, an initiative focused on identifying and cultivating future leaders across the RV and campground industry.

The Emerging Leaders Coalition will strengthen institutional industry collaboration, competency, engagement, inclusivity and innovation by identifying, recruiting, developing, engaging and retaining emerging industry leaders and harnessing and elevating diverse emerging industry leader perspectives. Specifically, this means continuing the rich legacy of the RV industry that has been built over decades and ensuring the future of the industry contains collaboration towards our common goals.

Members of the Emerging Leaders Coalition will be thrust into committees and task forces which are already tackling our biggest industry challenges, bringing fresh perspective and ambition to current issues facing the industry. This next generation of leaders will learn about all segments of the industry and develop significant personal relationships that help bind the industry together for generations to come. After all, it is these personal relationships that have let our RV industry unity thrive and grow over the past 40 years and especially during such challenging times we face today.

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The full version of the article from the January/February issue of RVBusiness is available here (page 32).