“What kind of America would you like to have?
Instead of the usual electoral horserace questions, a recent focus group of citizens was simply asked about their vision for a better nation. Peggy Noonan, the WSJ columnist who reported the story, reprised the group’s answers–“a solid education system,” “no more war,” “people with joy in their work,” “our country leading again, including in morals”—and then reflected that the respondents were looking back to “when things seemed assumptive of progress.” She noted the comments, unexpectedly, emphasized not individual desires, but rather “hopes [that] were communal, societal.”
In Search Of Hope
I was less surprised than Ms. Noonan. Amidst rapid global economic and social change, as institutions and hierarchies erode, people everywhere are trying to find—or rebuild—communal values, to restore some collective optimism to their lives. It’s happening throughout society: in neighborhoods, towns, businesses, churches.
And they are searching for a new kind of leadership to help with that. Many Americans, looking beyond this toxic election, are wondering about something more universal: how do the best leaders actually succeed in “building community”—whatever the would-be community might be?
The ‘How’ Of Community Leadership
That question began my recent conversation with Richard Harwood, a practitioner and thinker who since 1988 has devoted himself to such inquiry. His Harwood Institute for Public Innovation has helped transform thousands of communities around the world, strengthening collective progress among people who share some common purpose.
Though renewing American rust-belt cities first put his Institute on the map, Rich’s experience has since grown to include lessons for leaders of many kinds of communities, whether geographical, regional, or virtual; whether the relationships are political, economic, or business strategic.
It Begins—And Ends—With The People
What unifies it all for Rich Harwood is people: building a community always comes back to the core, its human members. As he explained, unless a leader lives that truth, no progress can ever be sustained.
“But ironically, the more ‘community’ has become important to leaders—as it has in recent years—the more they’ve squeezed out the human element as they try to ‘fix the problems.’ They gloss over what people really care about. A new generation of technocrats has turned community building into a Gantt chart, endless initiatives following a schedule. Even worse, they often frame challenges around their own good—not the common good.”
Turning Outward
Rich went on to describe how would-be community leaders must “turn outward”—away from themselves, instead focusing horizontally on members, their relationships, and their collective yearnings for progress. “Great leaders build community from the outside in, talking and listening to people in their real lives. They abandon the heroic ego of directing top down.”
As we spoke further, a deeper conceptual infrastructure of Harwood’s accumulated experience emerged–about leadership mindset and skills, how to diagnose the state of a community, establishing the right context (creating “public capital”), and promoting a “ripple effect” that encourages other leaders, groups and citizens to join in.
Six lessons for community leaders seemed particularly distinctive:
Hope And Understanding
1.Your most important job is to help people have hope, and believe in the possibility of progress.
“Members of a struggling community may talk about problems, but what motivates them is hope for a better life, and belief that they might somehow get there. Great leaders will acknowledge challenges—but they rapidly pivot to summon a ‘can-do’ spirit among as many members as possible. Nothing’s more important than sparking a sense that if people work together, they will succeed.”
2. You earn credibility as a leader through authentic understanding of the community itself.
Instead of raw power, Harwood’s approach stresses leadership credibility: becoming trusted as someone who truly understands the opportunities, traditions, networks and relationships which give life to a community. A good leader doesn’t mandate; he or she co-creates.
“Regrettably,” Rich explained, “’community understanding’ often gets defined as data—a poverty rate, school drop-out statistics, etc. Of course data is useful—but it can crowd out what’s really on people’s minds. A leader must combine data with ‘public knowledge’: what people are feeling, talking about, and aspiring to, even if those collective feelings are out of sight.”
“A few years ago, we worked in Mobile County, Alabama, to help accelerate school reform that had been bogged down ever since the 1954 Supreme Court decision of Brown vs Board of Education. Polarizing race issues stymied progress: many whites blamed bad schools on unwillingness of blacks to improve their lives, while many blacks felt the root cause was an implicit effort to maintain local segregation. The data highlighted the stagnant student test results, low graduation rates, declining spending, etc.”
“But when we brought together the various community and civic groups, a steering committee formed to engage citizens about their shared aspirations. Local leaders were surprised to learn that white rural people felt just as neglected educationally as members of the black community. The conversations sparked interest for more people, both black and white, to get involved, working together to improve the schools. This new ‘public knowledge’ stimulated critical collaboration that ultimately led to increased educational funding, new math and science programs, and improved teaching and test results.”
Does Political Identity Matter?
“How important is political identity?” I asked. “Do leaders have to be ‘the right color’ or ethnic origin, or have deep personal experience in a community?”
“Of course those things help—but they’re not required. Most important is that you have the trust and right relationships—and achieve real understanding of people involved. You also need courage to face what will be tough challenges from some of those same people—and demonstrate back to them you really care about helping the community build itself up. Leadership can’t be about you; it has to be about everybody else.”
Building Momentum
3. Build momentum by first getting people to work together and then helping others see their progress.
Harwood prioritizes “getting people on the right trajectory”—starting and then building momentum with achievable, hope-inspiring collective work.
“Another misunderstood community leadership practice is ‘creating vision.’ Those exercises can become blue-sky, untethered from reality. People get discouraged when there’s no forward movement. Great leaders start by leading community conversations, and then guide members towards valuable but near-term achievable goals. They build on that progress over time.”
“Mobile County again serves to illustrate. The leaders there laid the foundation for measurable school reform, beginning with local discussions about people’s shared aspirations. Those first steps mobilized a sense of common purpose and public support for more educational funding; that in turn allowed the leaders to involve the broader community in making concrete reforms. As more people worked together, and saw initial success, still others joined in.
4. Foster “can-do” narratives,” not disconnected storytelling.
Storytelling has become a new pillar of leadership, but Rich Harwood explained how it can sometimes be counter-productive. “People don’t need isolated tales of nostalgia or stories that don’t lead to action. Much more energizing is when leaders encourage what I call “can-do narratives”—accounts collaboratively constructed by members that are coherent, positive and forward-looking. The best of these evolve organically—laying out the trajectory people see themselves following to achieve longer-term success together.”
“I saw the power of such narratives years ago, in Battle Creek Michigan. Teams collaborating on an initial pilot project constructed a story for one of their retreats, like a Dr. Seuss kids’ book. This ‘Battle Creek Fable,’ as it came to be called, confessed why they had been struggling, and what they now wanted to achieve to improve local education, healthcare, and social services.”
“They actually acted it out as a little play at the retreat, and then later shared it more widely, as a public document. As they updated the narrative every few months, it became a chronicle about themselves–how they overcame initial barriers, and then began to succeed—and where they next wanted to go. It successfully engaged others to become part of the movement.”
Everyone At The Table?
5. Lead with “pragmatic selectivity”
Another community-building myth Harwood explodes is “always getting everyone around the table.”
“If you pursue that too literally, it can kill momentum– and people lose hope. An effective community leader is ruthless about making choices—who to ‘run with’ (the right partners, citizens most committed to real change, etc.), where to productively start collective efforts, how fast to move, etc.”
“The right balance is to be ‘opportunistically inclusive’—work with whoever is authentically willing to collaborate on goals most people agree on. In the Bible, Abraham had a tent that was open on all sides—so that travelers from everywhere could come in. The good community leader, like Abraham, must be ready to accept new travelers once they are ready to join the collective effort. You should never exclude anyone who legitimately wants to help make progress—but the leader must avoid getting drawn into arguments with naysayers who harp on problems instead of solutions.”
Virtual Or Not
6. Lead even more intentionally if the community is virtual
Over the years Harwood’s practice has expanded into helping leaders of regional networks, extended virtual partnerships, and larger, technology-enabled communities. He emphasizes that community-building leadership, whatever the setting, follows most of the same principles that work in smaller towns and cities.
“Building hope, creating momentum for progress, being selective in where and how you work to create initial trust—the practices are essentially the same. But at greater scale, or in virtual situations, the leader does have to be even more intentional, almost exaggerated at times–to help people work together when they don’t know one another or even see one another.”
“With virtual, the typical pitfall is over-emphasizing technology, instead of people’s hopes and aspirations. Remember, virtual communities will likely not be people’s primary source of relationships—and it’s easier for them to opt out.”
“Larger, and virtual community-building calls for particularly focused leadership: to really understand the public knowledge across members, and being clever in packaging it so people understand one another’s deeper aspirations. The leader must also take extra care to nourish the broader context that fosters collective action—opportunities for people to collaborate on something winnable, encouraging face-to-face relationships whenever possible, creating more easily understood narratives when members are online.”
Why All This Now?
I closed by asking Rich why building better communities today really mattered—and why it mattered so much to him.
“Everywhere I look, people are losing hope. They see a status quo that isn’t working. We’ve come to an inflection point, too many people sensing we can’t go on like this.”
“But at whatever level or in whatever domain you’re living and working, the greatest source of progress through history has always been ‘the community.’ Tomorrow’s best leaders must do whatever they can to rekindle the can-do spirit of that fundamentally human invention. It’s the challenge that still wakes me up every morning.”
Originally published on Forbes.com