128. Community Development Reflections for the New Year

Well, hey friends, it is the last podcast episode of 2023 on the Growing Small Town Show, and instead of bringing on a guest, I thought we're gonna call this a bit of kind of a yearly recap, maybe a bit of kind of top reflections from 2023. We could also consider these things good reminders for all of us that wanna make our communities great. Good reminders to consider as we go into 2024. Whether you look at it as the close of a year or the start of a new, makes no difference to me. But these are just some of the things that I, in this role, you know, feeling truly such incredible ups and downs in this kind of work, this public sector work. And I'm, I'm gonna say that the public sector tends to be what we refer to like our public officials, right? You're an elected official, you've been appointed or elected, or maybe you are volunteering, but you're in this very public way. But truly, that's not just limited to that. I mean, to me, this really is for you if you are the kind of person who will stand up and make your ideas heard, will speak your mind, will kind of put yourself at the will of the public because of something that you're passionate about. A dreamer, maybe if you— a doer and a dreamer, if you will. My— our friend Ben Muldrew, he considered these people the spark plugs. And so I think that might be a good way to look at this. This is for the spark plugs. Okay, so I've got 10. I've got 10 things. I kind of like 10. Didn't know if I'd get to 10 quite easily. Got to 10. And so It also tells me these are, these are things born out of a lot of pain, generally speaking. And please know that when I share these things, it's usually because I keep getting slapped in the face with it. So clearly it's my reminder as well. So please don't take this as any sort of indictment or, you know, this is, is actually just meant to be encouragement entirely. Okay. So here we go. Either 10 reflections or 10 upcoming reminders. For those getting stuff done in their small towns. Number 1, we need to quit expecting people to behave in a way that they likely won't. I think the reason this is particularly hard for me, I tend to just believe the best in people. I am not one to expect people to let me down. And so I tend to fall kind of hard when I am let down. But what I need to remember, this whole like quit expecting people to do something we don't want them to do. This comes back to, and I've shared this before, this, I got this from my personal therapist, the idea of let them, you know, that we're really not responsible for what people do. And so the most important thing when it comes to this idea of expectations is people aren't going to do what we expect or want them to do. And so a little bit of a giving up control of that, you're going to still vent probably and maybe gripe a little bit as you work through people not behaving the way you want 'em to. But I think this is about the expectation setting, and that's on us. Okay. Number 2, remember that no one is ever actually unbiased, yourself included. This idea where we go into, especially if you are actually in the public sector work in a, in a way where you go into meetings hoping for and maybe believing that you are creating an environment of neutrality. Truly, neutrality just actually doesn't exist. We can try our hardest to be impartial listeners, but we are human, and human beings bring experience. You think of how unique every single individual person's perspective is because of just how they're made and then what they've experienced. It is impossible to ever achieve a full level of neutrality. So try to remember as you're listening to either maybe oppositional points of view from your stance, or you're in a situation where you're trying to get someone to see something and they're just not getting it. It's just remembering that you come to the table with a bias and so do they. Number 3, if you're an open-minded person in a small community, I'm going to encourage you to try your hardest not to judge the folks that are closed-minded. Because if we do that, and, and, and again, I think some of this is just labeling it like, Somebody that's resistant to change isn't necessarily closed-minded. And so the fact that I'm even framing it this way, I still have a lot of work to do on this one, but I find myself in situations in particular where I, I can't seem to get people's minds to crack open a little bit. I find myself just tending to want to judge them. I'm really trying to catch myself with that because it's not helpful. It's not helpful for me. Anytime I find myself getting a little self-righteous, it feels really gross to me. It sits in my body in an unpleasant way. So trying to maintain that openness with a dose of humility, I think too, is, uh, really important when you're trying to make changes in a community where maybe change doesn't happen as fast or as readily. Number 4, we're not gonna turn everybody. I think it's a cool idea to keep the invitation open. So this really kind of again boils down to work with the willing and love the rest, which I've said before. My best friend just the other day had to remind me of it because I was kind of perseverating, right? I was spinning out a little bit on the fact that sometimes I feel like I'm forcing my ideas or myself onto people. And he just lovingly reminded me, like, work with the willing, right? Not everyone's going to love you. That's not a possibility. So there's something very generous and very gracious about like letting people stay where they are, love them where they are, and just keeping that invitation open for whenever they may open up or be willing to explore it. We don't have to force them. People will come to us in their own way, in their own time. Number 5, community improvement is not a project. It's a long, it's a long game. We're playing a long game and that can be really, really hard. Because truthfully progress is probably going to look like a series of little projects. But the challenge in this is not to get too myopic or short-term in our thinking. And this is probably truly, this is probably applicable to most business as well, whatever your business might be, if you own one, organizations, committees, and I specifically came at this from the perspective of communities, but when you're trying to make something better, The change is incremental, but it's a long game. And so patience is paramount and it's not always easy. Okay. Number 6, ideas aren't enough. There needs to be action and execution. And that's a little bit of, again, a reminder for myself because it's so easy to get in the kind of the creative flow of brainstorming and visioning and dream casting. I love all of those things with a passion. What I need to remember is that there's got to be time for who's doing what by when and what resources are required to put one of these things into place. So just remember, if you find yourself not feeling like enough progress is being made, I'd encourage you to look at your ratio of ideas to action plans or execution and just see if you are maybe not carving out enough time to actually put things into practice. Number 7, you in your town, you can have nice things. And audacity is aspirational. I understand and value the idea of a shitty first draft. And so when you're trying something completely new, you know, maybe a low-risk attempt at it, uh, low-resource-driven attempt at it, I can understand the value of not deploying a lot of resources to start something, try something, and kind of test it. I understand the value of that. And yet I also don't ever want communities, no matter how small they are, to let their dreams get cut off at the knees due to pragmatism. I think there's something powerful in being a bit audacious, and I think there's something incredibly powerful about believing that you're worth nice things, that you're worthy of nice things, that you're worth being something invested in. So I've been asked the question, like, which small towns are going to be saved? Like, in my state, somebody asked me that question. It was kind of coming at it from the standpoint of if a state, or a, let's say, a region, a county, whatever, they're going to deploy resources, how do we decide how to deploy them? Who's savable? And in my mind, I thought, well, it depends on if there's a person there that wants to save it. Because we can't look to other people to be saved. That's not how it works, right? We have to have the audacity to invest in ourselves. And so we don't invest in things that we don't believe have a long-term payoff. And so nobody can do that for you. Nobody can create self-esteem, civic pride in your community. No one can do that for you. You have to do it. So again, I just kind of go, well, is it that we always want every idea to be executed with a minimum viable product, kind of a, a test run or a pilot, or is there some room for dreaming bigger than that? I just encourage audacity because if it's the opposite of pragmatism, we're in a lot of trouble. Okay. Number 8, I have heard a number of times lately that it's not personal, it's just business. Oh, I kind of wanna rail against that. And I'm so, I'm going to, I'm gonna say that all business is personal. So quit saying it's not. I think community development is personal. I think art is personal. I think what drives us as human beings is personal. And so I think, you know, the intention of that statement is if your idea's not being followed up on, or you are not being chosen, or your idea's not being selected, or someone's telling you no, that it's a business decision and don't take it personally. Of course there's value in that, but I'm gonna hold to this. Like, it's one thing to say don't take the results personally, but to say it's business and it's not personal misses the point that all of us, if we're fighting for something, it is personal. And it's okay for your passion and your personal connection and feelings about something to come through. Now, again, you know, making sure that you don't take everything to heart. Is different, but I think sometimes we try to create or maintain this level of objectivity that takes the heart and the soul right out of what we're trying to do. And in my mind, if I could, again, like wave a magic wand, I would put more humanity in stuff, not less. I would create more subjectivity, not less, because I think that's— we're driven by our humanity first.. And so I think it's all personal. Okay. Number 9, whether you articulate the culture in your community intentionally or not, you have one. And so this is a big challenge when we think about, I mean, let's pick anything like a more welcoming community. How do we create a community that embraces diversity more? If that's something like, if you think about what you want to see shift in your community, how do we do that? Well, I think the reason I'm even bringing this up is just the first thing is to acknowledge that at any point, a group of people, a small group of people even, could start to speak differently about your town and change what it becomes known for or thought of as. And I think it also has to be backed with action, right? But I think it's just really remembering that a great way to think about culture um, at least in organizational development. And so I, there is, again, there's a lot of parallels between that and community development. Culture is just the way we do things around here. And so if you're like, I don't know what the culture of my town is, I ask that question. Well, how do you guys do things around there? Like, what do you see? What do you witness? And then what are the characteristics of the people involved? Right? And there again, if you want to shift that in a certain way, Just decide one thing that you wanna be that you don't maybe feel like you are and start talking about it and start showing up in a way that other people would look at that behavior and say, yeah, that's really welcoming. And over time, and again, this, this goes back to my number 5. I mean, this is a long game, but at any point, that's how we change the narrative. We start speaking differently about ourselves and we start taking actions that validate that new set of beliefs or ideas. Okay. And number 10, every single person on the planet yearns to feel like they matter and they yearn to feel like they're important. So as you go about your difficult and challenging business of trying to make your community better or trying to make ideas stick or trying to get something new or something different, yeah, just anything that's out of the mainstream, right? You're going to be faced with people. A, that you don't like, B, that don't like you, and C, could stand as a roadblock to your success. If there are things that you can do to make that person feel valued in the conversation, it's not just stroking their egos. I hear that a lot. It's kind of an old school. He's like, just, we'll stroke their egos. Just make 'em feel, you know, almost in this vein of playing the game, right? And I'm saying, what if instead we actually chose to treat people with the most humanity that we could? And instead of saying, well, I'm gonna do this because it'll help me get what I want, what if instead we're saying, I'm gonna do this, I'm going to make them feel valued because it's what all people at their core actually need. And this isn't just about my results. This is about the other human standing in front of me. And so I'm gonna treat them the way I would wanna be treated. It's, again, this is more than the golden rule to me. It's actually remembering that that's what people want more than anything is to feel like they matter. And so what if we infuse some of that honesty and humanity and personal connection back into these situations that otherwise are just, it just feels like we're being politicized or, um, we're a part of some sort of a machine where we don't treat each other with actual dignity or respect. We just use each other to get what we want. So those are my 10 kind of things that I have been pondering and reflecting on as I just continue to fight for what I think is good for this town and fight for myself, for my ideas, for my beliefs. It's not easy work. And the growth in Growing Small Towns, again, it's, it's really about these things, these things that we're talking about today, which is how do we each individually and then collectively get just a little bit better every single day. And these happen to all be related to other humans we interact with. And again, there's not another asset in a community that I'd rather see communities invest in than the people who are there. When the people get better, everything gets better. So I hope you had a marvelously successful 2023, and I can't wait to keep hearing from you and talking to you. In 2024. I see you, friend. You're a dreamer and you're a schemer and you're getting stuff done. And I'm so happy to get to share this ride with you guys. It's the privilege of my life, frankly. We'll talk to you soon.