133. Putting People Back in Politics

Well, hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Growing Small Town Show. The last couple of episodes we have highlighted a couple of amazing women in my local community, and gosh, it's been fun to see the reaction to both our chamber director Kasia and our newly minted relocation specialist TJ. I do encourage you to go back just these last two episodes and listen to them if you're in a small town and you're looking for, for any creativity related to how we both recruit and retain and create vibrant places. I am so fortunate to live in a town and also to work in a building where those two lovely ladies work alongside me every day. It's just been awesome to see. And, um, I guess today, this is one of those things I do solo cast every now and again. They tend to feel honest, if I'm being honest, kind of, um, self-absorbed. But I— that's not the intention of this episode today, and it's never the intention of a, of a solo cast. I share things on a solo cast when they are literally keeping me up at night, or it has been like percolating in the back of my mind for some time. And, uh, this one's a doozy. I actually will be— I've written the entire— I've written an entire blog post. And so basically I'm giving you a couple of options. Some people like to listen. I know as I hear from you listeners, like honestly all across the country, which is just— again, I never stop being kind of in awe of that. It's so cool. It's just the raddest. By the way, rad is a word that I'd like to continue to try and bring back. My kids are not having it. Let's make it a thing, shall we? Like, I kind of love it. It is so, so cool to hear from people all over the country because that's what this is about. Like, somehow tapping into this collective optimism and hope for the future of communities like mine. Small towns, there is so much to appreciate and to love and to, you know, honestly, just like that, the richness sometimes of what I feel and experience here There's nothing like it. And yet today, the topic that we're, we're going to dive into is about politics. And I grew up here. I'm from Oakes. My little town is in North Dakota. We vote one way in this state. And granted that— so by the way, like what I'm going to get into here, that doesn't mean that everybody in our state has all the exact same ideas. That's never the truth. That's never the case. And that's one of the things we're gonna talk about. But you know, as I have come back to Oaks, we've been back now in my hometown for almost 15 years. With that, actually it's been a little over 15 years. It's crazy. It just, time goes by so fast. And as I've gotten into this work with Growing Small Towns and I've traveled a bit more speaking and I've met different people and I've talked to different people in different communities, there has been an opening up of my mind, of my heart, and of just the way I see the world. And I'm not gonna lie, friends, that has been confronting. It has been challenging. There's something so magnetic and alluring for me about having those experiences, collecting those experiences, and collecting the humans that deliver that to me. It has been such a cool ride. I can't say it enough. Like the people I have met are game-changing people. You know, some of them now are like, they're like ride or dies. It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. But what I wanna talk about today is how some of that growth for me personally, and again, this is, this is personal, but it absolutely is professional. What this growth for me personally has, um, made me see differently. So I think this is the interesting thing about growth. You learn new things, you try or experience new things, and you actually do shift sometimes your worldview, sometimes your paradigms, and sometimes deeply held beliefs can get confronted. And that is alarming, and it's scary. And navigating that, it's like a whole journey in and of itself. So as I've said many, many times, I am so pro-therapy for this very reason. And my therapist has been a huge part of bringing some of these things to light for me in a way— by the way, it doesn't mean I look around and I go, well, screw this and screw these people and this town's too small and now I'm bigger than them and now I think That isn't it at all, but it absolutely is something to navigate and maneuver both mentally, emotionally, intellectually, right? And I guess as I've talked to some of my good friends, you know, I'll just say it, I'll actually share her name because she's done a podcast with us. Winona is her name. She is, um, one of the co-founders of Roll Call. We will go ahead and like right off the top of my head, because I didn't even know I was gonna say her name until I started talking to you. We'll make sure that we flag it in the show notes. But when Nona and I talked about, so this, this idea of feeling confronted, and I'll tell you, we were, I was speaking with, for their Talent Attraction Summit, which by the way, let's just make a plug for that. They're coming to Fargo, North Dakota. They're bringing their Talent Attraction Summit to Fargo. They're a Nashville-based business, or maybe Iowa. There's two founder, co-founders. That's where they live. One's in Iowa, one's in Nashville. Where I spoke was in Michigan, Flint, Michigan last summer. That was one of those experiences that did this kind of opening for me. And we were talking about just how hard it can actually be to maybe think and feel differently or have different ideas than a good majority of the people that you do life with. And the question was, so what a lot of people do, I think, is they leave, is they go, okay, this feels untenable, this feels too hard. I don't think I can stay. I don't think this environment is good for me. Like, those— some of those things are legitimate, and I'm not— I'm not demonizing the people that leave. What we continued to say when Ona and I were having this beautiful conversation about how challenging this is, the question is, if all the people that leave the community like I do, right? I'm just an example. I'm just one person. This is— I'm not special. Like, if I haven't made that abundantly clear, there's nothing special going on here. This is how I'm wired. I am wired to consume the stuff around me and then think about it and think about how we can apply it here and think about how we can change things. Like, I'm just wired for that, for growth. I'm wired for it. So she said, what if all the people that leave their community that kind of operate in the world the way that you do, like trying to gather new ways of thinking and new ways of being and then have a place for those to go, she said, If every single person like that leaves, then what happens? And so that's some of what's been really weighing heavily on me, and it's all coming to like roost in my brain through this lens of local politics. And so today I wanna share with you a little bit about what I have seen playing out locally in my community, and then ideally, broaden those ideas out a little bit to just think about how we participate in even the national scope of politics. Because I don't know if you guys knew this, but we're on the heels of another election. Like, I already hate it. I already hate what I'm seeing. It's just, it's just, to me, it's sometimes it feels like it's just like everybody in it seems to just represent the worst of us and That's another big challenge, right? So I'd like to share a little bit about what's happened locally. And by the way, these ideas, they're not just like Rebecca ideas, they're fundamental people skills. And first and foremost, I want people to realize that those are skills that you can develop. They are developable, which I do think is a made-up word. I kind of like it though. And so I guess, you know, as I'm talking to you, dear listener, you may, or a brand new listener, you may have listened to this show for the 4 years we've been running it. I'm talking to you because if you're listening to this, you're one of the people that can actually shift this. Like with all the things that we try to offer to create change, so often the people that need it the most don't get it or they don't access it. But this isn't about changing other people. This is starting with ourselves. Okay, so that was a lot, is it? Heck of a lead-in. And I, again, I don't script out my lead-ins, so sorry, I got very rambly, but this is very personal to me as well. So as I record this, by the time you get to listen to this, the vote will be over, but we are 2 days away from a school bond referendum in my community. It's just shy of $15 million. It is all for critical infrastructure. Like HVAC, like the HVAC system in our school, okay? Our school facility, like seriously, least sexy things imaginable. And you would think that no one would argue about that, but yeah, that's, you know, that's not how this goes. And so I'm not really interested today in talking about, you know, like the ramifications of whether it passes or not. Instead, I really wanna focus on what I believe might be the potential long-term impacts of unhealthy public discourse., and I'm gonna call it unhealthy. And you know, again, I can't force this perspective on people, but you know what I did? I started an organization called Growing Small Towns with the firm belief that when people get better, everything gets better. And so I'm gonna continue to beat that drum probably until I'm dead. Will the work look the same? I have no idea, you guys. I don't, I don't know what's gonna happen. Big picture, right? Like, I don't know, but I'm telling you, like, I believe so firmly that our homes, our churches, our communities, our schools, our country will get better, quote unquote, when we get better. This is a we the people kind of thing. So this is important to me. This is important work and it's core of what we do. And I will say that this is a big caveat too. I get it. Like, I live in a town of 1,800 people on southeast corner of a flyover country. Nobody cares what I think. Nobody cares what I might see or what I might observe. Anybody might have the right to say, who the hell do you think you are? I don't think I'm anybody other than I actually have dedicated my professional career to these kinds of conversations. Organizational development is rooted in the people side of business, and I also actively work on these things myself. So I am not coming at you today on any sort of a high horse. I struggle. I am in it with you as much as I've ever been. But as I am a generally open-minded and open-hearted person, I think there's lessons for us to consider. And again, I think if we want our country to be better, then we the people have to freaking do better. So with that, here are 5 ways, 5 things you can do right now to potentially shift things locally and then think about how this plays out on a broader scale. I'm passionate. I think, you know, if nothing else, you probably, if you've listened even to one episode, you know that I'm a passionate person. I have on more than one occasion behaved in a way or spoken words that I'm not proud of. Overall, where repairs needed to be made, I attempted to make those repairs. And the hardest part is Sometimes once those words are spoken, the rift can't be repaired and we can't force people to accept our efforts for repair. So I'm truly sharing this from the perspective of appealing to a nobler motive. And again, like, I've been called all sorts of things. First of all, like, too soft. That's too gentle. That's not, that's not direct enough. That's not what leaders need to do. Pollyanna. Eternal optimist, foolish, silly. Like, I actually don't care because I just want us to be better. Okay, so here are 5 things that we can do. And again, this is playing out coming from a perspective of what I've seen locally, knowing that we're right on the heels of seeing all of this publicly up in, on a national scale. So number 1 is to notice and call out the use of labels. Gosh, this would seem simple and obvious, right? Like we learn this in grade school. Like name-calling isn't something that we do, right? We're not supposed to do that. But today we use it as a shortcut to make our point faster and to move the dialogue along faster. If we can lump an entire group of people together to clarify what we're trying to say, that's what we're gonna do. There might be times when the distinction's helpful. I mean, maybe, but overall, I'd like to submit to you that in most cases, most of the time, all that does is it takes the individual out of the conversation, and it really dilutes and weakens our arguments. So let's just talk about a few, right? There's Democrats versus Republicans. In our recent situation in Oaks, it was yes voters versus no voters. It was people who support the school versus people that don't. My big joke is like, you know, there's Catholics versus all the other Christians. I'm kidding, I'm totally kidding, by the way. This might land better with my voice than it does in writing, I think it's kind of funny. I always joke like, well, you guys think you're better than all the rest of us, right? It's fine. It's fine. But I mean, again, that's just, it's an example of labeling and it is so damn tempting to put people into buckets and categories because they're easier to deal with that way. Overall, the danger of labeling people is that we stop viewing them as humans, as individuals with their own experiences, beliefs, and ideas. That broad categorization, it leads to assumptions at best and actual dehumanization at worst. So all I'm, all I'm saying today is to listen for it. And I'm telling you, once you start to listen for it, you're gonna hear it everywhere. It's alarming. And so I'm also gonna offer at the end of each of these ideas are just some questions that every single one of us can ask ourselves. And because you are listening to this, you're the kind of human that will, and I love you for that. Keep doing it because we need more people to step up. So one of the questions, here's just a few, I'll just Rattle off, what do I really know about the person that I'm dealing with? Like, again, the question, the person that you're dealing with, because you're dealing with a human, just to remind you, what questions might help me better isolate what their personal opinion is? When I call this person, you know, whatever the label is, insert the label, what assumptions am I making about them? How could I get beyond this label? To get to know them better personally. Those are just a few ideas. There's a lot of other questions we could ask ourselves overall. I'm also gonna say this, this takes time and it takes effort. And most people that aren't doing these things aren't doing them because they're pieces of garbage humans. That's not the reason. But overall, we're kind of lazy. Uh, social media, especially in this context, has made us particularly lazy. And we also, for some reason, and this is a total aside, but we suddenly now live in a time where we actually all think that our opinions actually matter. It's like, you know, maybe your opinion doesn't have to be said out loud. That'll be a question later. So the first one, notice and call out the use of labels. If you hear it, you might just simply with some love and grace, look at the person and say, Gosh, that sounds kind of limiting. And then see what happens. Because again, people that flippantly label people might not be as willing as you and I are to hold a different perspective. Again, if we just opt out of these conversations altogether, then what happens, right? Okay, number 2, employ the golden rule. I can't even believe I have to say this out loud. This one similar to like, we don't name call. It's like what we learned in kindergarten, you know, do unto others as you would have done unto you. Is most of us got a hold of this pretty early in our lives. And I just say, you know, like maybe in small towns, again, like you'd have to know if they have children, but I feel like maybe a better frame for people is to say, well, do unto others as you would have done to your children. Because for some reason people seem to grasp that faster. And I'm just gonna say it again as a person who pays money, real money, for therapy. I think that might be a bigger issue in itself, because I do think that the general lack of self-esteem and self-love that leads to a healthy inner life and overall emotional and intellectual well-being— I think this is a thing, friends. But I— again, that's like another topic for another time. I'll just keep saying I'm pro-therapy, and I think more people would benefit from it. So Overall, if imagining your kid standing in front of you is the thing that gives you pause or helps you take a deep breath before off, like just unloading on someone like a jerk, then do that. So here's some questions. What do you actually know about the person standing in front of you? What do you know about what they might be going through? What's the kindest and most gracious way to deliver your message? What would happen if you didn't say what was on your mind at all? Kind of goes back to the whole like, does your opinion add value to this conversation or is it just me? Like absolutely a question we could ask ourselves. And finally, with all of these, it's just what assumptions am I making? What assumptions are driving my point of view? Okay, number 3. Oof, this one is— saying this one out loud makes me feel like throwing up. Just, I don't know why. Maybe I make a bigger deal of these things in my head, but number 3 is to consider the implications of selective rights and privileges. If there was ever something I worry about saying out loud, it really is this one. We can't advocate for our rights and our beliefs without affording everyone else the same opportunity. That's what this country is about. But I truly, I continue to be kind of surprised and almost kind of horrified by how easy it is for people to fight hard for their personal beliefs in the name of freedom and sometimes patriotism even, while at the same time publicly through both words and actions, sometimes blatantly suggesting that other people shouldn't have the same. It's hypocrisy to me, and it's honestly just blows my mind. That's all I'm going to say about this because this is a really nuanced topic. There's not enough time to do it justice, really. I've seen this play out more times locally than I can count. So at a minimum, it's really something for us to watch for and to realize when we might be caught in ourselves. Some questions you can ask are just, what would happen if what I'm asking for, for me, were given to everybody else? What are the things I'm saying out loud that suggest that only certain people should get what I'm advocating for? It's kind of that, what are, what are the beliefs that I'm holding that are keeping something outta the hands of someone else? Those are deeply confronting feelings, but again, it's, it's really making sure that as we move through as part of like the, the world as a collective public that we're actually doing our best. Number 4 is beware of the echo chambers. I really saw this play out with our local school board vote. Instead of intentionally going to the places and the people that think differently from them, I actually saw people cutting off people who prior to this situation were actually their friends because they just didn't want to hear their quote unquote rhetoric. I don't know where this idea came from that the willingness to listen and hold different perspectives, like just hold space for that, makes us weak. I feel like that's the prevailing thought here, is like, well, it just, it makes me weak if I open myself up to that. That, I'm sorry, it is utter bullshit. Frankly, if your ideas and your beliefs are as strong and unflinching as you're claiming they are then exposing yourself to people or opening yourself up to people who think and believe differently from you, it really shouldn't feel threatening at all. Echo chambers are what happens when we cut ourselves off from people who think differently than we do. It all it does is reinforce our own thoughts and beliefs, and it shuts off any alternate information. The reason I find this so crazy is because I think of all the things that human beings are capable of doing, changing our minds is one of the most powerful. If we never source new information, nothing can or will change. So here's a set of questions. Where do you get your information from? Do you put yourself in the way of people who live, think, and behave differently from you? What might you gain from broadening your perspective a bit? Okay, number 5 is simply this: make repairs. You're gonna step in it because you're breathing. And you're alive, you're just gonna do it. So this particular skill for me goes so far beyond conflict management. It taps into the care and compassion that we have to hold for somebody that we've hurt, even if we never intended to hurt them. Intention matters, yes. And if someone that we care about expresses that we've hurt them, we ought to believe them. The other thing too that sometimes can help us be aware that a repair might be in order is if we continue to reflect on a situation where we wish we'd handled something differently, there might be an opportunity for repair. So go with the person, be humble, be gracious, own your side of the street, own your role, apologize. Again, none of these things make us weak. It demonstrates an ability to put other people ahead of ourselves, and that's the literal definition of a servant's heart. Most people at face value wouldn't be like, who wants a servant's heart? That sounds gross. Most of us don't operate like that. So here's a few questions. What situations exist that you could possibly repair? What role did you play in the last conflict that you encountered, and how might you go about owning that with the person or people that were involved? Who needs your grace today, and how might you show it to them? So this was fast. I dive in a little deeper in the blog post, but I wanted to give you a means of listening to this if you prefer audio. So again, I'm gonna remind you these 5 ideas for how to put the people back into politics, understanding that everything that happens in public is politics. That's what I'm talking about. Number 1 is to notice and call out the use of labels. Number 2 is to employ the golden rule. Number 3 is to consider the implications of selective rights and privileges. Number 4, beware the echo chambers. And number 5, make repairs. Again, I know that the people— you might be listening to this and you might be thinking, oh, God, you know who needs to hear this? And man, there might be a few people like that that I had in mind as I wrote and published or produced this episode for you. But if you've listened to this whole thing, you got to this point with me, I know that you care. And if those of us that care and operate with some empathy don't step up now, the future of our communities actually is at stake. There's this concept that I've talked about. It's just like slowly turning up the heat, so to speak, one by one with every interaction using these fundamental people skills. It will help us slowly shift our communities into the kind of place that we wanna live in, creating the ultimately the kind of world we wanna live in. And then, you know, before I bid you farewell today, there's also just this consideration of how we get quote unquote good people to run for public office. If we want that to happen, then we the public have to be the kind of constituents worthy of having good people represent us. There is an actual threat locally. You know, if you run for city council or you run for school board in a community like mine, there's an actual threat to your livelihood, especially if you are a local business owner because you end up in the middle of challenging topics. You wrestle with things that are highly heated a lot of times. And this to me is about the suckiest thing about this whole situation, politics in general. The public, we the public, we're unforgiving, we're unrelenting, and we have the memory of an elephant. We never forget anything. We never forget that thing that this one mayor did 5 years ago or 20 or 30 years ago, or that one time this one, you know, it's just, they're humans. I have a terrifying thought, and here's what it is. It's that if we continue to just kind of behave in this way, mostly unchecked, Because here's the thing too, social media makes it absolutely worse. I see this playing out locally with people that you absolutely run into again, right? You see like the biggest jerkwad you could possibly be to your neighbor on social media, and then you have to see them again. In our little town, you're running into them at the grocery store, at the gas pumps, you're seeing them at the local sporting event. And if we are doing that here, Once we start dealing with people completely separate or removed from us, the slippery slope to treating people like shit just gets worse and worse. It's steep, it's fast, and before you know it, you're at the bottom of it. It is terrifying. So if we continue to operate in this way, not tapping back into our collective humanity, the only people that'll be left to run for public positions are gonna be people without a shred of empathy. They're literally the people who walk around saying and meaning, well, I don't give a shit what people say about me. And that is terrifying to me. So please hear me, I don't want our public officials to be, you know, like soft and to take everything personally, but the ability to operate from a place of compassion and empathy and critical thinking and problem solving, that is not something to take lightly. The public is people. People need empathy because all I'm saying with all of this is that we are humans first. So find the common ground, do better. And I promise you, I'm not gonna say like overnight everything's gonna shift. If every single one of us that is committed to creating this kind of a future for our communities where a wide variety of humans with different backgrounds and perspectives and beliefs and ideas can be welcomed and nurtured and loved. If those of us that feel that way all agree to step up and just challenge some of this, again, with love and with grace, that's the shot that we have. Humans like you, you're the way forward. And so I would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. If there's more we need to talk about, if you need to have a separate conversation with me, you know how to get ahold of me. I would love to discuss anything that helps us put our, a better foot forward as humans. Thank you so much for listening and thank you for everything you're doing to make your small town a better place to be. See you next time.