Episode 94: Civic Trust, Together (With Matt Lehrman)
Public leaders often find themselves in situations of disagreement -- and that's not inherently bad. "Effective leadership isn't about avoiding disagreement," says Matt Lehrman, a civic facilitator and past CityVision keynote speaker. He adds: "Disagreement isn't just natural; it's necessary." On this half-hour episode, Lehrman of Social Prosperity Partners circles back with Municipal Equation to go over the overarching importance of a shared sense of purpose and effective communication points so leaders can discuss disagreements and other intersections productively and fulfill the reality that our communities' people depend on it.
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Transcript
From the North Carolina League of Municipalities, this is Municipal Equation, a podcast about cities and towns. Welcome to another episode of Municipal Equation from the North Carolina League of Municipalities. My name is Ben Brown. So in our last episode, in episode 93, we talked with individual municipal governments in different parts of the state finding ideas to work on together where they could trade notes on their experiences with effective ideas and then work together to implement these ideas in different communities. I see you tried this idea in your town, and it seems like it's going great. Could you help me implement that same idea in my town because I think it might fit here too? That kind of idea sharing. One of our favorite subjects on this podcast. So we focused on the GEM program in Marion, North Carolina, which inspired the RISE program in Sanford, North Carolina, a different city, different part of the state. It was a cool program to boost successful entrepreneurship locally. Sanford got its version of the program in place with the help of Marion. It went great, and Sanford ended up giving some support back to Marion. And I I think I mentioned in that episode that I learned about this this enterprising team up, from the mayor of Marion. His name is Steve Little. And it's just something I learned about during an otherwise random hallway conversation I had with mayor Little at one of our events, and it just had the qualities of a story to tell on the podcast here. Matter of fact, if your city or town picked up a great idea from another city or town where it seemed to be working great, please let me know. I love covering stuff like that and sharing it so that these these ideas can get to the places where they might fit. In short, working as one, advancing all, that's our motto here at the League of Municipalities. We know how to work together. That is helped by our understanding of nuance and variety and tone and discourse and awareness and how all that goes into our shared sense of preparedness and being there for the realities that we need to deal with. But also our sheer practice in working together civilly and efficiently, that that's worth looking into a bit more. Really, at any time in history, it's important to look at our abilities to work together. So here at the league, for example, we have our Commit to Civility program. We we have a lot of programs that deal with working together to achieve success, but Commit to Civility, you know, it's one of our certification programs you can learn about at n cl m dot o r g. And really what it looks at is the effectiveness of working civilly. It's not just feel good nonsense. Like, there's a payoff to it. Going back real quick to that hallway conversation I had with mayor Little, I always enjoy those conversations with you folks, and I had a lot more at our recent City Vision Conference in Greenville. Please share with me what your city's working on, by the way. Any and all cool projects could be a great podcast episode to look at. At the City Vision conference a couple years ago, we had a keynote speaker who was great on the subject of peaceful momentum. His name was Matt Lerman. And I wanted to get him back on Municipal Equation to talk about these perspectives in good productive communication and the cool stuff it leads to when it's really practice. You know, when we listen to one another and we know the ways that we can produce the kind of future we need and have a local level might have a specific edge on that kind of thing. Matt had an article out recently that gets into some of this. This is a good conversation. Let's get to it now. My interview with our guest and a familiar phase for us here at the League of Municipalities, Matt Lerman of Social Prosperity Partners. Matt Lerman, it's it's great to see you again. We you know, we've worked on projects, you and I, together in the past in the spirit of helping our communities get through dynamic times. And, you know, it it it seems like, in a sense, like, you know, every age for politics is dynamic. It's always a conversation in some form or fashion. You know, things are changing. You know, how do we get used to this? And you spoke at our annual conference a couple years ago, and you addressed hundreds of municipal officials from across the state on on things like, you know, like, what happens when, you know, generally speaking, a group of people feel like maybe they're not being heard by their government, and the effort to bring conflict to conversation. Those were your words, bringing conflict to conversation. Depending on where folks stand, they might, you know, love the changes being made, or they might have anxiety about the changes being made, or, you know, there there's there's always, you know, some kind of version of that going on. But you've got a new article that I've read called defending civic trust, the responsibility of local leadership. And, again, a lot of the big news is, you know, kind of focused on the federal level right now. And state government is usually, you know, kind of tandem with that in some way. But your article looks at local leadership at this time. What puts what puts the local level into conversation for you?
Well, first of all, man, I'm I'm thrilled to be back with you, and, I totally enjoyed my time at City Vision. Hey. The, if you think about just the recent past, like, this century of leadership, you know, from the events of '9 eleven to the great recession, to the COVID pandemic, and to the, you know, the radical changes that are going on right now. Like, there has not been a quiet moment in in this century yet, from a position of local leadership. So this is not this is not just about the current political moment. This is about recognizing that throughout all of this, the responsibility for defending civic trust always leans most heavily on the people who are in local government, the people who are closest to the residents. Because if you're a mayor, if you're a city council member, I'll take it even further. If you're on staff in a municipality, if you're serving on a school board, I would even take it to there as well. You're in a place where the people in your community are depending on you. They expect you to pick up the trash and to to haul away snow or, you know, to to do all the things necessary for their daily lives. You have the accountability, the responsibility, the the accessibility. You said that the residents have the accessibility. Like, my bottom line is is throughout all of this, for democracy to work, it has to work locally. We can have all kinds of political divisions and going on, and I'm not taking political sides in this moment. I'm just taking the point that in our communities, locally, that's where democracy has to work. That's where our communities have to be strong. People have to come together for you might remember, Ben, when I when I gave my from conflict to conversation talk, I made the definition that the purpose of local government is to enable people to, join together in recognizing and solving community problems. It doesn't get more basic than that. That's the fundamental responsibility that exists today as it has always existed for cities and towns.
So at the community level, we have, the the quickest, most, you know, kinda tangible nature of of government. And, you know, if if we see a a a crisis in in trust that, you know, hurts the kind of, you know, maybe public discourse that we would would like to see to, you know, kinda get us places in society. You know, I I guess people are, you know, skeptical, I I think is a word that you you used in your article, maybe skeptical of government maybe, for example. And and being skeptical is is is good it's it's a good thing, you know, to have your defenses up and, you know, you're not gonna get taken advantage of. You know, you're trying to read the situation for what it is. But, but that the application of that sometimes, when it comes to, you know, our shared interest in government and so on,
maybe kinda plays out a bit differently. I mean, what's the difference between, you know, skepticism and maybe how we might be regarding our government and interacting with it? You know, I actually this might surprise you. I have no problem with skepticism. I think that, you know, healthy skepticism is is really valuable in this world because that means that when people tell you stuff, you get to ask the question, where did you hear that? How do you know that? Does that match up to the truth as I understand it? And ask questions that get to the core of of understanding. This is how people come together to recognize and solve community problems. They come at it with a combination of skepticism and perhaps trust and certainly their lived experience and what what they've, you know, what what they know to be about their role. Look. Sometimes, you know, we are competitive with each other as individuals, and sometimes we are collaborative with each other. Right? The the mix is always changing, and as people, we're always reading in the moment how we feel about it. I have no problem with skepticism. What I do have a problem with is when skepticism, doesn't lead to something productive. And the whole purpose of democratic of the democratic form of government is that skepticism is supposed to be an entree point to reasonable people coming together, putting together all of their different understandings of what's going on, and reasoning together in public in front of everyone on the dais. This is how I see it. This is how someone else sees it. This is what the what the facts say. This is what the analysis is. This is what we've tried before and what worked and what didn't work the way we expected. Let that all play out. Let the most complex and sensitive issues that our community have, that our community has, let them play out in full public so that everyone can see these earnest people on city council and the earnest staff people who are supporting them that we're putting all this information out there and still trying to come up to the answer of, but what's in the best interest of our community overall? That's worthwhile to have.
And I love the sentence that you have here. Expecting residents to be more polite doesn't rebuild trust in government. What do you what what do you think that we need to be looking at instead or or more than that for for the folks who might be frustrated with whatever system is in place? Yeah. Well, you know,
the North Carolina League of Municipalities and other leagues around the country have spent a lot of time and effort, in recent years talking about civility. I have nothing against civility. I love the idea of civility. I worry sometimes though that civility sounds like we're imposing rules and that somehow we're saying, you know, that we're asking everyone to be polite regardless of everything else that's going on. I think we have to go deeper than that. Civility is not just rule following. It is, are we actually bringing people together with purpose, with meaning? Are we actually being open to a conversation? You might recall when when I go out and speak, the very first thing I do is I I ask people, in the audience to make everyone feel welcome. And one of the ways that we make people feel welcome is not just by, you know, shaking their hands or patting them on the bat or back or making eye contact. It's by saying the words tell me more. Help me understand where you're coming from. Help me understand what combination of education and, experience and divine creativity makes you see that in that way. And it's the gesture that says, if you're willing if I'm willing to listen to you, are you willing to listen to me? And so we get through skepticism. We we we create trust when people in local government create forums, create the mechanisms that bring people together where they're willing to say to each other, tell me more, so that we can learn that the way we see the world may not be the way everyone else is experiencing at the same time. And just a little bit of deference and a little bit of respect will help people come together and figure out the answers to big questions that actually we discover don't put us in competition. We're not opponents in this. We're just different stakeholders trying to figure out how we can make this solution suit many different, people who care about it.
Yeah. And and and that's, it's a good point that, you know, different people might have different styles of, say, satisfaction with government, and and, I might have a different impression than the guy next to me as to whether I feel like I've I've been listened to or heard. And, you know, engagement just, you know, it has to be such a core piece of this active, healthy participation along the way instead of maybe being, you know, told after the fact. I I think you wrote about this in your piece about maybe the kind of reactive nature sometimes of, say, the electorate instead of, like, that they're say, a, there could be a process where, you know, we're all kind of contributing and participating at once. We're all informed, and we're all you know, we're not surprised by the outcomes. And, then the other is, you know, we see the outcome, and then we have to knock on the door and say, I'm not pleased with that. Can you tell me what happened? And, it's it's you wrote about something. It's called the idea structure. That word one word, idea structure. What what what is that? What why do you think local leadership needs to keep, things like this in mind when it comes to public involvement in community government versus we're the government and we're telling you what we're doing, and then you tell us after the fact what we did. I'm so grateful that you asked that question. Look, I I spent a lot of my time as a facilitator, so I spend more of my time listening
than I do speaking. And when I go out and work with cities and towns, one of the questions that I frequently ask is, what's the what are the most important core responsibilities of a of a city or a town? And the typical first two answers have to do with, public safety and infrastructure. That is we are responsible for taking care of people, protecting them, and delivering them the services that they rely on. But there's a third one that doesn't get mentioned often enough that I think belongs just up there as part of the top three responsibilities. And it is keeping people engaged in the process, keeping them informed, keeping them connected to what's going on, giving them a voice in the future of their community. So I coined this phrase idea structure. I was looking for something that would match up to infrastructure. So if infrastructure is the durable roadways and sewer lines and perhaps power lines, the things that we build that are gonna serve our community for twenty, fifty years or longer. Well, then we also need idea structure. An idea structure is we need to have equally durable ways to involve people in, getting information and participating and contributing to the future of their communities. And those pathways, those avenues have to be just as well planned, just as deeply invested in, and just as perfectly executed as you would expect your trash pickup, your road repairs, and all the maintenance that's required to keep all of those systems going. And in this case, idea structure means that we need to have a process of visioning and of strategic planning and of outreach and of inclusion and of making sure that we're actually hearing voices from throughout the community and we're not and and here's the worst part, that that people aren't just showing up at a council meeting after months and months or years of of research and review only to show up at the last council meeting where it's going to be voted on and feel like they missed the opportunity, that somehow because the the final vote happened so expeditiously that somehow they thought the the the skids were greased, that the decisions were made in a backroom. They weren't. They were made in public if they were made over a long period of time. And our residents don't often understand that their opportunity for influence and for meaningful input happens at a much earlier stage. And we as as leaders in local government, we have to create the avenues, the idea structure that lets people plug in at a point where it can actually be meaningful for them.
And in getting that diversity of of voices and participation, you write about, restoring a shared sense of purpose. And I I really like that phrase. I mean, it just seems like every single word in that has weight, shared sense of purpose. When we do have, you know, divisions and cynicism around government conversations, what what's the mentality that you think we need to have here in terms of getting to and recognizing that, like, there is a shared sense of purpose that we can go toward versus, you know, kind of fighting over what, you know, it it how how do how do you see ourselves, you know, kinda getting to a shared sense of purpose and recognizing something like that? You know, Ben, I think there's a tension that exists here. There's a tension that some people believe that
when you're elected to local office that you become the decider, the decision maker, and that's the only thing or that's the the the the core responsibility that you have. I work with local leaders to help them understand that their job isn't just to make a decision, that their job is to educate their community, to create understanding, create consensus, create dialogue that actually brings everyone along. That doesn't get you away from the fact that when the budget comes up or when the zoning request comes through there's gonna be a vote you're gonna have to vote yay or nay. I totally get that, But that's not the only job here. The real job is to serve your community, and you serve your community not just by saying I'm going to make the decisions when they are presented to me, but by involving people in a process and making them feel meaningfully a part of it, educating the community, bring them along. So creating a shared sense of purpose in your community is an essential leadership job, and this is not just for the mayor, and it's even not just for elected council member. People who are appointed to boards and commissions have that opportunity as well. People who are serving as city managers and at every every staff level of city and town government, they have the same opportunity as well. Every engagement is an opportunity to involve residents in the process. We that's sacred. We need to con continually be working to build understanding so that we can build agreement or build consensus towards what what is goodness, what what does it mean to be moving our community forward in this moment. And I wanna emphasize, I'm not taking a red stand or a blue stand. I'm not focus I'm not prescribing any particular political cause. I'm just saying that at the local level, what is inescapable is that leaders in local government are tied to serving the people in their community. You can't get away from it, and you do that by educating, by by, bringing them along in the process.
Yeah. It's it's, I'm I'm thinking about this as you're you're talking just, you know, in my prior career. I've been with the league about ten years now. Prior to that, it was ten years in, the sort of the political governmental journalism world. And, the number of it's it's amazing the number of times you see instances where there's someone who maybe approaches a situation, like, this is my political adversary, and I'm showing up, you know, tensed muscles, and I'm here to have the the hard conversation. And they don't expect it to I think they go and maybe expecting a a fight, nothing but disagreement, and maybe sometimes walk out of it or often walk out of it pleasantly surprised at how well that went when they did sit down. And the the person who's in elected office who they thought might give them a hard time is actually very courteous to them and listens to them. And, you know, it it it kinda hits a a a nice reset button, and changes the entire nature of whatever that conversation was. It it sort of just pulls the tension out of it, and you can focus on different things and put your goodwill in different areas. And it's just it's it's such a nice thing to just kinda bear in mind how simple that is, but, you know, how vital it is. I mean, you you wrote in your piece, effective leadership isn't about avoiding disagreement. I mean, I I love the way you said that. I mean, it's it's well, I I guess, you know, maybe we can kinda round up here. What what what's it about instead if if we're not trying to yeah.
Yeah. I mean, my bottom line here is that a disagreement isn't just natural. It's necessary. Our it it's necessary in human endeavors, and our form of government, the beauty of it is that it was created, especially at the city council level, it was created to put some number of amateurs in elected positions where they get to make the policy informed by the professionals on their staff for sure. But we invite amateurs and why is it a virtue that we have amateurs making public policy decisions? It's because it is the process of their figuring it out, doing it in public where everyone in the community can watch these people earnestly looking at the facts and discussing it from their different perspectives, where the community can say, well, if these people who see the world so differently can have this conversation, and if they can arrive at what they think together is in the best interest of our community, if my voice can be heard through that, I may not win every single argument. My everything may not be settled exactly the way that I would want it. However, I respect that the process brings a lot of people, a lot of perspectives to the table, and our job in local government is to sort through all of that. And if nothing else, leave people feeling connected, respected, and heard in the process. That's the job of local government.
Matt Lerman, I really appreciate your time with this. I mean, it's, and and this is something obviously, you know, that this isn't the the the final word. There are so many directions we could go from this, so many hard applications we could think of and apply. Where where where if someone is listening to this and wants to kinda pick it up and maybe delve a little bit deeper, are there resources that you can share? Or I have a ton of resources. First off, come to my website, which is www.socialprosperity.us.
I have a newsletter, and every week, I am sharing from my Community Catalyst podcast. Every week, I'm interviewing a different civic leader about their journey to leadership and the lessons they've learned along the way. Once a month, I offer free of charge for anyone who's on my email list a local leadership chat. And I bring together usually about 40 or so local leaders to talk about an issue, and it's gently facilitated. There's no presentation. It's free to join. It's a respectful, supportive way to air interesting challenges that we have. I'll give you a quick example. Just last week, we had our April, local leadership chat, and we talked about when words collide. And we talked about the vocabulary that is tripping up people in local communities right now, and you would be surprised. It is not all the stuff that it's not only the stuff that you hear out of national partisan politics these days. There's all kinds of vocabulary locally that people in elected and staff levels are finding difficult for them. We I don't have the solutions for them. We just talk about it. So come to the website, and if nothing else, shoot me an email. I'm always eager for a conversation. Like I said, I'm a born listener before I'm a speaker, and so people can reach out to me at matt,matt,@socialprosperity.us. And I will always respond, and I'm always happy to hop on a Zoom and have a chat with someone as well.
Matt lehrman, matt@socialprosperity.us, if I repeated that back the right way. Thank you so much. You got it. Yeah. Really appreciate this. And, I'm sure we will find an occasion to talk again on the podcast. But, but, Matt, yeah, thanks so much for your time. It's an honor. Thanks so much, Ben. Great to see you. Thanks again for listening. I would love to hear from you any thoughts you have on this conversation. Maybe any thoughts from your home court that we didn't touch on here. Any nuance, anything. Let me know. Again, my name is Ben Brown, and you can get me at bbrown@nclm.org. Again, bbrown@nclm.org, or use the contact form at n c l m dot o r g. NCLM stands for North Carolina League of Municipalities. We've been around since nineteen o eight, helping municipal governments be the best they can be together, working as one, advancing all. That's our motto, n c l m dot o r g. Please send me your feedback. It's been cool hearing from those of you who've been watching this podcast since we have a video version of it now. It's not just an audio podcast anymore. It's a full on show that you can watch every month. Send me your thoughts, your ideas, suggestions. We started doing this podcast almost ten years ago, but it's not a flat template. It's not some done thing. You know, we're always trying to improve it and look for ways to, you know, just to to add to it and make it more of a conversation. Again, my name is Ben Brown, bbrown@nclm.org. You can send me all your ideas. Our Our guest on this episode has been Matt Lerman of Social Prosperity Partners. Always looking for good guests and ideas to have on the show. We appreciate your help with that, so it is indeed a conversation. We'll catch you on the next one. My name is Ben Brown.