Otis White – Page 15

The Greatest Book About Cities Not Written by Jane Jacobs

July 13, 2011 By Otis White

This is the 50th anniversary of the publication of a book that many urban thinkers consider the greatest ever written about cities. It’s Jane Jacobs’ “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” and it is, indeed, an important work. Among other things, it showed us how to look at cities—particularly the interactions of street life—with greater appreciation.

“Death and Life,” then, is a great book. I recommend it highly. But I’d like to offer up another great book about cities, one published in 1993 with a bright green cover and cartoon illustrations. It was by a pair of Chicago academics and community organizers, John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight, with a title only an academic or a community organizer could love, “Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets.”

In 376 pages, Kretzmann and McKnight introduce us to a set of ideas as challenging to the conventional wisdom of community development as Jacobs’ critique was to city planning. Their premise: that every neighborhood and every community—even the most impoverished—is filled with human, organizational and institutional assets that should be inventoried and harnessed before seeking outside help.

I’ll explain more about their ideas shortly, but first let me tell you how I was introduced to this book. In 1995, I wrote an article for Florida Trend, a business magazine, about a city in South Florida called Delray Beach. My assignment was to find the place in Florida with the most committed and effective group of local leaders. I found it in south Palm Beach County, which was a bit surprising because that part of the state wasn’t known as civic minded. But a much greater surprise came when I got to Delray Beach. Leadership worked in Delray, I learned, in ways differently than any place I’d ever visited.

You can read the entire article on the Civic Strategies web site, but here’s the five-second summary: Delray Beach city government insisted that, before it responded to citizen complaints, citizens closest to the problem had to organize themselves, study the problem and assume part of the responsibility for solutions. This bracing attitude—you do your part before we do ours—was so contrary to how local governments worked, I struggled to find ways of describing it. I finally hit on calling it Delray Beach’s “responsibility revolution.”

A year later, I got a second surprise when I was researching a study of leadership in Los Angeles and dropped by the offices of an organization called RLA. RLA had been created four years earlier as Rebuild L.A. and was the political and civic communities’ reaction to the 1992 Rodney King riots. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley asked Peter Ueberroth, the organizational mastermind behind the 1984 Summer Olympics, to head the group, giving it the vague mandate of raising a lot of money and improving the riot-torn areas of South-Central Los Angeles. In short order, Rebuild L.A. became a political disaster, a high-profile piggybank with a 30-member board that served the interests of everybody but the people in the neighborhoods. (To see of how bad things were, read Time magazine’s article about the early problems of Rebuild L.A.)

By the time I visited RLA, Ueberroth was gone and so was the 30-member board. In their place was a quiet, confident Latina named Linda Griego who had been asked to clean up the mess at Rebuild L.A. and do something to improve the area. Griego wasn’t interested in high-profile fund-raisers or big-ego politics. She renamed the organization and focused on the community’s strengths. What she discovered as her organization inventoried South-Central block by block was that there was a lot more to the area than outsiders thought. She found dozens of promising but underserved retail locations and hundreds of small employers. Maybe the greatest surprise: South-Central was a honeycomb of small manufacturers, from print shops to metal-working establishments.

Griego organized these small businesses so they could support one another and negotiate with big businesses and city hall. And she produced corporate-style market studies, pinpointing places that a drug store, supermarket or discount retailer could thrive. She took these studies to chain stores that had never given places like South-Central L.A. a second thought and already had successes to show for her work.

In the space of a couple of years, then, I had seen examples from opposite ends of the United States of how to look at neighborhoods, including very poor areas, in a totally new way: not as hopeless victims but as places with assets—communities with the leadership and some of the resources needed to turn themselves around . . . if outsiders let locals take the lead. And once again, words failed me. I couldn’t come up with the right term to describe what Linda Griego was doing. I called it “grassroots networking.”

It wasn’t until the following year, when I was visiting the Kettering Foundation in Dayton, Ohio, that I found the words I’d been looking for in a homely guidebook in the foundation’s library. It was Kretzmann and McKnight’s book, and the term they used was “asset-based community development.”

In an 11-page introduction to the book, Kretzmann and McKnight explained that the traditional approach to low-income neighborhoods was understandable but wrong. As outsiders, we view these places as the sum of their problems: “crime and violence, of joblessness and welfare dependency, of gangs and drugs and homelessness, of vacant and abandoned land and buildings.” This causes us to conclude they are essentially hopeless: “needy and problematic and deficient neighborhoods populated by needy and problematic and deficient people.”

One result, they continued, is that we throw the residents a lifeline in the form of welfare and a mixture of social programs. These programs don’t solve the residents’ or their neighborhood’s problems; they “guarantee only survival and can never led to serious change or community development.”

What’s needed for change—for altering the fate of neighborhoods and the lives of people and not just easing their pain—is a new way of thinking about these communities, not as a collection of needs but as a wealth of assets that haven’t yet been identified, organized and made productive. What assets? They are “the capacities, skills and assets” of the residents and the neighborhood itself. And you find these assets in three forms, Kretzmann and McKnight say: in individuals, associations (formal and informal groups of various kinds) and institutions (from churches, businesses and schools to police stations and neighborhood parks). Most of the book is given over to showing how to find these assets and what to do with them once they’re found.

I knew instantly what Kretzmann and McKnight were talking about. Their notion of asset-based community development was the same as Linda Griego’s belief that South-Central L.A. teemed with productive businesses and potential markets, and what was needed were ways of harnessing this productivity and unleashing the potential. But there was also in the asset-based approach the wisdom of Delray Beach: that real change can’t happen until the community is a full-fledged partner in its own development—and not a supplicant. As Kretzmann and McKnight write:

. . . All the historic evidence indicates that significant community development takes place only when local community people are committed to investing themselves and their resources in the effort. This observation explains why communities are never built from the top down or from the outside in.

Yes, Kretzmann and McKnight are careful to add, outside resources are almost always needed, but these resources are effective only when requested by local leaders and matched by local efforts:

. . . Outside resources will be much more effectively used if the local community is itself fully mobilized and invested, and if it can define the agendas for which additional resources must be obtained.

OK, this isn’t great writing. In fact, at one point Kretzmann and McKnight caution that their book “is not a novel.” It’s meant to be read as a handbook, skipping from section to section as needed. But for community developers or others who care about cities, there’s as much wisdom here about the human assets of cities as you’ll find in Jane Jacobs’ descriptions of the physical assets.

There’s one more thing: The greatest obstacle to effective action in cities is the complexity of communities. People are frozen because they don’t know where to start. “Building Communities from the Inside Out” tells us not only how to make sense of places but where to begin our efforts to improve them. Literally. One of its final chapters outlines a five-step process: Map the assets, build relationships, mobilize for economic development and information sharing, convene the community to develop a vision and plan, and (only then) seek outside help.

If you want inspiring prose and a dead-on analysis of the physical assets and street life of cities, turn to Jane Jacobs, who probably did write the greatest book ever about cities. But if your tasks involve changing attitudes, peeling back layers of cynicism and apathy, and rallying groups to improve the places they live, then Kretzmann and McKnight have written the book for you. And by anyone’s measure, it’s a great one.

Photo of Jane Jacobs book ad by Pdxcityscape licensed under Creative Commons.

The Montana Study and the Untapped Capacity of Communities

July 6, 2011 By Otis White

We need to remind ourselves from time to time that most of what we know about communities and leadership isn’t new; it’s relearned. Here’s an example: a project called the “Montana Study.” The name is misleading, since it wasn’t really a study. Rather, it was a civic experiment that took place in small, windblown towns in Montana during and just after World War II.

By the time it was finished, some of its sponsors consider it a flop —or, if not a flop, not of much interest. But on the contrary, the Montana Study showed us something inspiring and important: that average people living in unexciting places could do remarkable things in behalf of their communities. It was the first and one of the most important large-scale demonstrations of community citizenship ever mounted in the U.S. Only problem was, once it was demonstrated, it was almost entirely forgotten.

That may have been because of where it took place: in tiny towns scattered across a large and remote state. Or the timing: There was a lot on Americans’ minds in the mid-1940s. Or it could have been a result of its academic origins and the confusion caused by its name. Whatever the reason, it’s a shame the Montana Study faded in memory because there was nothing academic about its aim, approach or results, and the lessons learned apply just as well to communities large and small today.

The Montana Study was the brainchild of Ernest O. Melby, the energetic chancellor of the University of Montana system. (An admirer called him “the crusadin’ist educator this state had ever seen.”) Melby was worried about many problems facing Montana, but one of the most worrisome was what would happen to its small towns after World War II. The war was in its third year for Americans, and people like Melby were looking forward to the soldiers’ return. But would they come back to the cattle towns of Montana they had left in 1941 and 1942? And it wasn’t just the soldiers; others had left for work in urban war factories. Would these men and women come back to Saugus once they’d seen Chicago?

Melby thought the best way to bring back the young—and hold on to future generations—was for the towns to make themselves more interesting. So he approached the Rockefeller Foundation with an idea: Help us put together an experiment in engaging citizens in small Montana towns in improving their communities through study, discussion and action.

He must have been persuasive. The foundation approved a three-year grant, Melby put together a small team of professors to design the program and work with communities, and, in September 1944, the team started looking for towns willing to participate. The first place that asked for help was the west Montana farm town of Lonepine, a place so small, one professor wrote, that “the one-man cheese factory just back of Ted Van der Ende’s home makes up the industrial section.”

The approach was simple, unhurried and open-ended. The professors asked the community to organize a group of people who more or less matched the community’s demographics and were willing to devote 10 weeks to study and discussion. Then they offered a framework for the discussions: The first week was “Why Are We Here,” a look at town history. The second was “Our Town and Its People,” a discussion of demographics and origins. Another week was a look at the local economy called “Our Town and Its Work.” Another was “How to Make Life Better in Our Town.” And so on.

Each study group member was asked to research and write a paper to guide one of the discussions. At every session, a member took notes. The professors took the notes back to Missoula, where they typed them up and (using the technology of the day) mimeographed and returned the notes to the group as a record.

Looking back, you might call these discussions consciousness-raising exercises. They were a way of showing citizens how to see problems and opportunities with a fresh perspective and talk about them in new ways. But then what? At the end of the 10 weeks, the professors asked if the group wanted to do anything more than talk, if they wanted to take on some kind of improvement project.

Of the 15 communities that the Montana Study worked in, most did. And as they did, something wonderful happened: The academics stood aside and the citizens took charge. In Lonepine, members of the study group organized their fellow citizens to build a community library. In Conrad, they rallied neighbors to build a recreation center. In Lewistown, they started a folk festival. Some places even went on to create permanent citizens’ committees. The Greater Libby Association stayed together for years, lobbying for a new hospital, tourist attractions and two school bond referendums.

One town, Darby, created a pageant, “Darby Looks at Itself,” that was built around the things the study group had learned about the town. It had a cast of 125 people, plus members of the high school orchestra—in all, better than a fifth of the town’s entire population. A central figure in the drama was the Devil, who represented “outmoded thinking” about natural resources. At the end of the play, a group of woodsmen, worried about forest depletion, threw the Devil off the stage.

By the end of its three-year life, the Montana Study had awakened citizens in more than a dozen towns to their communities’ possibilities, moved most of these places to take action and started attracting attention around the country. (In the years shortly afterward, educators in 12 other states and five foreign countries borrowed the Montana Study’s guidebooks to begin community study programs. Leaders in one Kansas town wrote, asking how they could “do a Darby” and organize their own community pageant.)

Unfortunately, the Montana Study no longer had Ernest Melby, who had moved from Missoula to, of all places, New York to be a dean at New York University. And for all the good it did in these communities, the Montana Study’s organizers neglected to build institutional or political support. After Melby left, academics at Montana’s colleges made it clear they weren’t interested in tromping around the state, helping people with community problems. The Rockefeller Foundation declined to fund the project any longer, and the Montana Legislature said no as well.

Because it didn’t endure, some associated with the Montana Study thought it really hadn’t accomplished much, but others saw it for what it was: an astonishingly successful experiment in citizen engagement—and a remarkable instrument for energizing communities. One who was involved in the project, Richard Waverly Poston, wrote a few years later:

. . . The Montana Study is of the greatest significance to America’s small communities themselves, no matter where they may be. For here is a technique through which ordinary men and women can coordinate for their own welfare the forces of education, religion, government, economics, culture, and democratic neighborliness, and by this simple means can lift the whole level of living in America. And, as the people of Conrad and Libby have shown, it can be done without the presence of outside experts. Any group of civic-minded men and women in any small community who desire to improve their own town, and are willing to take the trouble, can of their own initiative utilize the techniques of the Montana Study.

When I learned of the Montana Study a few years ago and got hold of the two books about it and the handful of academic papers, it was like finding my own community work—and the work of others I’ve admired—sealed in a time capsule from another era. All the elements of modern-day citizen engagement are there: Seek a cross-section of the community, offer them a structured approach to learning, put them in charge of their own research and discussions, don’t direct but seek only to facilitate. In the end, ask them if they want to go further—and accept if they don’t. But know this: Once most people have been awakened to new possibilities and new ways of thinking about their towns, cities or neighborhoods, they won’t be comfortable with the old ways. And most times they’ll want to turn that new understanding into action.

That’s what happened in Lonepine and a dozen other Montana towns in the 1940s. It could happen in your city too.

Dealing with Fear and Demagoguery

June 16, 2011 By Otis White

Bear with me as I tell you the story of a place far away, but one whose story will sound familiar. Maybe all too familiar. It’s Toowoomba, a city of 120,000 in Australia’s interior. The funniest thing about Toowoomba is its name (it’s an Aboriginal word that means, more or less, swamp). Toowoomba isn’t actually in a swamp; it sits atop a range of low mountains and is known as a pretty place where people take pride in their gardens, their local university and their schools.

But as Charles Fishman describes in his new book, “The Big Thirst,” Toowoomba has a terrible problem, which it shares with the rest of Australia. It is running out of water. Australia is 10 years into a drought that has become such a part of Australian life that it is called simply “the Big Dry.” Toowoomba’s particular problem is that, because of its location, it suffers a little more than other places, as water runs quickly off its slopes.

By 2005, with the drought in its fifth year, Toowoomba had done the usual things, forbidding outdoor watering, hiring officers to look for scofflaws, and holding community religious services for residents to pray for rain. No luck. The city’s reservoirs were down to 34 percent of capacity, and political leaders were desperately looking for solutions, any solutions.

You can imagine, then, the excitement that Mayor Dianne Thorley felt when, in May 2005, she addressed a local women’s club with news of a breakthrough: For six months, she told the members, she and city water engineers had been studying water systems around the world and had a plan to recycle waste water as crystal-clear drinking water—extending the city reservoirs’ capacity and, possibly, saving the city.

The reaction? “Dumbfounded,” one who was at the meeting, Rosemary Morley, said. The city wanted to run water from the toilet to the tap? “I came home from that meeting,” she told Fishman, “and my reaction was, “˜How can you go forward with a project like that without running it by people?’ I thought, “˜This is such a sneaky thing. There must be something about it that’s funny.’ “

Even so, it took a while for opposition to build. In the meantime, the city council approved the plan unanimously. The governor of Queensland, where Toowoomba is located, endorsed it. So did the member of parliament from the city. And the national government offered to pay two-thirds of the cost of the advanced treatment facility needed for recycling water.

By then, though, a citizens’ rebellion had begun in earnest. A former mayor weighed in, calling it the work of “sewer sippers.” If it came to pass, he thundered, Toowoomba would be known as “Poowoomba.” A group called CADS, Citizens Against Drinking Sewage, organized. And the federal government, seeing the furor, changed its mind, saying it would participate only if the voters of Toowoomba agreed to it in a referendum.

You can imagine how this unfolded. On the one side, the mayor and water officials offered reason, science, detailed technical information and the experiences of far-off places (in the U.S., Fairfax County, Virginia, and Orange County, California recycle water) to assure voters that it was safe to drink thoroughly treated waste water. On the other side, opponents used slogans, scare tactics and pseudo-science. (Opponents brought in an out-of-town plumber who said he had been studying recycled water and learned it contained tiny amounts of hormones from drugs flushed down toilets. Drinking the water, he said, would cause men to grow breasts and lose their testicles. Keep in mind, this was scientific analysis . . . from a plumber.)

Proponents produced a 40-page book, Fishman writes, “with graphics of molecules and filter barriers, pages of text explaining the technology, photos of water in every possible mood, and many pictures of children.” Opponents issued an eight-page newspaper whose front page had a photo of brown sewage. Underneath, it asked, “Is this our city’s future?”

Well. You won’t be surprised that on July 29, 2006, the voters of Toowoomba said no to the water recycling idea by a thumping 62 percent majority. The only surprise is that it wasn’t unanimous.

As discouraging as Toowoomba’s experience was, it raises a good question: How can you deal with fear and demagoguery? This isn’t something that happens only in the Australian Outback or with proposals for recycling water. It happens every day in America, where complicated issues are put before voters promising an important benefit, but only if voters will pay a little more in taxes, change a familiar habit (such as commuting to work by train rather than car), or overcome their squeamishness. These ideas are sitting ducks for opponents whose only chore to come up with a slogan clever enough to play on citizens’ fears and doubts. When they do, the game is over.

What, then, can leaders do to lessen the inevitable resistance to new ideas and, maybe, win over skeptical citizens? The first thing is to do what Mayor Thorley (known in Toowoomba as Mayor Di) and her city hall allies never did: Recognize how much resistance there would be to such an unexpected and unconventional solution. Here’s how Fishman frames the mayor’s blindness:

What Mayor Di didn’t appreciate that day in May 2005 was that she was introducing a whole new way of thinking about water. She wasn’t being “sneaky”—to use Morley’s word—in the least. But Mayor Di didn’t seem to grasp that people might have different attitudes about water, and about what kind of water is wholesome.

What Mayor Thorley lacked was one of the essential ingredients of leadership: empathy, the ability to see the world from the others’ perspectives. She had been quickly converted to the idea of recycling water. She saw no reason others should take their time. When opposition mounted, she dug in her heels, insisting that the decision had been made, and critics should just get over it. “No consultation, no debate,” Rosemary Morley said. “That’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull.”

But realistically, had she been more empathetic, what could Mayor Thorley have done? She could have taken six months to let the public work through the conversion process that she had made in days. When she spoke to the women’s club, her announcement should have been that she was forming a large task force (made up of friends, critics and respected leaders) to look at solutions to the water crisis and involve the community in learning about the options. Recycling water could have been one of the options, but only one.

Knowing how squeamish this option would make people, she could have suggested video conferences between task force members and people in Orange County and Fairfax County. She could have suggested a partial solution: Build an advanced treatment facility but use the water only for non-drinking uses, such as for industrial processes or in city fountains. Then she could have put goldfish in the fountains and invited everyone to watch the fish. (One resident of Toowoomba actually suggested this idea. It would have been persuasive.) After people saw the fish thrive (with no harm to the males), she could have suggested finishing the project.

The secret to defeating fear is a lengthy, open but certain decision-making process, one that allows not just those involved in the decision but everyone an opportunity to learn about controversial ideas without being hurried, to explore alternatives, and discuss and reconcile their feelings. In the end, of course, you have to make a decision. But in most cases, you don’t have to do it at the snap of your fingers. And you don’t persuade others by telling them just to get over it.

So what happened to Toowoomba after the referendum? An advanced treatment plant was built in Toowoomba but only to supply water to a coal mine operator. (The facility doesn’t bring the water up to drinking standards.) Eventually, Toowoomba signed an agreement with another water system to pump drinking water up the mountain. The pipeline and pumping stations will cost about twice what the recycled water system would have and have much higher operating costs that will grow as the price of energy increases. Fear, it turns out, has a price. Toowoomba’s water users will be paying for their fears for many years to come.

And now, the final irony: The water system that’s supplying the water to Toowoomba is building . . . you guessed it, recycled water facilities. So while the citizens of Toowoomba won’t be drinking water that has passed through their own toilets, they’ll be drinking the water from others’.

Photo of Toowoomba City Hall by Tim Swinson licensed under Creative Commons.

Consensus, Power, and the Art of Getting Things Done

June 3, 2011 By Otis White

If you’re the kind of person who likes intellectual exploration, abstract concepts and learning for the sheer joy of it, I have a suggestion: Spend a few weeks learning about systems thinking.

OK, I didn’t really think you’d go for it. Civic leaders are practical people who have little patience with theories. But a little theory can sometimes be helpful, and in this case might offer some guidance and encouragement for your work. So let me offer you a thumbnail guide to systems thinking (or at least, to my layperson’s understanding of it).

To begin, it’s a way of seeing major problems as . . . well, systems, rather than isolated issues. Systems thinkers usually begin with a thorough analysis that tries to untangle the system’s elements, interconnections and functions (they tend to make elaborate charts). They look at how the system changes over time (what systems thinkers call “flow” and “stocks”). Finally, they examine the causes or drivers of change, which they represent as “feedback loops” that work either to bring the system into balance or reinforce its direction. There’s much, much more to systems thinking, but trust me, a little goes a long way. This stuff gets complicated quickly and a bit mystical . . . like taking a seminar on quantum physics.

Here’s the point, though: The best urban leaders I’ve known were, consciously or not, systems thinkers. No, they don’t use the language or draw the charts, but as they looked at problems they too searched for context, change and causes. And they knew there were no simple, one-shot answers for complex problems.

And more: They discovered in many cases that the ultimate answer did not lie in addressing the problem they began with (say, crime in an urban neighborhood, the unkempt yards of foreclosed houses in the suburbs, or pedestrian fatalities along a busy highway), but in changing the system itself in some way—the elements and interactions that were causing crime, unsightliness or dangerous conditions.

Some of these changes might be obvious (closing a neighborhood crack house), some might not (setting up after-school programs to keep children away from temptation). But these leaders learned two things through experience: First, you can’t change complex systems by doing one big thing. You change them by doing a number of smaller things in a coordinated way. Second, you can’t make these changes alone; it usually takes a team of outsiders plus the active participation of those in the system.

Let’s take a relatively simple case, the unkempt yards issue. Most suburban communities have ordinances requiring that lawns be mowed even if houses are unoccupied. But the foreclosure process creates a legal gray area as ownership moves from one party to another. During that time, it’s often impossible to tell who owns the house. Yes, the city can send out its own mowing crews and attach liens to cover the cost, but the paperwork is daunting, the process inefficient and reimbursement a long way off. And, in truth, city governments have better things to do. It’s much, much better if the house doesn’t remain unoccupied for long, and that means speeding up the foreclosure process, making it easier to rent houses, or both. But what city controls foreclosure laws? (They’re the province of state governments.) And suburban homeowners are rarely happy about having renters next door.

To change the system so that houses don’t fall into disrepair, then, requires a lot of small solutions working together: Swifter legal processes, banks that are convinced to maintain their properties, incentives for placing renters in foreclosed houses, a neighborhood that accepts rental properties as preferable to abandoned ones, and neighborhood associations that are quick to report those who aren’t playing by the rules.

Looking over the list, you realize that no single individual or institution “owns” all these solutions. They are spread among several levels of government and independent agencies (judges, for example, have a big say in what gets priority in their courts), through the private sector (the banks must be willing to cooperate) and civil society (someone has to speak for the neighbors).

Another thought may come to you: This isn’t an exceptional problem; this is a standard-issue problem. In American communities, our problems are often complex and power is dispersed by design.

So how do you deal with systemic problems when no one’s in charge? This is the heart of modern civic leadership: It is about being the one who can create consensus among independent interests for solutions that benefit all—and then seeing that the solutions are carried out. It’s not glamorous work. It’s painstaking, “small-p” political work that involves chipping away at obstacles and bringing interests together. (Elsewhere, I’ve referred to it as “removing the boulders” and “building the wall”.)

There are rewards for this kind of work. First, it can result in actual solutions—or, at least, better bad situations—because you’ve dealt with root causes. Second, you manufacture a form of power along the way. The ability to solve problems is the most important power a civic leader can have. It’s not the province of elected officials alone; it can be done by philanthropists, business leaders, nonprofit executives, neighborhood leaders—or by institutions and organizations, like universities, foundations or chambers of commerce.

The keys are to see problems systemically, practice the art of consensus-building and focus on results. And if you like to draw charts, well, that’s a bonus.

How to Listen Effectively

April 18, 2011 By Otis White

On his 27th birthday, John Francis, an environmental activist who loved to argue, decided to be quiet for one day and listen to others. The result changed his life. What he learned on his day of silence was that he hadn’t really been listening at all. “I would listen just enough to hear what people had to say and think that I knew what they were going to say, and so I would stop listening,” he said in a speech not long ago. “And in my mind I just kind of raced ahead and thought about what I was going to say back while they were still finishing up. And then I would launch in. Well, that just ended communications.”

At the end of his birthday, he decided to be quiet for another day. And another. And then for an entire year. In all, John Francis remained voluntarily silent for 17 years, during which time he earned three college degrees (including a doctorate), taught classes using sign language, and walked across America. And he listened, really listened, to the people he met. (If you want to know more about Francis’ amazing story, you can hear it—yes, he speaks now—by viewing one of his presentations online.)

I doubt I could manage even a day of silence, nevertheless years. Perhaps you couldn’t either. But you don’t have to be silent to listen more effectively. And it’s a skill worth learning, maybe the single best thing you could do to make yourself a better leader.

Why? Start with the obvious: You can’t be a leader unless you have followers, and you can’t gain followers if you don’t understand them well enough to represent them. This involves listening. If you want to be effective as a leader, you’ll have to be more than a mouthpiece for a group: You’ll have to negotiate for your followers, and effective negotiating means knowing how leaders of other groups think about things. Finally, leadership means sometimes having to change your followers, as when circumstances shift dramatically and your group has to adapt. To do any of this involves listening deeply—truly taking in others’ fears, hopes, vision and motivations—before acting.

There are other reasons listening can make you a better leader: You’ll arrive at better solutions because you’ll have more complete information. Your ideas will gain greater support if you’ve developed them after consulting others. You’ll make fewer gaffes if you know others’ sensitivities. Finally, you’ll enjoy one of the greatest benefits of civic leadership, which is to learn about people who are different from you in background, temperament and world view.

And it all begins with listening. So how can you improve your listening skills? Here are some ways:

Start by concentrating. This sounds simple but isn’t. The greatest obstacle to listening is distraction. Instead of paying attention to others, we let our minds wander—to what else we need to do, whom we need to see, what we’ll say next, and a hundred other things. So begin your meetings with a reminder: Stay focused on the other person’s words.
Ask open-ended questions that require explanations rather than closed-ended questions that can be answered with a “yes” or “no.” So you might ask, “How did you feel?” rather than “Were you angry?” because it offers a fuller understanding of the person. And keep your questions brief. The simpler the question, the more detailed and candid the responses tend to be.
Listen for insights into the person. People often say a lot more than they intend or we expect them to say; as a result, we don’t always take in what they’re telling us. Your meetings may be about a community issue, but if you ask good questions and listen carefully, you can learn a lot about the person who’s talking. You can not only get her opinions, you can get her life story and motivations, how she forms opinions and reads people. These things can be critically important later on as you work with this person. So listen for these deeper insights.
Take time. It takes a while to understand people, and the longer you spend, the more you learn. Don’t expect to learn someone’s life story, philosophy and motivations in 30 minutes’ time. Plan on an hour or more, which is why lunch can be a good time for such meetings.
Make it comfortable. Here’s another reason to consider lunch as a good setting for listening: It gets the person out of her office and away from her desk. Simply moving to neutral ground will sometimes open up conversations, particularly if the person has reason to see you as a potential adversary. But be careful: Chose quiet restaurants where you won’t be rushed, and think of places where the other person might feel comfortable.
Make eye contact. It seems like a small thing, but looking a person in the eye builds trust and comfort. And for you to listen deeply, you need people to trust you and feel comfortable sharing their hopes and fears.
If they attack you or your group, don’t be defensive. Ask the person why they feel that way. Keep in mind that every civic leader comes under attack from time to time, sometimes unfairly. If you meet anger with defensiveness, it deepens the antagonism. But if you seek to understand the anger, it diffuses it—and may win you grudging admiration. It’s something good salespeople know: When the customer attacks, don’t defend; probe.

At some point, though, we must move from listening to acting, right? Of course, but as international mediator Mark Gerzon says in his book “Leading Through Conflict,” we don’t suffer in American life from too much listening (which Gerzon calls “inquiry leadership”). We suffer from too little listening and understanding. Here’s Gerzon’s advice about when to move from inquiry to advocacy:

The general rule is this: inquiry precedes advocacy. If you (1) are uncertain about having reliable, complete information; (2) have not yet engaged all the relevant stakeholders; and (3) doubt that you will have sufficient votes, power, or other support to put your plan in action, then it is time for inquiry, not advocacy. However, if you (1) have access to all the necessary information, (2) have obtained input from all the necessary people, and (3) have mapped a clear road to implementing a viable plan, then go ahead. Advocate your “solution” to the issue or conflict, and begin to rally everyone behind you.

In other words, until you understand an issue from all sides, have a clear plan, and enjoy broad support, listen up.

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The Montana Study and the Untapped Capacity of Communities

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Consensus, Power, and the Art of Getting Things Done

How to Listen Effectively

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