The 3a's Of Public Life

Philanthropy News Digest – The Sustainable Nonprofit The Sustainable Nonprofit series examines critical issues related to nonprofit sustainability through the eyes of nonprofit leaders, practitioners, and consultants.

Authority and the Sustainable Nonprofit by Richard C. Harwood Over the past fifteen years, I have repeatedly engaged groups of citizens around the country about their concerns and aspirations. These discussions usually focus on such topics as jobs and the economy, public schools and family life, the news media and politics. In almost every one of them, I ask people to name leaders they would trust to stand up and give them an honest assessment of an important issue. More often than not, the silence I hear in response is deafening. Only a handful of people are able or willing to name leaders, on any level of society, that they trust. Indeed, in a fit of desperation, one person in a recent conversation said that actor Keanu Reeves was as good a name as any. This is the second in a series of three articles by Richard Harwood that explores the 3 A's of Public Life:

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Accountability — Setting realistic expectations for change and pursuing actions that have meaning for people. Authority — Possessing knowledge rooted in the community and infusing that knowledge throughout your work. Authenticity — Reflecting the reality of people's lives in your words and actions.

Together, they form a set of touchstones for the practices necessary to create greater sustainability in nonprofit organizations and their work. With so much work to do in our communities and the nation as a whole, the problem, as many people see it, is that our leaders too often are focused on maintaining their own power, pursuing a narrow agenda, or relying on a superficial understanding of people and their concerns. In fact, I find that people increasingly believe the same thing to be true of business leaders, religious leaders, and, importantly, nonprofit leaders. At a time when one can no longer simply claim authority but must earn it, how can we as individuals and leaders of organizations speak, act, and ultimately lead with authority? Speaking with Authority For many people, speaking with authority means citing various "experts" or making datadriven decisions. I remember being told in class in graduate school that the best way to solve

a public problem or create change was simply to get people with the right pedigree around a table. The idea, apparently, was that the "best and the brightest" automatically hold authority. For others, it involves raising the volume of a discussion — demanding change or yelling at people to secure adherence to a particular plan.

...In order to possess real authority, you must first possess a deep understanding of the community you hope to serve....

Of course, neither of these approaches is a guarantee of the authority necessary to work in real communities — or to ignite people's imaginations in a meaningful way. In order to possess that kind of authority, you must first possess a deep understanding of the community you hope to serve.

Whenever I address the issue of authority, I always find myself posing the same test: If you were dropped into a room full of people from a community, could you talk to them about their concerns, about their aspirations and the obstacles they face in achieving them, about what they value? More importantly, would they believe you? Would they hear their concerns and voices echoed in your words and sentiments?

There is, of course, the temptation to skip, sidestep, or at the very least minimize any effort to gain a deeper understanding of the communities we serve. We make excuses, saying it will take too much time or too many resources. Or, we assuage our guilt for not making the effort by conducting quickie surveys, indulging in short-hand assumptions, or focusing on hot-button issues, before setting off to devise our own solutions to the problems we have identified through such means. Yet another temptation is to believe you can gain a deep understanding of a community as a passive observer. A few years ago, when I had a job teaching reporters how to connect with the communities they were covering, the managing editor of one of the nation's largest newspapers told me he would never just drop one of his reporters into an unfamiliar neighborhood because, as he put it, "They wouldn't know what to do!" Consider for a moment a reporter who is assigned to cover the impact of a homeless shelter on a neighborhood. That reporter might talk to the director of the shelter, interview a few people in the area for the "man on the street" perspective, make a few calls to public officials, and then write his story. Indeed, it's quite possible he might not even visit the shelter. A story written in that fashion would get some of the facts right, but it wouldn't get all the right facts, and it almost certainly would miss the larger context — the history of the shelter in the community, the perspectives of neighborhood leaders, the attitudes of local residents toward the shelter, or of the people who will use the shelter. If we in the nonprofit sector hope to create sustained change, we cannot fall into such traps. Instead, we must make an effort to understand how people talk about, and seek to make sense of, the dilemmas in their lives. And in doing so, we must heed their personal stories, experiences, and even their use of language to gain context, meaning, and perspective. In short: we must view ourselves as operating as part of the community, rather than apart from it. Undertaking this vital work is necessary not simply because we want to produce a compelling report, have a grant renewed, or even to say that we "listened." It's necessary because a deep understanding of the communities in which we work helps to ensure that our work reflects the reality of those communities and that our responses to that reality are potent and meaningful. Consider another example. During the recent presidential contest, the Democratic nominee, John Kerry, made headlines during an all-important campaign stop in Wisconsin by calling the home of the Green Bay Packers "Lambert," instead of Lambeau, Field. On one level, this

verbal miscue may seem too insignificant to raise here, perhaps even silly; but anyone who knows Wisconsin knows that Lambeau Field is one of the most revered places in the state. If Senator Kerry could not properly pronounce its name, how, the people of Wisconsin must have wondered, can we expect him to understand our concerns about health care or education? In that moment, Senator Kerry's authority was greatly diminished. When people in a community seek out leaders with genuine authority, they look for individuals who have a deep understanding of their concerns, a sense of their values, and are crystal clear about the tradeoffs they are willing to make to bring about change. On the flip side, those who seek to claim authority in that community must be absolutely familiar with its sense of itself. They must be familiar with the type of civic places that exist in the community, the people who use those spaces, the conversations that take place in them — and the stories and insights that emerge there. Those who seek authority must also be attentive to the kinds of language people use and how people describe their concerns as well as their aspirations. And one more thing: they must be aware of their own biases and preconceived notions with respect to that community. Without this knowledge — without knowing the communities in which we work as well as we know the back of our own hands — we cannot expect to claim authority in our work. And yet gaining the knowledge to speak with authority is only the first step. We must also summon the discipline to actively use that knowledge to make our efforts more effective and sustainable. Acting with Authority The essence of acting with authority is acquiring knowledge and then putting it to work. We must infuse everything we do with such knowledge. That infusion must take place on an organizational level, so that we can leverage the mission and resources of our organization for change; and at the personal level, as a way of holding us accountable for our own words and deeds. Granted, many programs fall short of their goals and ...The essence of acting objectives because they fail to achieve this lofty ideal. At with authority is times our efforts may be based on superficial, incomplete, or acquiring knowledge and downright erroneous knowledge of a community. This can occur because we fool ourselves into believing that our efforts then putting it to work.... to gain knowledge have been meaningful and/or pursued in good faith. I once was involved with a project in a major metropolitan area. The group sponsoring the project was told by its funders that they needed to get more "input" from the public in order to have more credibility — more authority — in the eyes of the community. During a conference call one day, the project managers ran down the options under consideration. The first involved putting a three-question survey online that would allow anyone who visited the project's Web site to "participate" in the project. The second involved setting up a "talk box" downtown through which passersby could offer their own thirty-second opinion about the project. But my favorite was option number three: a reality-show-type contest in which residents would compete for a spot on the project's advisory board. Now there's an idea! Unfortunately, as ridiculous as Survivor: Philanthropy may sound, I encounter such ideas every day. And they all have one thing in common: They're informed by misguided notions of what constitutes, and what it means to exercise, authority. Such stories remind us that the activities we pursue within our organizations and through our individual leadership — in meetings and conference calls, conversations and decisions, planning sessions and program design — shape the very essence of our work and reflect the sense of purpose with which we conduct that work. Recently at the Harwood Institute we have been involved in developing a tool for public agencies that benchmarks their external efforts

with respect to acquiring public knowledge and then helps them evaluate their internal efforts to apply that knowledge. Taking this step toward true authority is not easy, and organizations of all kinds struggle with it. But as you work to gain a deeper understanding of the communities in which you work, there are questions you can ask to ensure that your organization is acting with authority rooted in that knowledge:

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Are we absolutely clear about the hopes, aspirations, concerns, and values that prevail in the community we hope to serve? Do we have the capacities — time, skills, internal mechanisms — to stay the course? Do we consistently use the knowledge we gain from the community to inform our best judgments? Do I have the personal fortitude to follow through on applying the knowledge we've gained — especially as people within the organization resist such a path, complain that it is unimportant, or simply do not see its relevance?

In my first article in this series, I wrote about the importance of being accountable to the rhythms of community life. Knowledge of a community can help you identify those rhythms. And if you understand those rhythms — if you're interested in working with them — you will be able to better determine the kinds of strategic interventions and changes that are possible in the near term, as well as those that may take longer to evolve. Such an understanding is a key step toward acting with authority. But even that is not enough. Leading with Authority The kind of authority I am proposing requires that each of us approach the community in which we work from the inside out, rather than from the outside in. We must view ourselves as part of the community, and ask ourselves what that means for our relationship to the community. In part, it means that we must see ourselves as being interdependent with the community. That in order to figure out our appropriate role in society and make informed judgments about our actions, we must develop a deep understanding of the communities in which we work. Otherwise, we may find ourselves operating in a dangerous vacuum. I'm not suggesting that expert knowledge is unimportant or not to be tapped. Just the opposite. In all of my research and experience with on-the-ground projects, I have found that ordinary people believe deeply in the professional roles of school teachers, journalists, health care professionals, nonprofit leaders, and other experts. They do not wish to usurp the place of professionals, even though it sometimes appears that way. What people want is to be more than just spectators in a community that has become a playing field for professionals; they seek instead an ongoing relationship with those professionals. True authority derives from this sort of giveand-take between a deep understanding of the community and one's own professional expertise and judgment.

...The kind of authority I am proposing requires that each of us approach the community in which we work from the inside out....

As with accountability, I return again to courage and humility — virtues far too rare in public life today. To operate with true authority, nonprofits must have the courage to change their relationship to the communities in which they work and to apply that approach to everything they do. Taking into account a deeper understanding of a community — and possibly changing your own way of thinking — also requires courage, as does putting your stake in the ground and saying, "This is where we are, and this is what we need to do to move forward."

Along with courage we must find humility, for I have yet to see real courage exercised without it. Humility — the humility to say we do not have all the answers — is essential if we are to open ourselves up to listen, learn, and share space with others. And, if we are truly humble, there will even be times when we realize that we have put our stake in the wrong place. It is my hope that sometime in that not-too-distant future, I will ask a group of people to give me the names of leaders they trust and instead of silence I'll be greeted by a flurry of names of worthy individuals, all of whom wield true authority. For this to happen, however, all of us need to reexamine the work we do and how we exercise our own power and leadership. Only through such renewed leadership can we hope to imbue our work and organizations with lasting sustainability. And only then can we make haste with the unfinished work that remains to be done. 12/21/04 Richard C. Harwood is founder and president of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, which is dedicated to helping people in communities imagine and act for the public good. Over the past fifteen years, Mr. Harwood has become a leading authority on improving America's communities, raising standards of political conduct, and re-engaging citizens with today's most complex and controversial public issues. As part of this work, he developed the Harwood Public Leadership Schools to provide leaders with the sensibilities and practices discussed in this article.

Philanthropy News Digest – The Sustainable Nonprofit The Sustainable Nonprofit series examines critical issues related to nonprofit sustainability through the eyes of nonprofit leaders, practitioners, and consultants

Accountability and the Sustainable Nonprofit by Richard C. Harwood In my home state, the Maryland Association of Nonprofits recently announced that their voluntary "standards for excellence" program is going national. That's a good sign. The program requires participating organizations to fill a five-inch-thick binder with documentation about their governing, financial management, and fundraising practices. Organizations that demonstrate their compliance with the program's standards are given permission to use the association's seal of excellence in their materials and on their Web sites. My own organization has engaged in the process with gusto, and such programs are gaining popularity as the nonprofit sector faces a growing chorus of voices demanding greater accountability. But creating organizations that are not only accountable but able to sustain themselves involves more than complying with a set of standards, however well intentioned, and displaying a "Good Housekeeping" seal. It demands a fundamental shift in how nonprofit leaders view accountability. If we are to avoid taking our organizations down the wrong path, we need to pursue an accounting of ourselves. Unfortunately, discussions about accountability usually focus on external forces and internal procedures. Many of us persevere through detailed checklists to determine whether our organizations are meeting various standards of accountability: Are we fulfilling the goals of our funders? Does our organization meet particular financial-management standards? Is our board structured properly? These and other efforts are vitally important for any nonprofit that strives to be both successful and sustainable. But they do not make up the whole of accountability. A significant piece of accountability must come from within each of us. Each of us must ask, "What promises have I made to people? What claims can I make about my work? Does it have integrity? What about my organization? Is it truly and consistently serving the public good — and if not, why not?" Asking such fundamental questions helps nonprofit leaders to focus on what they can realistically achieve in their work. It reminds them of their responsibility to the communities they serve. And it's a powerful way to reveal an organization's capacity to create change and encourage each member of the organization to examine his or her own personal capacity.

...A significant piece of accountability must come from within each of us.....

Ultimately, we are all in the business of change. But what are the implications of accounting for ourselves? I believe there are four important factors about which we must be forever conscious: the rhythms of community life; definitions of progress versus success; notions of

time; and legacy. Of course, there are other factors. But these four affect every change effort, even though they may sometimes be forgotten or hidden among more common measures of accountability. When we are aware of these factors, we invariably make our efforts more sustainable because we become more accountable — to both our community and ourselves. Factor #1: Rhythms I use the word rhythms to refer to the stages of a community's life. My own organization, in a report entitled Community Rhythms, has found that there are five key stages in a community's life: the Waiting Place, Impasse, Catalytic, Growth, and Sustain/Renew. Many efforts designed to bring about change are based on the assumption that the community in question is in the "growth" stage — a stage characterized by respected leaders, strong networks, positive norms, and civic-minded organizations. But most communities are not in the "growth" stage; they're in an earlier stage where their capacity for change is much less developed. As a result, change in these communities often plays out in all-too-familiar fashion: An organization will announce a new program to great fanfare. It gives the program three years to produce change. When, after three years, people begin to realize that the promised change has not materialized, disappointment sets in and people lose hope. Those in charge are chided and told to try harder. It may seem like farce, but something resembling it happens more often than you'd think. Efforts that assume that networks already exist which can jump-start and sustain change in a given community, or even that there exists among the people in that community a commonly held idea of a path for change, are almost certainly doomed to failure. Honest assessments of what is possible in a community begin with an honest appraisal of the stage from which that community is starting down the path of change. A community's passage through the five stages can be accelerated, but the stages themselves cannot be ignored or skipped. Factor #2: Progress vs. Success Accounting for ourselves also requires being aware of another tension: progress versus success. This has to do with our conception of outcomes and what it means to move forward and generate change. I have consistently found in all kinds of organizations — whether foundations, civic groups, or nonprofits — that the working assumption concerning outcomes is one of success. In other words, either you hit the mark or you don't. In reality, of course, none of us can do our work in this way, nor will any community ever make significant progress if this is the prevailing paradigm. Saddling ourselves with an all-or-nothing idea of success blinds us to the steps we must take on the path toward real change, as well as the knowledge that we stand to gain along the way. In place of the idea of success as a hit-or-miss affair, we ...Saddling ourselves with should instead consider our aspirations — not wishful dreams an all-or-nothing idea of or a wild vision, but what we truly hope to achieve through success blinds us to the our efforts. What are the milestones that will help us understand whether or not we are moving toward that goal? I steps we must take on the path toward real once had the opportunity to work in South Carolina with school and community leaders from four of the lowestchange.... performing districts in the state who were looking for ways to improve their local schools. I asked them to identify what they wanted to achieve in seeking such improvements. One of the goals they mentioned was the desire to turn their local schools into the "highest performing" schools in the state over the next three years. But they also described for me the context in which they hoped to achieve this goal: Many of the school buildings in the four districts were dilapidated; many parents never showed up for teacher-parent conferences; kids went to school hungry and undernourished. They told me their communities did not value education, that through ways big and small they were

signaling to the children in those communities that attending school wasn't important. Given the conditions they described, I asked myself:

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Realistically, how fast might change come about in these communities? What, if any, building blocks for change are already in place? What might give people in these communities a sense of possibility and hope to sustain their efforts, especially when the going gets tough?

I have found that when people inflate their expectations, they end up accomplishing less than they could have by adopting a more realistic view of the situation. They overreach and overpromise and, in doing so, end up undermining their efforts. In the worst cases, they distort what needs to be done, when, and by whom — and end up producing very little. It seems to me a moral imperative to avoid this approach. Every child is entitled to a quality education. The question is, what steps have to be taken in order to deliver on that promise? Grand plans and lofty rhetoric must be checked against real results. We must constantly look at ourselves and ask whether the actions we are taking are right and necessary. Doing so puts us in a position to become more, not less, accountable for making progress and helps us to sustain our efforts over time.

...When people inflate their expectations, they end up accomplishing less than they could have by adopting a more realistic view of the situation....

Factor #3: Time All this talk about change underscores the need for us to think about time differently. The notion of time — its literal playing out — is an acute challenge to all of us, whether in our dayto-day work or in our personal lives. In our society people tend to adopt a stopwatch mentality, an approach that can drive them to feel overworked and personally stretched. Every thing we do is a race against time. This same dynamic can push us to design programs and pursue goals that we know are unattainable but which sound good, position us well, and/or help us to raise needed dollars. Then we — and others — wonder why so many people are skeptical, or even cynical, about efforts undertaken in the name of the public good. In similar fashion, the very expectations that the public, funders, colleagues, and others impose on us can be downright onerous. It often seems as if people engaged in change efforts are expected to solve the most vexing public dilemmas overnight. Funding for organizations expires just when programs have been ramped up and are beginning to gain traction. My own organization has found itself in this situation a number of times, and our experience is not unique. Money becomes a proxy for time. Most of us assume that because we are consumed by the demands of time, we are accountable to them as well. And in some ways we are. None of us can escape the realities of our day-to-day existence. But a blind allegiance to the stopwatch is not only unhealthy, it's dangerous: The essence of time — how things really unfold and what it takes to be part of a larger cycle of change — totally escapes us.

...a blind allegiance to the stopwatch is not only unhealthy, it's dangerous....

Factor #4: Legacy The idea of a larger cycle of change leads me to my last point: the notion of legacy. What do we want to leave behind as a result of our work? Often, the talk of legacy, if it is broached at all, is a matter of personal gain — how to position oneself in a field or embellish one's results. Such talk often is found in annual reports.

Less often do we think about legacy in ways that place ourselves and our work in a larger context. The simple fact is, there have always been people who were willing to wrestle with the issues with which we wrestle, and there will always be people who follow in our footsteps and work to address the same issues that engage us today. The notion of legacy embodies the other three factors I have mentioned. In order to have a sense of a community's rhythms, you have to be willing to see the work that has come before. Your progress — and what you hope will be the lasting impact of your work — must be viewed in the larger context of what is possible. An appreciation of one's legacy also helps to put time in the proper perspective, placing your work within the unfolding and never ending story of a community. The Challenge of Leadership Ultimately, the challenge of accountability is a challenge of leadership. And leadership requires two qualities that are enormously important but often difficult to integrate into our lives: courage and humility. Courage enables those who possess it to step forward and ask the questions that need to be asked, to hold themselves accountable for their promises, actions, and the progress that they are, or are not, making in their work. Humility requires us to acknowledge that we do not have all the answers — we are neither the first nor will be the last to take on the work we do — and that real change takes longer than the limited time we are usually able to devote to a project. So, what is a true "seal of excellence"? The good work of the Maryland Association of Nonprofits is part of it. But there's another part, one that often is obfuscated in our rush to be seen as being accountable. That part is much harder to quantify. We must account for ourselves, something that requires each of us to exercise constant vigilance and sensitivity. It is a promise we should all make and try our best to keep. If we can keep that promise, we may even find a new path to sustainability for our organizations and the work they do. There is no better time to begin than now. 9/14/04 Richard C. Harwood is founder and president of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, which is dedicated to helping people in communities imagine and act for the public good. Over the past fifteen years, Mr. Harwood has become a leading authority on improving America's communities, raising standards of political conduct, and re-engaging citizens with today's most complex and controversial public issues. As part of this work, he developed the Harwood Public Leadership Schools to provide leaders with the sensibilities and practices discussed in this article.

Philanthropy News Digest – The Sustainable Nonprofit The Sustainable Nonprofit series examines critical issues related to nonprofit sustainability through the eyes of nonprofit leaders, practitioners, and consultants

Authenticity and the Sustainable Nonprofit by Richard C. Harwood Before Dan Rather stepped down as anchor of the CBS Evening News, capping an impressive though at times controversial career, he told Ken Auletta of the New Yorker how he wanted to be remembered. "The one thing I hope and I believe," said Rather, "is that even my enemies think I'm authentic." But what does it mean to be authentic? After all, the word is invoked so often these days one can't help but wonder what constitutes authenticity, especially in a society that works so hard to manufacture it. This is the final article in a series of three by Richard C. Harwood that explores the 3 A's of Public Life:

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Accountability — Setting realistic expectations for change and pursuing actions that have meaning for people. Authority — Possessing knowledge rooted in the community and infusing that knowledge throughout your work. Authenticity — Reflecting the reality of people's lives in your words and actions.

Together, they form a set of touchstones for the practices necessary to create greater sustainability in nonprofit organizations and their work.

The issue that dogged Rather in his final months as anchor of the Evening News was the inauthentic documents he used for a 60 Minutes report on President Bush's National Guard service — this despite the fact that Rather had labored mightily throughout his long career to be authentic, generating in the process a whole collection of "Ratherisms," homespun sayings such as the one about the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan's opponent for the U.S. Senate, who, said Rather, had "about as much business in this race as a moose in a phone booth." Although the veteran newsman's quaint phrases struck a chord with some viewers, former CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite recently commented that his successor in the anchor's chair "gave the

impression of playing a role." Authenticity often is confused with a kind of posturing designed to foster goodwill and trust. Yet, as Rather's case teaches us, such efforts ultimately ring hollow and produce little more than cynicism in people. That's a shame, because the importance of authenticity in our society cannot be overestimated. In practically every effort the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation has undertaken during the past seventeen years — whether our focus was the improvement of journalism and politics, working with foundations and community-based organizations to improve their effectiveness, or attempts to address specific public challenges such as education or the environment — authenticity, or lack thereof, emerged as a key factor in determining whether leaders and organizations were able to muster the credibility and trust necessary to bring about sustainable change. ...authenticity emerged as a key factor in determining whether leaders were able to muster credibility and trust....

The Need for Authenticity There is, I believe, a crisis of authenticity in society today. It stems in large part from the belief among citizens that the reality of their lives is not reflected in the stories covered by the news media, in the rhetoric and action of their leaders, or in the initiatives undertaken by the nonprofit sector. Over a decade ago, my organization released Meaningful Chaos, a report that examined how people form relationships with public concerns. One of the report's most significant findings was that people formed attachments to such concerns when they felt that three standards of authenticity were being met. The standards went far beyond people merely insisting that their own personal prejudices be reaffirmed by what they saw, read, or heard:

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People want discussions of public concerns to reflect a base sense of reality — the context of their lives, what is at issue for them and society, their daily language — something that current news coverage and public discourse often fail to do; People want information sources to reflect an understanding of their experiences and values — and yet such experiences and values are often dismissed as "soft," "irrelevant," or "unreliable" in today's strategic and highly competitive world; People want to be given the story straight — they want to be squared with — but such candor is increasingly rare in public life.

In the years since we published the study, I have experienced time and again just how frustrated people are because their sense of reality is not accurately reflected in so much of what passes for public life; more to the point, too often their sense of reality is distorted by leaders and organizations primarily interested in advancing their own agendas. I am now in the process of finishing a book, Hope Unraveled, that traces the changing relationship of citizens to politics and public life over the past fifteen years. The book reveals, in essence, the story of people's retreat from the public realm. There's an old country song whose refrain goes, "I can't see me in your eyes anymore." That's how people feel when then look at public life — they cannot see or hear themselves. The fact that people are turning away from politics should not come as a surprise; that people are also retreating from their own communities and, in some cases, even from their own neighbors should. And the consequences of that are real and sobering. If people once gave leaders the benefit of the doubt on public matters, now they want those leaders to prove the worthiness of their causes and actions before they will believe them. That kind of showme attitude can have a corrosive effect on society, leading people to question at every turn the veracity of public statements and endeavors, and to personally waver in their own commitment to the public good.

When one purchases a collectable or antique, it is often accompanied by a certificate of authenticity. These flimsy sheets of paper, and our faith in the person who provides them, give us some comfort that we are acquiring something that is authentic. But there are no such certificates for public-sector organizations or leaders. Instead, it is up to each of us to earn such authenticity in the eyes of those with whom we work and serve.

...If people once gave leaders the benefit of the doubt, now they want those leaders to prove the worthiness of their causes and actions....

More Than Words One oft-used technique in the pursuit of authenticity is to manipulate words to create a simulated connection with people or to conjure up an appearance that hides or disguises reality. Take local news organizations, which routinely try to establish a connection with viewers by adopting taglines such as "On Your Side!" or "We're Connected to You!" These approaches inevitably ring hollow, as people come to realize that the final product fails to deliver on the slogan's promise. I have been in scores of newsrooms where the marketing department has created a new tagline only to have the news-gathering operation maintain the status quo - a status quo rooted in a presentation that rarely reflects the real issues with which people must grapple. Similarly, how many times have you visited a community in which banners adorning streetlights proclaim, "We're Back!" And yet, if you were to walk down Main Street and interview people, how many people would tell you a different truth? This kind of manufactured authenticity not only makes people wary of communications efforts in general, it also reinforces people's ingrained reflex to discount the host of messages they hear and see in the public realm. Messages become interpreted as efforts to manipulate, with honest, forthright communication the ultimate victim. Here's another example. Short funding cycles, not to mention the shrinking pool of available funding, often produce the temptation within nonprofit organizations to overstate success. Each of us has probably found ourselves in a situation where we stretch the facts, embellish results, and toot our own horns, all in the hopes of securing the next dollar or a funder's approval. Deep in our hearts, we know that such an approach is antithetical to true authenticity. But because we've been conditioned to believe that short-term results can be produced by pursuing such a path, we do it anyway. Falling Back on Expertise Another tactic used to increase authenticity is to appropriate expert opinion and jargon as a way to convince others that we understand an issue and have a solution. But this can backfire, too. In the Harwood Institute's on-the-ground projects and research on public school reform, we've often had people tell us that they don't understand the public school debate, let alone engage in it. Why? Because leaders engaged in the debate — whether researchers, professional educators, or politicians — tend to resort to professionalized language that leaves people feeling cold and excluded, as if public discussions about schools were wholly unrelated to the education of children. The same scenario plays out on a multitude of issues every single day. The response of a woman in Indianapolis whom we interviewed for a nationwide study is quite revealing. When asked about the use of professional language in public life, she said, "I think first, you shoot all the experts." When asked to elaborate, she explained, "They have a whole language, and it has a lot of letters in it, and I don't know what those letters are, and they have a lot of these things they talk about, and normal people don't understand that." In an effort to stem the use of expert language, some initiatives now appropriate what I would call "public language." One familiar example is the reliance on the phrase "town hall meeting." All sorts

of organizations now sponsor town halls as a way to signal to people that their voices will be heard and that the sponsoring organization cares — a code word signifying authenticity — about them. But how many town halls have you seen or attended that amount to nothing more than "tell and sell" sessions in which a panel of so-called experts on stage speaks at people? Or where people line up behind a microphone for their one minute of discourse? Or where people actually do talk to each other, but where their opinions and insights are not substantively integrated into a program's design and implementation? To care about something means to give it your serious attention. But if we do not give serious attention to the voices and perspectives that people bring to a town hall meeting, we surely will deepen their cynicism about public life, causing them to retreat further from any effort that tries to engage them. Ultimately, our actions speak much louder than our words. The Whole Story From my earliest discussions with people about authenticity in public life, the theme that has surfaced most consistently is the sense people have that they are not being squared with and are receiving only part of the story. Certainly this theme comes through loud and clear when people are referring to political leaders and news media coverage of politics; but it is present, too, when people talk about nonprofits and nonprofit leaders. "Spinning" public events has become commonplace in our society, to the point where a new definition of the word has entered our vocabulary. In the Harwood Public Leadership School, participants read a case study on how a nonprofit leader should respond to a public event that has the potential to adversely affect the organization. Time and again, session participants' reflex is to "spin" a response to the news reporter who calls asking for a comment. And yet, upon further reflection, most participants say that their initial response would compromise their authenticity in the eyes of their constituents and community.

...the theme that surfaces st consistently is the sense ple have that they are not ng squared with....

One well-known cable news anchor calls his program the "no-spin zone," even though his program is largely about spin. He's not alone, of course. I remember reading a news article in the Washington Post during the 2004 presidential campaign that showed how the two major candidates had taken different facts about the economy and twisted them to present different meanings, even though both sets of facts (as the article pointed out) were true. But the candidates were not interested in the "truth" — only in using parts of it to pursue their own political agendas. By now, we have all become familiar with the damaging effect such inauthentic efforts have on people's trust and confidence in political leaders, politics, and public life. Closer to home, a similar effect can be seen in the way our municipal officials, education professionals, and business leaders talk about the revitalization of our communities, the state of our public education system, or the health of the environment. For most people, authenticity only enters the equation when they are treated to the "whole story" — when, for example, a politician or public official says, "This is the deal, and this is what I believe we should do." Then, and only then, are people able to understand the context of the discussion and the reasons being offered for moving in a certain direction. Then, and only then, can people judge for themselves what needs to be done. Then, and only then, will people trust their leaders, even when they disagree with them. In one of our studies, a woman from Little Rock described what she needed to hear from a leader in order to credit that person with greater authenticity: "If [a leader] would admit that the country was in bad shape....And if he got the facts from people, rather than from his advisors...and if he came out here and said, 'Ok, we've all discussed it, I have listened, and this is what I think we should do. And we're going to do it' — then I would pay attention. Otherwise, I'm out of here."

"Out of here" — that is what so many people have said, through words and actions, about their relationship to public life and politics. The sense of authenticity is simply missing. To be authentic means to care; to care suggests one holds a kind of affection for something or someone. If we could re-develop our affection for public life, we would make sure our actions were truly authentic. We would hold ourselves to a higher standard. And we would walk away from certain activities that might look good on paper but which we know fail any reasonable test of authenticity. The Path to Authenticity Dan Rather's authenticity can and will be debated for some time. But in the meantime, I am reminded of his most famous signoff. For many years during his career, and at the close of his final broadcast, Rather concluded with the simple declaration, "Courage." ...To be authentic means to Courage, as I have noted in previous articles in this series, is an care; to care suggests one essential part of the kind of public leadership I am proposing. In holds a kind of affection for these articles I have focused on what I call the 3A's — authority, accountability, and authenticity — all of which require public leaders something or someone.... to summon the courage to stand up and declare their intentions to build a stronger, more vibrant, more sustainable public sphere. Such declarations will no doubt be met with resistance from those who want quick solutions and easy answers. No matter; the people doing the building must persevere. Along with courage, leaders must approach the public with a good deal of humility. Humility teaches us that we do not have all the answers, that we must actively engage others and learn to listen, and that the solutions to problems we propose may need to change as we learn more over time. It is nearly impossible to exercise courage without humility, for how else would we know what to do and say? Over the last generation or so, too many people's hopes with regard to public life and politics have come unraveled. If we are to re-engage people in public life, ensure that our own efforts are effective and sustainable, and restore hope in our politics and public life, it is essential that we make authenticity a touchstone in all our efforts. At the end of the day, words and deeds count more than we know. Richard C. Harwood is founder and president of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, which is dedicated to helping people in communities imagine and act for the public good. Over the past fifteen years, Mr. Harwood has become a leading authority on improving America's communities, raising standards of political conduct, and re-engaging citizens with today's most complex and controversial public issues. As part of this work, he developed the Harwood Public Leadership Schools to provide leaders with the sensibilities and practices discussed in this article. His thoughts on current issues in politics and public life can be found on his Redeeming Hope weblog. 4/19/05