Interview with David Carter
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In our second episode of the Voices of Local Leaders series, we interview David Carter, one of the facilitators for the ‘Neighborhood Leadership Program’ (NLP) from the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. After 30 years working as a project manager, David decided to shift his career and dedicate his efforts to help local leaders make a difference in their communities. From being the professional that was expected to have all the answers to embracing the unexpected challenges of community development, David’s journey has been centered in active listening and learning. Not by chance, both attitudes constitute two of the main pillars of the NLP program. But they are not fundamental only for creative, community problem-solving. They also embody essential aspects of critical thinking and the scientific mindset we foster here at Science Yourself. We truly believe that David’s experience and perspectives illustrate how everyone can benefit from an empathetic, scientifically literate community!
Interview Transcription
“My name is David Carter. I was trained as an architect and practiced as a project manager in the field for 30 years. And I always felt there was something missing. About 25 years ago I got involved with the Community Organizing effort, the bases of which were one-on-one meetings with people. That awoke in me something that was missing in my professional work. In 2008, when the economy tanked and I had to find a new way of supporting myself, I realized that that is what was calling to me. So, I got trained as a leadership coach and began working with groups on how to improve their impact and what internal work they needed to do to be more effective. That led me to a collaboration with Rev Kev Ewing, who I actually met through the community organizing work. He and I (he for a long time, me on-and-off) have been working with a program called the ‘Neighborhood Grant Program.’ We put our heads together and engaged Lee Cruz (of the Community Foundation [for Greater New Haven]) to shift to, rather than a grant program with a little leadership training, a leadership program with some grant money. Which was a new kind of work for them; they usually just give money to non-profit organizations to let them do whatever they are doing. This was kind of seeding leadership and good work in the community. We realized that’s where both our hearts were and where the more effective use of our time was. So, we’ve been doing this together now in this format for six years. And we’re still learning. These intentional one-on-one conversations really woke me up to something. I’m still motivated by wanting to share that experience broadly and I think that has an impact on the way we live together.”
[Science Yourself] A great focus of your leadership training program is learning from the community before taking action. Why do you think that is important?
[David Carter] The traditional top-down model of community development has a bunch of experts doing a needs assessment and getting all their data together to say: “Well, these are the resources that are needed and here is how we can impose them on the community.” I think that is a broken model! The approach that we foster in the ‘Neighborhood Leadership Program’ is a relation model, where people who want to make a difference (and that’s people who self-selected for the program), we encourage them to go and talk to people one-on-one in the community to find out what is really going on, what are the real issues, what are the real opportunities, and what might be needed to make the change that they want. It gives them kind of narrative data, which I think it is more powerful. At the same time that you are listening to what is emerging [in the conversation] and what is needed, you are also building connections.
I think the shift was clear for me when I let go of my project manager role, where it was my job to have all of the details, organize them, make flow charts and spreadsheets, and have all the answers. If you think you have the answers, you can’t listen to what the problem is. So, it's really relaxing that, being grounded in what is important to you and what your purpose is, but then being humble and flexible, and listening. And it shows up in all aspects of my life now, my interpersonal relations with my family, meeting people professionally and the coaching that I do. So, it’s a different mindset. Sometimes people talk about you having an executing mindset and a learning mindset, and they are different. I think they overlap all the time and, at their best, they support each other. You can't really execute without learning, and you can’t learn without executing. So, the pilot is an example of forcing yourself into an execution mode but still within a learning framework.
“If you think you have the answers, you can’t listen to what the problem is”
[Science Yourself] What is the idea behind the pilot projects? Why do you think it is important to test in practice some of the assumptions about the community and the services to be provided?
[David Carter] The pilot [projects] are specifically oriented to trying to get some deeper information about something that you have seen in the community. So, you get to go a little deeper, see whether the way you understand it actually shows up. Many people coming through the program who have ideas about solving some of the health problems that show up in poor communities, [such as] obesity, diabetes, and bad nutrition, they think “I’ll just get the community good information about what is healthy food and where to get it.” And they have consistently learned that information is not enough. When they start interacting with the people, teaching them to cook, or having the kids involved (so that the kids are seeing their parents in a different way), [that’s] the social shift that has to happen to support change in nutritional stuff. That’s recurrent; pretty much every year, there is one or two people who are dealing with that and have that same a-ha moment.
The other important part of the pilot [projects] is for the participant to overcome their fears or concerns, or build their ability to be present to what needs to happen, to lead an event, if that’s what it is. It’s a chance for them to step into what they said they want to do. And there is enormous personal learning there, as well as community learning about what is actually working.
[Science Yourself] How do you support participants when these critical assessments reveal that they were wrong in their assumptions or their plan of action?
[David Carter] “Take a deep breath” is a big part of that! Part of it is normalizing failure. If you are trying something new, fail early and often, so you can learn quicker. That does not necessarily soothe the heart of the person who was disappointed. The people did not show up, or the people did not act the way they expected them to. And that is one of the reasons the supporting teams are so important, because, when the participant is carrying out their pilot, they have people who have been with them through the journey of developing it and can help them understand it and learn from anything that goes wrong or surprises that show up.
“If you are trying something new, fail early and often, so you can learn quicker”
[Science Yourself] What are the supporting teams? What do you think is the main benefit of these teams?
[David Carter] Over the course of the several months of the program, when you are working closely with two or three other people every week on what each of you is bringing or trying to do, you develop skills of talking about your program, you develop skills about listening to another person talking about their program, and how to be an effective listener that is not giving the other person the answer but suggesting things or asking questions. I think those skills get developed in that team and, this year [2020], most of those connections persisted beyond the program and people are still in touch with each other, which is that community fabric part. So, it’s people who know you and whom you trust being a sounding board for your ideas and who learned to see deeper into what you are doing (not just the project) and how it relates to your deep values, your deep goals, and what grounds you.
“If you are stuck in trying to understand or solve a problem, change your perspective”
[Science Yourself] What would be your advice to someone who is fascinated by community engagement and is seriously thinking about becoming an instructor to help community leaders move forward with their projects?
[David Carter] My architecture school professors taught me (which I wish I had learned it earlier) to ‘never get good at something that you don’t like to do!’ Because you will end up doing it, because people will find it useful, and you won't get the chance to explore the things where you can be more effective. Another actually lesson from architectural work was ‘if you are stuck in trying to understand or solve a problem, change your perspective.’ So, in architecture, if I was studying a design in plain view and it wasn’t working, I would look at the elevation view or the section view to see how the parts were relating on a different axis. Be aware of the perspective that you are taking when you are working on something and be able to shift, so you can give a different understanding of it. Part of the one-on-one conversations is that you are hearing other people’s views on the things that you are concerned about.
The change of letting go of needing to be the person that has the answers, kinda being grounded in my intent (‘Why am I doing this thing? What is my purpose here?’), and then, letting go of my preconceptions, so I can be present and pay attention to what is actually happening. Realizing that I didn’t have to have the answer, and I didn’t even have to be instrumental in the answer, I could just hold space for the person who was trying to create something.
