> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.jeffcobeacon.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # I Was Thinking . . . What Kind of Community Are We Asking People to Lead? - URL: https://www.jeffcobeacon.com/i-was-thinking-what-kind-of-community-are-we-asking-people-to-lead/ - Published: 2026-10-13T21:01:38.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-13T21:01:38.000Z - Description: Why do our leaders keep leaving? - Author: Scott Rogers - Tags: Columns, I Was Thinking, Community Leadership, Scott Rogers I had an odd reaction to some news the other day: I chuckled. There wasn't anything funny about it—actually, quite the opposite. Someone I respect told me he was leaving, and my immediate response was a little laugh. Not because I was happy about it, but because somewhere in my head I think I had already decided: of course he is. That night, the chuckle turned into anger. I was pissed. I went through all of the reasons this shouldn't be happening, all of the things that could have gone differently and all of the people who could have done something differently. By the next morning, though, most of the anger was gone. What replaced it bothered me more—“What's the point?” It wasn't despair exactly; it was exhaustion. I am tired of watching change get chewed up and spit out, only to find ourselves back at the beginning, having the same conversations with slightly different people. And that got me thinking about resignation. We talk a lot about the problems facing this community. I certainly do. Housing is one of my favorites. We don't have enough of it; much of what we have is too expensive, and employers struggle to find workers who can afford to live here. But lately I've started wondering whether housing has also become a convenient answer. Can't find employees? Housing. Can't recruit somebody? Housing. Can't retain younger families? Housing. Okay. What if we built it? What if, through some miracle, we woke up tomorrow with enough attainable housing? Would people come here, put down roots, build careers, start businesses and stay? I think more of them would—Housing matters. I'm just not convinced anymore that it's the whole question. Because sometimes people do come. They take the job. They move here. They commit themselves to the place. They see something that could be better and start trying to make it better. And then we put them through the grinder. I talk about the value and need for leadership fairly regularly. I've wondered why more people don't step forward, why organizations struggle to find board members, why government has difficulty attracting people willing to take on difficult jobs and why the same relatively small collection of people seems to appear whenever something needs doing. I've generally assumed the answer was that we needed more leaders. Lately I've been wondering why in the hell anyone would want to be one. Leadership, at least the kind we say we want, requires someone to believe that something different is possible. You have to look at what exists, imagine what could exist instead and then be willing to say it out loud. The trouble is that somewhere along the way, I think we have become very comfortable with "no." Sometimes no is exactly the right answer. Bad ideas exist. So do unintended consequences. Opposition matters because the person objecting may see something the rest of us missed. But there is a difference between listening to opposition and allowing opposition to rule. We've seen a handful of people use the courts to stop a state-mandated comprehensive planning process affecting an entire community. Whatever you think of the underlying argument, there is something worth thinking about in that imbalance. A community can spend years planning, holding meetings, taking public comment and trying to decide where it wants to go, while a very small number of people may have the ability to stop the whole thing. I'm wondering what happens to a community when stopping something becomes easier than doing something. The person proposing something new carries a pretty heavy burden. They have to explain what they want to do, how it will work, what it will cost, who it will affect and what could go wrong. The person saying no only has to find the thing that might go wrong. And there is always something that might go wrong. I've never seen a perfect plan. I've never met a leader who didn't make mistakes. I've never encountered a development without tradeoffs, or an economic-development idea guaranteed to succeed. If possibility has to prove itself against every objection while the status quo simply gets to exist, the status quo has a remarkable advantage. After a while, I suppose we learn from that. We learn which ideas aren't worth bringing up and which fights aren't worth having. Another study starts to feel safer than a decision. We trim a proposal here and there until everyone can live with it, even if nobody particularly wants it anymore. Eventually we learn to say, "That's just how it is here." I've always hated that sentence, but I'm beginning to understand its appeal. It's peaceful. There is no disappointment in expecting nothing to change. That made me think about a phrase I haven't thought about in a long time: the audacity of hope. Hope really can be audacious. I don't mean the bumper-sticker version—I mean the kind that causes someone to put their reputation behind an idea, stand in front of a room full of skeptical people and say, "I think we can do this differently." There is risk in that; resignation is much safer. Maybe that's what I've been watching without quite having a name for it; not hopelessness, not apathy, but something quieter—learned resignation. We've seen the movie before, so we think we know how it ends. Somebody will complain. Somebody might sue. A board will get nervous. The proposal will be changed, delayed or studied again. Eventually, the person pushing it gets tired. After enough trips through that cycle, why would anyone volunteer for another one? Maybe asking where all the leaders are is the wrong question. Maybe we should be asking what kind of community we are asking people to lead. If we want people willing to imagine something better, there has to be room for them to try. There has to be room to get part of it wrong. There has to be room for disagreement without every disagreement becoming a veto. Otherwise, people learn not to lead, but to manage. The rest of us learn not to expect much more from them. And those of us who do keep showing up learn to protect ourselves with a little chuckle when somebody tells us they're leaving. Of course they are. That's the part I can't quite shake. I don't want that chuckle to become wisdom. I don't want "that's just how it is here" to be the lesson experience teaches us. And I don't want "what's the point?" to become my answer when somebody asks whether something could be better. I don't know what the answer is—I'm still thinking about it. But I wonder if, before we ask where our next generation of leaders will come from, we ought to spend a little more time thinking about the community we're asking them to lead. Because hope may be audacious, and I'm beginning to think resignation is what you get when you put hope through the grinder. David Balliff, you are respected and appreciated, and I will miss you greatly.