In January 2022, Carrie Fox set out on a blog series called Finding the Words because she had something to say. By the end of the year, you were doing more than listening. You were deeply in this work with her. And because of you, we’re keeping this series going, every week through 2023 and beyond. Our promise: Carrie will keep delivering these essays each Wednesday morning to further support your work as acommunicator for change. Your promise: keep telling us how these insights are impacting and influencing your work.
Here are some of the most regularly shared columns. If you like what you see, then subscribe here.
Close to Home.
When everything feels like it's breaking, look closer to home. Local news may not be the loudest voice in your feed, but local news will tell you what's actually happening where you live. That's the grounding we need in an information emergency, and it's worth investing in.
Live Like a Citizen.
In past columns, I've written about the stitching role that each of us can play in reweaving our civic fabric, one thread at a time. Eric gives that work a name and a set of daily practices to go with it. As he told me, living like a citizen in small, deliberate ways is what will carry us through this season. It's also how we'll come out stronger, more united, and more engaged on the other side.
The Truth Is...
Dolly had convictions, and she was more political than she let on. But she was also deeply understanding that multiple truths can exist. She once explained her refusal to take sides by saying, "I respect my audience too much for that." That's an approach worth borrowing when seeking to build deeper trust: respect first, so that the people who hold a different truth can still feel welcome at your table.
Something Else is Possible.
Communities that welcome tend to grow stronger, for everyone who lives there. But, as you might imagine, the contract only holds if we all keep it. Civitas can't be handed off as someone else's job. It needs to show up in how we greet the new family on our street, in who we invite to our tables, and in what we say when someone is being made to feel they don't belong.
Ode To Joy.
Joy won't clear its own space on your calendar unless you choose to have it there. Notice the day, find the good, change your tune when needed, and then share it. I can think of no better communications practice as we enter this new season.
It's Not About You.
Look again at those prompts and notice what they share: not one of them is about YOU. Each points to the audience, and as a result, directs your energy where it matters most. Just as I shared in this post from earlier this year, the most important shift any of us can make as communicators is from "how am I doing?" to "what does my audience need, and how do I want to make them feel?"
It’s Yours for a Season
The people closest to AI technology are the most concerned about it. Our job as leaders is to do what we know is needed in this moment: to set the standards that the giants have yet to set for us, and to decide how we'll use AI and on whose terms.
Consider THIS Your Prompt.
The people closest to AI technology are the most concerned about it. Our job as leaders is to do what we know is needed in this moment: to set the standards that the giants have yet to set for us, and to decide how we'll use AI and on whose terms.
An Observation.
Observation is essential to communication, but it requires one thing we're often unwilling to compromise on: setting down devices long enough to process what we're seeing, what we're hearing, and how we can make sense of the information around us to inform our own actions.
Shared Language.
That's the power of shared language in a complicated moment. It's not about how many words we use, but how we use them to advance the common good. Tyler described these short and powerful poems as working "at the atomic level of communication," the smallest unit, the place where meaning is made or lost. The words we use to describe our hardest challenges, he said, can shape our relationship to those moments.
This Too Shall Pass.
Every now and then, I come across a relic — some flash of a time gone by that brings me right back to who I was in that earlier moment. Just like that, and I'm the clumsy middle school kid again. Or the young and struggling professional, the new mom, the budding business owner…
Usually, the feeling emerges when I rediscover a photo on my iPhone. Memories from this day, in some long-ago year. Sometimes it's not a photo at all, but a smell, or a place, or the sound of a voice.
Are You Busy or Building?
The next time a day leaves you feeling empty, resist reaching for a longer to-do list, and ask a better question instead; from "What did I get done today?" to "What did I/we move forward?"
You may not be able to check off as many items on your list, but I guarantee you will have made incremental progress on something much more meaningful.
When Less is More.
Organizations that break through are rarely the loudest or the quietest. They're the ones brave enough to find the balance: to say what's true, make it matter now, and say it in a way that's worth repeating, and acting on.
The Best-Kept Secret?
Ah, the best-kept secret. It's a phrase I've repeatedly heard from nonprofit organizations, often as a point of pride and a call for marketing help. If ‘best-kept secret’ is a phrase you’ve used to describe your nonprofit, I’m going to suggest you retire it. Because the term may be limiting your organization's ability to become more well-known.
How's Your Heart?
Her questions are different by design because they invite an actual answer. Some might say Dianne’s approach is just a warmer way to start a conversation, but the longer I've gotten to know her, the more I've come to believe it's something bigger.
In times like these, with all their distraction and division, asking a real question and sticking around for the real answer is a radical act of communication.
"Is America Possible?”
In my office hangs a framed quote from the writer and activist Audre Lorde: "It's not our differences that divide us. It's our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences."
I put that quote on my wall years ago and read it daily. First spoken in September 1979 while Lorde was at a conference in New York, the words remain relevant and thought-provoking for me today.
Our differences don't divide us.
Or do they?
Leave It Better Than You Found It.
You don't build a conscious culture by announcing it. You build it by living it, in the small moments, until the standard becomes contagious. Win, lose, or draw, we can all choose to leave it better than we found it.
Five Minutes.
Truth is: it's never really about your five minutes. It's about whether your audience will want to keep listening after your five minutes are up. So, go in prepared to make the most of those few minutes, and your audience will soon stop watching their time, and they'll start asking for more of yours.
Life is Asking.
Which brings the question back to us, here today. The pressures we're navigating may not look like a heated 60 Minutes staff meeting. But the question beneath our tension is the same: when truth is tested, and independence is challenged, will you sit idly by, or will you tell people what they do not want to hear?
A Call For All of Us.
This moment is a call to action for all of us: leaders, communicators, educators, designers, and technologists alike. Leo's words are a reminder for us all, regardless of religious beliefs or background, that every choice we make about how we build, deploy, and talk about AI is a values statement. How we care for the margins — the people most likely to be left out, left behind, or actively harmed — is the truest test of whether we are using these tools wisely.
Looking for more?
Read the first year of Finding the Words articles.
