Hodding Carter III died last week.
For those of you who don’t know that name, Hodding Carter served as President Jimmy Carter’s (no relation) press secretary. He became the face of the administration when he gave daily press briefings during the Iranian hostage crisis, which lasted 444 days.
Carter’s family owned the Greenville Delta Democrat-Times, a newspaper published in Greenville, Mississippi, that became a vocal critic of the segregationist policies that prevailed in Southern states in the twentieth century. (As an aside, I am old enough to remember eating lunch in the “whites only” room in a restaurant in Lexington, Kentucky).
Partly due to Hodding Carter’s background in journalism, in 1998 he was named the President of the Knight Foundation. It was in that role that I met Hodding. A group of community foundation leaders had been invited to dinner in Miami to discuss the Knight Foundation’s program to support community foundations. At some point during the dinner, someone asked him if he could offer any advice.
“Remember,” he said, “Just because you lead an organization that has a bank account balance with lots of zeros at the end doesn’t mean you are the smartest guy in the room.”
“The problem with many foundation leaders I have met”, he went on, “Is that that someone put them on third base, and they think they hit a triple”.
The comment hit home for me. I was not yet 40 when I was named the Executive Director of our local community foundation. I was thrilled to lead one of the largest foundations in our community – and in our state – and I spent my first few years thinking I was a five-star general in charge of an army. Too many times, I acted like our Foundation was going to be the savior that solved every problem. I talked too much and listened too little.
But I came to realize that I was only one part of a complex charitable ecosystem, and it was the charities we supported who were doing the heavy lifting. And I was only a temporary steward of our foundation’s assets. My model became more like a servant leader: Embracing humility, listening, trusting, valuing people … and caring. I hope that I took his words to heart and used it to guide my behavior in the decades that have passed since that fateful dinner.
Thank you, Hodding Carter, for your insightful advice. Your wisdom and leadership will be missed.