ONE
Identify Your Call to Service:
Your Message to the Future
The future belongs to those who believe
in the beauty of their dreams.
The beauty of our founders’ dreams is set forth in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution:
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Our democracy is a call to reimagine the founders’ vision for America through the years. It requires a binding commitment between people, a commitment that begins with the earliest actions in family, school, worship, and community. It is a commitment that develops over time and experience, based on a call to service—the vision, ideas, and values that motivate each public servant.
Each of us has a personal call to service that motivates and inspires our actions in family, community, and public life. Whether your public service involves helping a nonprofit agency achieve its mission, voting or volunteering in an election, mastering the skills of running for public office, studying political science and civics, or networking with your peers in a community improvement project, everything you do to engage in democracy begins with your call to service. Your call to service springs from your vision for the future, the values that drive it, the ideas that embody it, and your commitment to work in a community with others to achieve it. Your call to service is your message to the future.
Whether your household is grounded in social responsibility, politics, workers’ rights, civil rights, or military service, your call begins at home with a family ethic, manifests itself in community work, and provides a touchstone for all you do, inspiring you on the good days and strengthening you on the bad days.
Many Americans find our personal calls to service inspired by the national vision, values, and ideas framed by our founders and realized by succeeding generations. We share a common American Dream yet have the freedom to express our personal interpretations of that vision. To many, that goes without saying, but when we consider the bloodshed of recent democratic reform movements in countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Syria, we Americans can never take our individual liberty for granted.
Why answer the call to service? For many people the answer is to help others: to give back to a country that has given them opportunity or to help people achieve their stake in the American Dream. Volunteerism is the backbone of society: nothing happens in politics or community life without it. A secondary reason is that we help others in order to help ourselves: we build confidence and self-esteem through accomplishment; we connect with others, including role models or mentors; and we gain valuable experience for a job or business opportunity. Nothing is more satisfying than identifying your call to service, following your passion, and making a difference in the lives of others. As President Barack Obama often says, success is measured by “progress for the American people.”1
In assessing your own participation in our democracy, the first essential question is what is your personal call to service?
ARTICULATE YOUR VISION FOR THE FUTURE
For many, the call to service springs from a vision of America as a better place. What change do you want? In reading the Preamble to our Constitution, what resonates? What compels you to give your time, energy, and resources, and to stake your reputation? Consider what you have done in your community—with nonprofits, educational or religious organizations, civic associations, and political or cause-related campaigns. Go back and read essays you wrote for high school, college, or job applications: How did you describe yourself? What was your favorite job or volunteer activity? What was your major in school? Your most treasured campaign? Your best writing? A closer look will tell you the message you have been sending to the future.
COMMUNICATE THE IDEAS THAT
WILL REALIZE YOUR VISION
“Ideas have consequences,” says columnist George F. Will, “large and lasting consequences.”2 Our Constitution was a bold stroke of ideas, imagination, and intellect that brought to life our founders’ vision of the future. It continues to have global consequences.
My own call to service includes promoting democracy. During the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the vision that kept coming to mind was a secure America where an engaged citizenry protects and defends our people and our Constitution. As the kids who were third graders on 9/11 are now young adults eligible to vote, I’d like to see them all registered and voting, and all serving their communities in national or civic service regardless of race, creed, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, or identity. I’d like to see the 9/11 generation of patriots come home to a society worthy of their sacrifice, with jobs, education, health care, and housing. I’d like a better balance of liberty and security for all Americans and an appreciation of our military as a force for good in the world.
Many ideas implicit in that vision require concrete answers. How do we share the sacrifice? Who is required or recruited or allowed to serve? How do we maintain force readiness and care for troops, military families, and veterans? How much of the federal budget do we spend in relation to all the other needs of the country? Do we raise taxes, and, if so, whose? Most important are the practical consequences: When and how do we propose to deploy the strong military to go to war and to protect us here at home? Should we continue with deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, or other nations? Each answer has a large and lasting consequence.
ARTICULATE THE VALUES THAT
SHAPE YOUR VISION AND IDEAS
Just as integral to your vision of the future and your big ideas are the core values—such as equality, responsibility, and justice—that inspire the vision. Too often we jump into political discussions without articulating our values. We may assume that others know what we believe or impute a value to our action, but assuming is always a mistake.
If, to take my example, your vision is a secure America where an engaged citizenry protects and defends our people and our Constitution, and your idea is to provide for the common defense through a strong military, your values will shape your treatment of the military servicemen and servicewomen. Equality shapes who gets called to serve and how: Would you enforce a draft or keep military service voluntary? Are all people, regardless of race, gender, class, or sexual orientation welcome to serve? Responsibility shapes how you prepare them when you deploy them in harm’s way at home or overseas. Justice guides whether you keep promises to military families and properly provide for veterans upon their return home.
TEST YOUR VISION, IDEAS, AND VALUES TO SEE
THE DIFFERENCE THEY MAKE IN PEOPLE’S LIVES
So far we’ve been dealing with the imagination; your vision becomes real when you make choices in public life that make a difference in people’s lives.
On a personal level, you might achieve your vision for a safer America, your idea of a strong military, and your values of equality, responsibility, and justice by enlisting in the military or by supporting the families of people who enlist. On a community level, you might achieve the vision by supporting initiatives to provide workforce training and small-business loans to veterans returning home.
How can you tell if a candidate shares your vision? Let’s say, for example, that you were evaluating candidates for president, and several promise a vision of America with the idea of a strong military and the values of equality, responsibility, and justice. So far, so good, but who will achieve the vision in the manner you intend? Until a crisis brings it home, it’s just a theory.
On a political level, you might volunteer to work for a candidate who shares your vision. However, two people with a shared vision can have vastly different values about how to get there. Consider the debate over the December 2010 repeal of the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy that prohibited gay and lesbian military servicemembers from serving openly in the U.S. armed forces.
To the vast majority of Americans, the votes to repeal DADT fit comfortably within the Pledge of Allegiance: “with liberty and justice for all.” (Even conservative icon Barry Goldwater advocated for opening the military to gays as early as 1993: “You don’t have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.”) While there must be work to achieve the vision of equality in deed as well as in law, at a time of war with a volunteer military comprised of only 3 percent of eligible servicemembers, most believed a DADT repeal could not come too soon. In addition, the Pentagon’s 2010 Comprehensive Working Group report revealed that over two-thirds of service-members did not think ending this policy would have an impact on military cohesion and readiness.
However, there were others who disagreed because their values took them in another direction. A Pew poll taken in November 2010 found that liberal Democrats backed a repeal by 6 to 1. And two voter groups—the religiously unaffiliated and voters under 30—backed ending DADT in proportions almost as large. By contrast, 52 percent of self-described conservative Republicans opposed a repeal and only 28 percent supported it, while among white evangelical Protestants, 48 percent opposed it and 34 percent supported it.3 But note that many Republicans voted for the end of DADT and a handful of house Democrats voted against—proving that one’s personal values and party affiliation are not one and the same.
BE PART OF SOMETHING
LARGER THAN YOURSELF
To experience the challenges and rewards of public service, and to find out what kind of engagement best suits your talents, work with people who share your vision, ideas, and values. Volunteer with a student organization, a community project, a nonprofit, or an election campaign. The way you act to achieve your vision is a signal to you and to others that you are engaged to do something: to make a difference in your community and make the future better.
In her best-selling book Know Your Power, my mother, U.S. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, says if you hear a call or see a problem, “organize, don’t agonize.”4 Organize means be part of something larger than yourself, work with others on their own paths to service, and remember that it is amazing how much you can accomplish if you are willing to share the credit.
You must do something for people before you ask them to do something for you. Think of it this way: if you had a friend who showed up only when she needed something or called only to ask you for money, you would probably not stay friends for long. The same is true in public life. Don’t be a taker. If someone gives you the opportunity to serve, pay it forward by helping someone else get involved or by donating money or resources to improve an organization.
Volunteer. To get started, give your time as a volunteer. “Every job I got I volunteered first,” recalled Lezlee Westine, a founder and former president of TechNet, a bipartisan network of technology companies designed to promote innovation and competitiveness. “You cannot underestimate the huge value of volunteering for your first job. Volunteering is a great opportunity to show your passion for a cause and catapults you faster to a leadership role in an organization.”5
STRENGTHEN YOUR FRIENDSHIPS
AND ALLIANCES IN NETWORKS
As you articulate your vision, ideas, and values; as you begin the service that puts them into action; and as you emerge as a trustworthy policy advocate, you will develop friendships and alliances. Westine advises aspiring leaders to “build technology networks to bring people together, coalition networks to accomplish a policy goal, and human networks to advance and mentor other people.”
Technology networks. Create technology networks through the Internet to organize local groups and individuals for fund-raising, communicating with the public on a grassroots level without using traditional media, and targeting favorable voters for get-out-the-vote efforts.6
I saw many of these networks firsthand on the campaign trail these past few years. Many fresh recruits—from New Direction Democrats to Tea Party Republicans—were volunteers connected with partisan groups like Young Democrats and College Republicans. But just as significant were the people mobilized by progressive netroots (Internet-based grassroots organizers) such as MoveOn.org and the Daily Kos community, by conservative networks such as the Club for Growth, and by fiercely independent communities such as the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA).
This new blend of asymmetrical politics thrives on bringing old-school politics and new media together. In communities around the country, I visited with people who had lost confidence in the large institutions yet felt intense pride in their own community institutions and service traditions. Not only were they voting out a culture of corruption, they were ushering in a culture of service: walking precincts for candidates and walking 10Ks for AIDS or breast cancer research; meeting to clean up politics and to clean up beaches, parks, and neighborhoods. American politics is being reinvigorated by these social networks of people willing to come together around a shared mission, stay together through challenges, and work together despite the inevitable clashes of personalities and agendas.
Coalition networks. Westine’s service in the White House involved working with a series of coalition networks, which she describes as a “temporary alliance of groups to achieve a common goal.” These coalition networks can include journalists, nongovernmental organizations, corporate executives, and political leaders—“groups of people with followings beyond themselves” organized around a specific policy objective.
Human networks. The most effective way to build a culture of service is to develop a network of people who share your call to service. For example, your call to service may be the economic empowerment of women. A women’s business network will help achieve the vision because it will do the following: host fund-raisers for women candidates or candidates who champion issues important to women; lobby government by showcasing the impact of women-owned businesses in terms of numbers of workers and revenues; influence media coverage of the most powerful women business owners; support women for political positions; and encourage successful women to mentor younger women. “From handshaking to supporting your peers to supporting a candidate, human networks will advance your goals and have untold benefits,” advises Westine.
Start building your human networks with the people whose leadership you admire. Work with a local nonprofit or political leader on a public service effort to learn the ropes, develop relationships, and take a shared risk.
Above all else, build connections and relationships—what Westine calls the glue that holds together any network.
To build networks, start with your call to service. Lead with your passion and ask yourself, “Which one of the issues or causes calls me to serve?” There are great online sources for finding volunteer opportunities and networks such as volunteermatch.com, school alumni associations, and local campaign offices.
Look into a particular group and ask: What is the reputation? Do people in it have fun? Do they make an impact? Are my friends involved? How would I fit in? Also consider the management style: the simple fact of having a Web site or Listserv doesn’t tell you everything. Look deeper: consider whether the network is using the old top-down pyramid style or has adopted the modern beehive model. If there are still only a couple of decision makers who don’t want volunteer feedback or who expect junior members to filter for them, you will not be as fulfilled as you will by the beehive model where every worker adds value, and leaders have learned to delegate, interact with supporters, and heed the wisdom of crowds.
You may be shy about putting yourself out there, but you may enjoy volunteering at a networking event, rather than attending as a guest. Can you work the phones or the doors? Can your business offer a service rather than cash? If you’re not sure, take a risk! The worst that can happen is you help other people and decide that a particular task or group is not for you. Finding your own style will help maximize your impact and fulfillment.
Demonstrate that you want to DO something, not just BE something. Begin with a good work ethic so that you are known as a workhorse, not a show horse. We all know the difference between colleagues who contribute and those who sail in at the last minute to avoid the heavy lifting. Performing the basic tasks of campaigning—sorting mail, stuffing envelopes, answering phones, handing out leaflets, making calls, updating Web sites—gives you hands-on experience in mobilization and exposure to the areas of messaging, fund-raising, and media outreach. Your willingness to do the basic work tests your commitment to a cause and seeds the grassroots of future support.
Register to vote—and vote! Dozens of elected officials at all levels of government come up for reelection every two, four, or six years. In addition, ballot measures at the local and possibly state levels are subject to voter approval. These are all opportunities to learn. Register to vote and know where to vote. If you have moved, update your registration. Being registered to vote is not enough; studying the issues, comparing each candidate’s position, and actually voting are critical for those considering a run for public office. Register other people to vote as well: encourage family and friends; register new citizens at their swearing-in ceremonies; and participate in voter registration drives.
Unhappy are the candidates who register or vote only shortly before running themselves and have to answer for the fact that they haven’t voted when others were up for consideration. Republican candidates for California’s biggest public offices in 2010—Meg Whitman for governor and Carly Fiorina for the senate—had spotty voting records that reinforced the notion that they weren’t interested in politics unless they could start at the top. The public didn’t trust them to grapple with tough issues as leaders since they hadn’t grappled with those issues (abortion rights, immigration, taxes) as voters.
Train and be trained. You must excel in the core areas of public service: message, management, money, and mobilization. Challenge yourself. Many local nonprofit organizations and political parties sponsor training sessions for potential candidates and volunteers. Many of my leadership boot camps have included training materials and speakers from Democratic Party committees as well as AFSCME, AFL-CIO, Democracy for America, EMILY’s List, Equality California, Fair Share Alliance, Human Rights Campaign, SEIU, Truman National Security Project, Veterans and Military Families for Progress, and the Women’s Campaign Forum, each of whom perform their own trainings helping activists develop advocacy skills. Take courses that teach you how to write op-eds (from “opposite editorial” page), which you can submit to your local paper, and how to create presentations and informational videos that you can upload to YouTube. Once you’ve recruited people, be sure to tweet them updates. Start an online group on LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Plus, or other social network, if none already exists that shares your vision, and invite people to join it. When I started boot camps in 2005, there were none I could find that performed cross-training among different groups, but just about everyone is conducting trainings these days. Be sure you get materials in advance and testimonials from those who have already participated to see what is worth your time and money, and check for interactivity and media training. Nothing solidifies your training better than having to stand up and talk about what you just learned.
If you are conducting trainings, be sure to invite people from different disciplines—business, labor, constituency groups—as well as at least one alum to come back as a presenter. We did this with our Congressional Candidates Boot Camps to show challengers that our message, management, money, and mobilization metrics are indeed keys to victory. After one boot camp, a candidate e-mailed me his feedback, concluding: “I am going to win and come back as a presenter.” He did: our 2006 alum, Congressman Ed Perlmutter of Colorado, came back in subsequent years to affirm the importance of grassroots organizing. He told us that one reason he ran for Congress was to push for expanded research that could help cure his oldest daughter, who has epilepsy. After over a year of walking door to door to door talking about stem cell research and other issues of the day, Perlmutter built a commanding lead, attracted a large volunteer corps, won that election, and has won two others since. Perlmutter’s simple and profound message: “I won because I walked.”
Pay it forward: mentor people as people mentored you. Everybody got a start from somebody. Sharing information, imparting wit and wisdom, and offering unvarnished advice is essential. This can be as simple as a few words of encouragement or as committed as a decades-long advisory role. Anyone new to a job or a position needs to learn the ropes. When running for chair of the California Democratic Party Women’s Caucus in 2011, I was nominated by my longtime mentor, Democratic National Committeewoman Rosalind “Roz” Wyman, who has advised me since I was her podium page when she ran the 1984 Democratic National Convention. Not only did I want people to hear from a woman of great achievement in our state, I wanted my caucus to know that we all still need advice and support from our mentors. Our successful team of officers won on the WOMEN Slate: Women Organizing Mentoring Electing and Networking. Our pledge is to pay it forward; the women we mentor are our messages to the future.
Match your skills to a position. Consider preparing yourself for one of the campaign staff roles in an upcoming election. When trying to make a match, identify your top five or ten experiences from campaigning to carpooling to coaching. What do they tell you about how you answered your call to service and how you helped others? Do you like to be the disciplinarian or the free spirit in the group? Leverage your participation: you don’t need to have political experience to be a good organizer with a nonprofit or get an entry-level position with a political campaign. Are you a stay-at-home mom? You’re an organizer. Have you coached, worked on the PTA, or driven carpool? You’re an organizer. A careful look at your service contributions, lessons learned, and value added will reveal your networks and (perhaps hidden) talents.
Be part of a team. Networking requires you to work with and for other people. Politics and policy are about teamwork. Some people like to study, worship, and work alone; if you do, perhaps a behind-the-scenes role is appropriate for you. Assuming you enjoy the camaraderie and cooperation of a team effort, you will be spending most of your time asking other people to volunteer their time, write a check, bring their networks in common cause with yours, and/or hire your candidate to work for them.
If you decide to become a candidate or commissioner or non-profit trustee, you will have a constituency to which you will have to answer, and each member of that constituency gets to vote on whether you get the job, has an opinion of how you are doing in the job, and ultimately decides whether you should keep the job. None of this will be communicated in the old hierarchical ways: any moment could bring a tweet or a message assessing your performance or offering new ideas. If you shy away from conflict or have slow response times, being out front is going to be a hard adjustment. On the other hand, if you are open to crowd sourcing, a network can help you assume a position of leadership based upon what you can contribute to the network.
Finally, campaigns are environments where the stakes are high and the pressure is intense. Networking means listening, and the feedback you hear will not always be favorable. You will have to hear criticism about work that springs from your intensely personal core vision, ideas, and values—and not take it personally. Remembering that you are a part of something larger than yourself will help you on the bad days—and even on the good days—to develop a thick skin.
WOMEN LEADERS:
CONSIDER YOURSELF ASKED
Women often find it harder to make the leap into campaigns because many of us remain the primary caregivers for our children and our parents, so family time is harder to let go. And public attitudes remain stereotypical, even among close supporters. I remember receiving an award at the pre-Columbus Day luncheon of the Irish-Israeli-Italian Society of San Francisco during my days as a deputy prosecutor. There I was, my speech all lined up about the caring traditions of Trócaire, Tikkun Olam, and Caritas when a family friend approached my table announcing loudly, “I’m praying for your husband.” My response, thinking she mistook me for one of my married sisters: “It’s Christine; I don’t have a husband.” “I know,” she replied, “that’s why I am praying for him!” My colleagues roared with laughter. One who has since gone on to elected office herself said, “When people ask me where my husband is, I say, ‘I don’t know, but if you find him tell him I’m looking for him.’”
It’s not just pressure to have a family—it is pressure from a family member. More recently, two female candidates dealt with family pressure. One was starting her campaign when her mother asked her, “Who’ll take care of your children?” (Translation: “Not Grandma.”) The other got a call from home that her daughter’s response to mom contemplating a primary was to dye her hair “one of the primary colors.” (Translation: “Mom, stay home.”) These are quite legitimate issues—and ones we encounter every day. Primary caregivers of small children find that before we can accept any opportunity, our first question is about childcare. I traveled to over twenty states with my infant daughter, and each boot camp from halfway across my home-town to halfway around the world began with: “How will I care for Isabella?” One person asked me, “Why don’t you bring your nanny?” “I am the nanny,” I replied. Every primary care-giver has to answer that childcare question, so candidates must remember this is not a trick question, just a very public one.
A Brown University study addressed the issue of women candidates with a report that asked “Why Don’t Women Run for Office?” The researchers found that women are less likely than men to have received the suggestion to run for office from party and elected officials, political activists, or family and friends; yet when women receive external support from formal and informal political and nonpolitical sources, they are twice as likely to run.7
Ellen Malcolm, founder of EMILY’s List, a national network of 100,000 members who recruit, train, and support Democratic pro-choice women candidates, says the Brown study shows that people who care about public service should encourage others to run. The theory behind EMILY’s List—EMILY stands for Early Money Is Like Yeast—is that early networking and institutional support helps the campaign “dough” rise. Malcolm says establishing a pipeline for women to run is essential because “progress doesn’t happen in a moment, but in battle after battle for our values.” Malcolm’s message to potential candidates: “Consider yourself asked.”8
This sentiment is echoed by Florida congressional candidate Annette Tadeo, now with the Women’s Campaign Fund, who explained during our joint presentation to the Florida Young Democrats, “Women are not asked to run. A woman with a PhD in education won’t run for School Board because she will think she is not qualified, but a man without that degree or kids in the school system will run. Because we need to encourage more women, the Women’s Leadership Fund site established www.Sheshouldrun.com for people to nominate people (or themselves) to run.”9
These networks are essential as women candidates and opinion leaders find the environment changing as the novelty of female leaders wears off. The feminist Barbara Lee Family Foundation commissioned a poll to study voter attitudes and research female candidates’ campaigns. Some results are striking:
Strong is likeable—voters decoupled strength and toughness.
Voters like problem solvers and think women have more agility due to roles as moms and wives, though moms of small children were greeted more skeptically in terms of their time to do the job well.
Voters assume honesty and punish perceived dishonesty.
Likeability matters more for women candidates than men: negative campaigning may erode any gender advantage gained from being seen as more corroborative.10
FOLLOW YOUR PERSONAL CODE OF CONDUCT
First and foremost, you have to be yourself. All too often, people will get into trouble when, rather than being confident in their service mission, they adapt their views to more experienced people’s in exchange for a possible advancement, endorsement, or contribution. Bad idea. Your stated values, ethics, and code of conduct should guide your behavior and your decisions on and off the campaign trail. First and foremost, you must be yourself and present the same call to service mission to everyone.
People may offer contributions to your organization, cause, or candidate, in exchange for a particular outcome. Stop the conversation. No contribution is worth your soul, much less your liberty and reputation. Other people may urge you to use negative information about the opposition or will tell unsavory details of their conversations with other people. A simple rule applies: “If they’ll do it for you, they’ll do it to you.” Once you ditch your old supporters for new friends, your new friends will know how little you value friendship and could ditch you on the same grounds. Think long and hard before you abandon your values, your friends, or your commitments.
When you undertake the leadership of a campaign, you become responsible for anything that goes out to the public. Establish clear ethical standards and expectations for practices such as fact-finding and fund-raising, and clear policies for endorsements, questionnaires, and Internet use—and stick to them.
WALK YOUR TALK
“People want to see how you walk on this earth,” explains international human rights activist Kerry Kennedy, president of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. How you walk your own talk will set the tone of your public service.
“Make an effort to do more than ‘campaign’ so that people can see who you are in your core,” Kennedy advises. “Do something in your campaign that helps people and reflects your message.” For example, her brother, former Congressman Joseph Kennedy, incorporated his message into a service: when going to senior centers to pitch health care, he would ditch the standard coffee and donuts for healthy snacks and an exercise routine of light calisthenics that he performed along with the crowd.11
If you are working on a political campaign or initiative to protect and preserve the environment, make your campaign carbon neutral, carpool, set up events near public transportation, recycle, and use recycled products. If you support workers rights in Wisconsin, Ohio, and across America, do not cross picket lines or patronize anti-union establishments. My husband and I have yet to celebrate our anniversary at the hotel where we married in 2008 because the management had a dispute with employees who in turn enlisted the Brass Liberation Orchestra for a flash mob dancing to a Lady Gaga-inspired song: “Don’t Get Caught in a Bad Hotel.” Now that there is labor peace we shall return, but for a while all we had was our wedding album and the flash mob’s YouTube video.12
Organize public service events such as monthly volunteer clean-ups of a local park, beach, or community center. Be sure to pick up after yourself and others when you use public space. Every small gesture reinforces the larger message.
PERFORM AN ACT OF COURAGE
TO ACHIEVE YOUR VISION
The big test of your commitment to service will come when you have to risk your reputation and perform an act of courage to achieve your vision.
Meet people you don’t know and ask them for help. Would you call people you don’t know to ask them to hire someone? Would you call people you don’t know and ask them to hire you? Would you go to the homes of people you don’t know, knock on the door, and ask them to hire you or a friend? Think of your last job interview. Now imagine doing it every day walking door to door in your neighborhood. Think of your last performance evaluation. Now imagine it posted on the Internet, with an opportunity for anyone to post their comments. That is a flavor of the exposure you have as a public leader.
Get out of your comfort zone. Your base supporters are people who will walk precincts in the rain, talk to complete strangers, and sleep on floors for you—in other words, people who are willing to get out of their comfort zone for you or your cause. Think about it: for whom or what have you walked in the rain? Talked to strangers and received unvarnished feedback? Opened your home to a stranger or slept on a floor in another town? Getting out of your comfort zone is a true measure of commitment, and inspiring others to get out of their comfort zone is a true measure of leadership. Your comfort level in asking people to talk to strangers, walk in the rain, and sleep on the floors and/or your willingness to do these actions yourself will reveal what sort of role you want to take, either behind the scenes, out front for a cause, or as a candidate yourself.
Getting out of your comfort zone may mean that you buck your friends or your political party from the left or the right. Nowadays most candidates have Democrats for X Republican or Republicans for X Democrat committees to show cross-party appeal. Remember there were “Obamacons”—Conservatives for Obama—and Democrats for McCain in 2008. You might have a good friend who is running in a primary whom you want to support even though it will be an uphill or uncomfortable fight. Again, you take it back to your call to service: if this is what you consider the right thing to do, follow your passion and fight the good fight.
Take a political risk. You will face criticism and skepticism from people who think your ideas are unrealistic or politically impossible. In the immortal words of Eleanor Roosevelt, “Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be damned if you do and damned if you don’t.” I used that quote at a 2008 dinner to introduce then-San Francisco mayor (now California’s Lt. Governor) Gavin Newsom, who took a political risk in 2004 when he decided to officiate over thousands of same-sex weddings much to the chagrin of those activists and politicians who wanted to wait for the courts to decide marriage equality.
More recently, California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris bucked the U.S. Department of Justice’s 2011 push to settle with banks, holding out for more homeowners’ recourse and consumers’ protection. Bucking the tide meant that these young leaders chose to make some establishment figures quite uncomfortable, but they also gained legions of new admirers who saw their impatience as more fitting for the circumstances.
Newsom and Harris each made a personal decision to advance their visions, ideas, and values, and risked losing to advance a service mission.
Demonstrating the courage of your convictions sometimes means you make the fight, even if you are not likely to win or face steep odds. When it came to the health-care reform fight in 2009 and 2010, there were many Democrats who knew that this fight was as big as the fight for the New Deal and Social Security in the 1930s and the Voting Rights Act in the 1960s. As Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords said in a March 2010 statement announcing her support for health-care reform: “The American people are being made to suffer through millions of dollars of corporate-sponsored distortions intended to scare the public and obstruct the progress of reforms.”13 She added: “As we approach this vote, I am acutely aware of the lobbying groups that do not support these reforms. What they cannot spin is who I am or the values that guide my decisions.”
Americans saw what her Cactus Roots supporters knew about Giffords’s values when she maintained her dignified demeanor after her office in Tucson was vandalized hours after the votes, saying, “Our democracy is a light, a beacon really, around the world, because we affect change at the ballot box and not because of these outbursts of violence in certain cases and the yelling.”14
Challenge a sacred cow. Another way to take a political risk in the nonprofit context is to challenge a sacred cow. Do you serve on the board of a nonprofit where the overhead seems excessive compared to the services performed? The sacred cow may be perks for the directors or money spent according to the whims of powerful donors rather than according to a mission statement. Or it may be paying large amounts of overhead for comparatively little deliverables. In politics this could mean exposing gold-plated government contracts that are not put out for competitive bidding.
Taking on sacred cows is especially important for women leaders. Longtime political activist and 2012 Project director Mary Hughes, whose “dream work” is helping women achieve power, says bipartisan public polling reveals that women face harsher scrutiny than men do with respect to their fiscal and national security credentials. To overcome this disadvantage, Hughes advises women to seek out opportunities to network in those circles by joining trade associations or policy forums that address those issues and to take on sacred cows in business practices and budgets.15 There will be pushback from entrenched interests who do not appreciate the scrutiny or calls for change, so there is definitely political risk involved. Remember the adage “Sacred cows make the best burgers.” Some of the best results come from challenging untouchable issues.
GET YOUR POLICY ACT TOGETHER
All leaders must inspire trust. Before facing the public, you must know what you are talking about.
Research the duties and responsibilities of the position you seek. If you seek a leadership role in a nonprofit, labor union, business association, political campaign, or elective office, consider the prerequisites. Does the position require any particular credentials? Do you need a certified public accountant license or a law degree? Do you need ongoing professional education? If so, take care of business. If you are considering working for a government agency or elected official, look into the responsibilities to constituents, casework, and staffing requirements. Sit in on public hearings and visualize yourself participating—you may have the requisite patience or you may find that you’d rather be out in the streets than endure long meetings behind a dais.
Master the public policy challenges. As you develop an understanding of the ideological, logistical, budgetary, and practical consequences of your own ideas, be sure to study policy triggers—the events or actions that affect laws. If you are gathering signatures for a ballot initiative, read the proposal first and be sure to understand what the law is now and how your measure will change it. Did you know that many states link some of their tax rates to federal tax rates? Check to see if your state does that before proposing a change in tax policy. One candidate did not check and proposed a federal tax cut that—if passed—would have unbalanced his state budget and left it in deficit. The governor was understandably displeased when called for comment. Another trigger to watch out for is the sunset date of any legislation: you don’t want to get caught proposing a budget or law based on a provision that has expired.
Be knowledgeable and candid about the consequences of your proposals. Your word is your bond in politics. People have to trust you as an advocate. As a practical matter, your arguments are stronger if you can identify and counter the strongest arguments against them. As a personal matter, your integrity is underlined by your candor about the merits of your position versus the opposition. The late Jack Valenti—a decorated World War II–combat pilot, Harvard MBA, speechwriter for President Lyndon B. Johnson, and longtime president of the Motion Picture Association of America—cautioned a bipartisan Capitol Hill audience: “Trust is everything.” Valenti urged us to be honest about our ideas and candid about our opponents because, he said, the people you are trying to influence will find out the merits of the other side eventually and will respect you all the more for being up front with them.16
Think like an innovator. Poll-driven messages are well and good as data points but no substitute for independent thinking. As Clayton M. Christensen has opined, the quest for truth requires an intellectual curiosity to “ask the right questions” if we want fresh proposals to solve vexing problems. In The Innovator’s DNA, authors Jeff Dyer, Hal Gergersen, and Dr. Christensen build on their idea of disruptive innovation to explain the five discovery skills—the cognitive skill of associating and the behavioral skills of questioning, observing, networking, and experimenting—that constitute what they call the innovator’s DNA, or the code for generating innovative business ideas. Their research on roughly five hundred innovators compared to roughly five thousand executives led them to identify these five discovery skills that distinguish innovators from typical executives.17 Applying innovative thinking to public policy challenges is essential to broaden your circle of policy sources and to bring fresh perspective on old issues.
Balance your purist and pragmatic tendencies. Do you see yourself as a purist or a pragmatist? How much of each? As just discussed, it might depend on the cause. Finding your balance with candor and clarity is essential to your success as people look to you for leadership. A purist can limit alliances or even discussions to like-minded people, but a pragmatist will have to reach across the spectrum of views to talk with everyone. Just as in the DADT repeal debate when progressive Democrats were working with conservative Republicans, the ability to see the humanity in opponents and to compromise on tactics but not principles led the way to transformative change.
See the “kaleidoscope” of politics. It helps to see activism through what Nancy Pelosi calls the “kaleidoscope” of politics. For example, when it comes to the environment, some of the same evangelicals and secular humanists who oppose each other with respect to the separation of church and state agree on the need to combat global warming, while environmentalists and hunters who hold opposing views on gun control share a conservationist agenda to preserve natural resources. You never know where you might find common cause with people, so don’t write anyone off and don’t wait to get elected—start when you start running. There must be some point of bipartisan agreement somewhere—be it in seeking lifesaving stem cell research, veterans benefits, or investing in an innovation agenda. Yes, there is much polarization now at the national level, but there is also much agreement among the American people that we must come together to find solutions.
In the words of former congresswoman Lindy Boggs of Louisiana, “Never fight each fight as if it were your last,” because today’s adversaries may well become tomorrow’s allies. Your cause is bigger than your ego: no need to fight a scorched-earth battle only to wake up the next day needing grassroots support from former opponents for your venture.
“Bush is right.” As former Indiana congressman and 9/11 commissioner Tim Roemer counseled, aspiring public servants must find at least one issue on which to promote bipartisan solutions.18 These three words from the first edition of this book drew many jeers from those who could not find even one reason to like the former president. But then some of them started quoting Barry Goldwater on DADT repeal and Nancy Reagan on stem cell research, and yes, even George W. Bush on funding for AIDS in Africa, and lo and behold there was a little common ground after all. No matter how much you disagree with people on the other side of the philosophical spectrum, there must be at least one issue on which you can work with the opposition to forge a constructive solution. Your willingness to communicate the issues of a shared vision will demonstrate your maturity as a political thinker and as a public servant. If you are engaged in electoral politics, your success relies on a bipartisan vision for America on at least one issue; if you are in the nonprofit world, your tax-favored status depends on it.
One person who balanced pragmatic and purist tendencies to great result was Father Robert Drinan, a Catholic priest who served in Congress and was known as the consummate “pragmatic idealist” because he retained his core values yet moved beyond his own ideological circle to find new allies to advance his causes.
Remember: criticism and effectiveness go hand in hand. A classic axiom of public life is, “You can go to church to confess your sins, or you can go into politics and have your opponents confess them for you.” Indeed, sometimes your opponents confess sins you never committed and you must confront and debunk them. Chain e-mails and snarky tweets used to gain lives of their own hurtling unchecked through cyberspace before Snopes.com and other debunkers began to offer help in the quest for Truth 2.0.
Campaigns are environments where the stakes are high, the pressure is intense, the media coverage is not always fair or balanced, and the competition is not always decent. Now that everything happens online, everyone from the lead spokes-woman to the newest intern is an ambassador for the cause and subject to relentless public scrutiny. The bigger the stage, the harsher the criticism. Just about anyone who has ever written a blog has been trolled by nasty comments and cyberbullied by people acting like schoolyard jerks. Unfortunately it comes with the territory. The more dedicated you are to your cause, the easier it is to put yourself in the public eye, let the water roll off your back, and keep fighting the good fight.
DECIDE WHICH LEADERSHIP
ROLE IS BEST FOR YOU
Take a hard look at what you say about you. In most community organizations, you must complete a background check to serve on a nonprofit board of directors. Be sure that your résumé is accurate, your credentials are sufficient, and you can explain any past mistakes that may come up. Most of all, be sure you have lived up to your code of ethics and the standards by which you judge yourself and others. If you preach family values, live them. If you seek forgiveness for your transgressions, forgive others in personal and public life. Nothing stings more sharply than hypocrisy.
Consider the answers you would owe to your spouse, your children, your friends, your supporters, and the media, should skeletons tumble from your closet. Take an honest inventory of your life now, and review it with your circle of trusted advisers. No one is perfect, but the past need not set precedence for your behavior going forward. People generally care less about your mistakes and more about your atonement. The American people are forgiving and compassionate. If you can express a lesson learned and earn the trust and support of others—particularly those who may have been aggrieved by your actions—you can put events in perspective and continue with your service.
When you assess candidates, how can you tell whether they risk implosion? You can and should ask these questions before giving support:
Are they comfortable in their own skin?
Do they seem to coldly prefer humanity to humans?
When they make big decisions, do they listen to people or keep their own counsel?
Do they seem obsessed with their online friends?
Adapting to fame often comes with a healthy fear of failure as well as a fear of success that causes people to self-sabotage. Fear is human—how that fear is managed is what separates adults from children. There are some signs to watch for in yourself and others to make sure the purpose is to do something not be something:
Boasting or brooding in response to praise or criticism
Mistaking political relationships (last-name friends) for personal friendships (first-name friends)
Making decisions without consulting a “kitchen cabinet” of close advisers
Electronic interdependence that becomes codependence when the roar of the digital crowd drowns out the voice of common sense
Arguments or inactivity when a major deadline or event approaches
Padding résumé or exaggerating support
Consult your family. Your reputation is not individual; your partner, spouse, children, parents, and close friends will also lose their privacy, possibly against their wishes and regardless of your best-laid plans to protect them. Your family and friends must live with you whether you win or lose. All of this must factor into your decision. Explain your call to service, the nature of your mission, and their roles in any public efforts. Before you embark on this family commitment, reach a family decision. You can dedicate sixteen-hour days to your service mission only if your loved ones support you and are ready to face the cameras themselves. Your loved ones may not support your desire to devote your time, energy, and resources to public service because they will not see you very often during the campaign, which may last a year or two. They may or may not offer you support and campaign with you. Teenagers especially have their own lives and are more likely to act out than grow up on camera. Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin will not be the last vice-presidential nominee with an unwed pregnant teenage daughter, because life happens.
With the economy changing and more two-parent, two-job households, nearly everyone is struggling for family time. As blogs like www.MomsRising.org point out, American families need maternity and paternity leave, open flexible work, health care, and childcare—all of which are scarce in public service campaigns. If you are going to campaign, the hours will not be flexible, the time-outs for family care will be minimal, and the stress levels will be high. For as much as we all talk about quality of life, campaigning does not offer much unless you claim it. Carving out boundaries and honoring them is the hardest part of public life because voters expect you to be on call for them.
If you are working on a campaign or running yourself, be sure to declare up front what family time you need and stick to it. Every day requires grocery shopping, preparing meals, helping with homework, and the more relaxing family activities. All of those activities take time—and money if you must hire someone else to do them for you. Can you afford the childcare necessary to nurture your child at home or to bring your child with you on the road and hire a sitter to entertain her while you campaign? These questions will be aimed at women, but with changing gender roles and family circles, will be asked of men as well. Male parents of small children are starting to be asked the same questions about balancing family life in a dual-income household with small children. Gay families are breaking new ground in this conversation: In 2011 Colorado representative Jared Polis, the first openly gay parent in Congress, took a brief paternity leave to be with his son, and San Francisco supervisor Bevan Dufty became the first openly gay politician to make a television ad with his child, a small girl videotaped riding the bus with dad.19
When you serve, your family does too, so be sure they have some of your quality time and not just face time. I say from experience that being home and on the phone or the Web does not count to my toddler and likely not to any family member. Make the effort to maintain traditions like coaching little league, going to church or temple, eating brunch, and attending soccer games and class plays. It makes little sense to run on a platform of helping families if you don’t get any time to connect with yours. Experience tells me voters would rather know you have established limits on campaigning due to family duties than that you never see your kids. In my opinion, smarter scheduling can squeeze out more family time. Any job that requires you to have no family life is not worth doing.
If you come from a political family, expect even more scrutiny than another candidate. In my races for Democratic National Committeewoman I have heard the gamut from “Love your mom; I’ll give you a chance” to “You show up; I like that” to “Your mom didn’t impeach George Bush so I’ll never vote for you.” All comes with the territory—the bigger the name brand, the harder folks kick the tires.
Consider what others will say about you. People competing for the same job—on a board or for a political office—or those who are opposed to your service mission may link your “minor,” “distant,” “remote,” “forgotten,” “childish,” “foolish,” “rash,” “young and irresponsible” acts together in order to gain competitive advantage. The more sacred cows you tackle, the more someone who is threatened by change may want to sideline you. So you must ask the hard questions about yourself.
Your life is an open Facebook. Whenever you are seeking support of others to gain a high-profile position, your opponents can play back everything you have said or done through the New York Times or a local blog. As everyone from job applicants to presidential candidates have seen by now, your life is an open Facebook, regardless of your privacy settings. Self-described “hacktivists” are able to break into e-mail, track messages, and leak or republish embarrassing information as disgraced former congressman Chris Lee and Anthony Weiner found out after they sexted pictures of themselves to women who were not their wives. The recent News Corporation phone-hacking scandal, where employees admitted breaking into phone records of politicians and murder victims to find profitable secrets, instructs us that voice mail probably isn’t private either.
Be prepared by being honest and keeping a sense of perspective. Anyone involved just to be something—to have the title or the ego boost—will internalize the praise and the criticism too deeply to be effective. Consider your personal, financial, political, or criminal background, ranging from every address, job, and position you have held to any civil or criminal proceedings in which you have been involved. Remember the Rule of One—everyone tells someone. A friend told me that he once asked a prominent official about a sensitive matter. “I trust you,” the official responded, “but I’m not sure I can trust the person you’re going to tell.” It’s human nature—neither lips nor records stay sealed.
Indeed one of the reasons I started boot camps to give advice up front, as candidates decide whether to run and the people decide whether to support them, was due to an unwelcome October surprise release of a candidate’s arrest records. His weaselly response to supporters—“I TOLD you I had convictions”—was cold comfort to those who had thought his convictions were beliefs, not misdemeanors. Of course nowadays people don’t wait until October for the surprise—opposition research can be dropped at any time, so a front-end risk analysis is a must. Assume you have no privacy because these days you probably don’t.
Assess your own financial risk. Your resources include your own funds and your professional career: you may need to take a leave from your job or curtail your work hours. Can you invest 5 to 10 percent of your disposable income, take out a loan, mortgage your home, give up cable TV, and put thousands of miles on the family car?
Jan Brown described the commitment that she and her husband, Fighting Dem Charlie Brown, made when committing to his campaign for Congress: “We cancelled our cable TV subscription, drove thousands of miles to every community in our rural district, and devoted all our spare time to the campaign so we could call attention to a new direction for the Iraq War, for our son Jeff who is serving, and for all servicemembers and their families.” The Browns even spent their 2006 wedding anniversary campaigning at a Nevada City house meeting. “Once we arrived, the campaign manager managed to close the trunk on my right hand,” remembers Jan Brown. After bandaging her bleeding hand, Jan went to the party, made the “ask” for donations and volunteers, and tried to avoid shaking hands that night. “An anniversary to remember,” she joked.20 Campaigning is a marathon that takes a personal and financial toll: be sure your family is ready to pay it.
Once you take everything into account and decide to go ahead, you are ready to step onto a public stage. You may decide to lead a nonprofit service agency. You may choose to accept a public trust position as an appointed official—city commissioner, deputy prosecutor, or county administrator. You may decide to chair a ballot initiative campaign. You may assume leadership in a political campaign. You may decide to run for office yourself. Make a decision—and do it.
GET REAL:
TAKE THE PUBLIC SERVICE FITNESS TEST
Candidates, prospective supporters, and volunteers should take this to test yourselves or to test those asking you for support for candidacies or nonprofit ventures.
1. What is your vision for the future that calls you to service?
2. What is the bold stroke—your big idea—to achieve your vision?
3. What are the core values that shape your vision and ideas?
4. Whom do you admire in your personal life? Who are your political heroes? Mentors?
5. What have you done for others? List your volunteer history and service on your résumé.
6. Whom have you actively encouraged, supported, or mentored in their paths to public service? List the people who claim you as a mentor. Will they talk to strangers, walk precincts in the rain, sleep on floors, or open their homes for you?
7. What is your personal code of conduct, aka your version of Big Daddy’s Rules of the Road?
8. What act of political courage have you taken to achieve your vision? Name your biggest sacrifice or risk.
9. Do you understand what the position demands, and are you prepared to meet those demands?
10. Can you ask thousands of people you don’t know to give you a job or give money to your cause?
11. How do you handle crisis and criticism about your personal or political baggage?
12. Is your family ready for you to serve?
13. If you put all your time, energy, and effort into a public service campaign, work your heart out and lose, what then?