Chapter 5: Lead With Humility | Building YIMBYs of NoVA
Why some very nice people let me tell them what to do
101 people are receiving this post via email (yes, I added a few of you; hi, mom). Special thanks to my 3 paid subscribers. And special gratitude to the friend who suggested I serialize this narrative and start a Substack.
Welcome to Chapter 5 of the Building YIMBYs of NoVA series, which covers:
Chapter 7: Recruit Like Crazy (Plus Thoughts on Social Media)
Chapter 8: Think And Talk About Opponents As Little As Possible
The irony of writing more than 1,000 words about my own humility is not lost on me. Nor is leadership something I claim expertise in, though I have always been assertive. Some of these reflections may be particularly clichéd, others can judge, but leadership and management are notoriously squishy. This is what worked for me and what I have seen work, based on positive as well as negative experiences across my career.
I take great pleasure in treating the members of my team like adults. Too few managers do that. It is a bit apples to oranges, because we are volunteers doing work with a clear, compelling purpose, whereas most people get paid to do who knows what, but the control freak manager who kills direct reports’ intrinsic drive is a universal experience. I want to minimize the emotional energy my team has to expend dealing with me. So although I set a low bar for mentioning issues like the tone of an external message or how we want to think and internally talk about opponents, I set a fairly high bar for calling something a problem. “Just something to be aware of” is a well-worn phrase. I do not expect things to be done exactly how I would do them. I no longer even think about it. Control or scale: Pick one.
Being kind and considerate is extremely important to me personally, but also as the foundation for a healthy organizational culture. We all share a mutual respect that helps us set our egos aside and step in to help each other. We lean on and reassure each other when things get rough or one of us is having a hard time. We always gently guide each other back on track. I always thank someone for completing a task, even if it is routine, especially if I directly asked. And I am always thankful!
Pride rarely provides good counsel. My job as a leader is not to be the most knowledgeable or have the answers, but rather to ask the right questions, facilitate, and keep my team motivated, focused, and pointed in the right direction. My co-founder Theo, who has run for office twice and is deeply emotionally intelligent, told me that early on. Humility includes being happy to do, and periodically doing, any of the things I ask other people to do. This is not scalable in the sense that I must heavily delegate by necessity, but I can never have an attitude of “that’s not my job.”
Humility also extends to decision making. This is not flattering for me, but my usual process is throwing out an idea, or more often just asking a few people, “What do you think we should do?” Someone throws out a more sensible idea than whatever I was thinking, maybe someone else posits something different. It is usually clear what the best idea is, and we just go with that. Making decisions, especially big ones, by consensus whenever possible is incredibly important. It actually results in better decisions, and people buy in to the participatory process. That is easy to agree with, but in practice means very few exceptions. I was recently wondering whether we should dig into an anti-housing group’s potential violations of tax and campaign finance law. I was leaning in favor, but a member of our team strongly disagreed, so I let it go. I rarely put my foot down, usually because a core principle of our group is at stake. Worth reiterating from Chapter 3, the person closest to a situation usually has the best information about it. Trust their knowledge. Empower your team.
Especially if you are getting started, you also want to find ways to minimize friction for the people you work with. Dig up links, find the quote in an article or document, take the time to show someone how to do a task. Take away the little hurdles that can prevent folks from following through. It helps people build momentum to start doing things more independently. And it sets an example that others emulate. Your team will see that they should be reducing friction for each other. Finally, you will earn your team’s appreciation and respect.
Celebrating victories is incredibly important, particularly in housing advocacy, where they are few and far between. It is important to enjoy those rare days, the fruits of our labor. I can only assume this is true of traditional entrepreneurship too. Celebrating wins prevents burnout and provides catharsis after a long struggle, as a friend and confidant explained to me. It resets a team emotionally.
Few managers seem to understand how powerful recognition is for individual contributors. It can really make someone’s day. I try to compliment a person’s unique traits. Exploiting a particular strength merits praise, as does going outside of one’s comfort zone, even to do something other people would find easy. I also sing the praises of people who pull off a big task by themselves. No one is expected to do that, and it should be recognized and rewarded with greater responsibility.
Praise in public, chide in private. Only correct or chastise someone visibly to other team members if that individual is threatening to undermine a basic norm of your organization. For example, if someone on my team said we should publicly attack our opponents, I would swiftly say, ‘No, we don’t do that. It is not productive and it makes us look bad. We do not get into back and forths with people.’ If someone makes a mistake, privately correct them and start by identifying and praising the good intention behind their action. “Stuff happens” usually works. Merely acknowledging their mistake is enough to make them uncomfortable and want to avoid repeating it.
Being the leader means the buck stops with you. When something goes wrong, even if it is squarely someone else’s fault, you must take responsibility, pick up the pieces, emotionally stabilize your team, and find the path forward. The person who messed up knows it, probably others do too, no need to make an example of anyone. You have primary responsibility for identifying threats and managing risk. You must draw any lessons you can from any failure, big or small, and apply what you learn to the team, to make it stronger and more consistent.
You are responsible for tasks no one else wants to do. You take on the uncomfortable situations. You hold people accountable if they behave unprofessionally. You keep everyone focused when something bad happens beyond their control. Maybe an allied organization made a mistake, maybe you are being publicly attacked. You have to be the bigger person, the voice of reason.
If you enjoy this series or want to work together, I would love to hear from you at lucagattonicelli@substack.com. I am glad to answer questions from readers, ideally in future blog posts. Visit YIMBYs of Northern Virginia at yimbysofnova.org.