In recent weeks, I have observed and been a part of conversation regarding the group of four freshmen women in Congress dubbed the “Squad.” To summarize if you’ve missed it, while President Trump has expressed non-filtered language to these four high-profile women of color in tweets that CNN and other news outlets identified as “racist,” I’ve been somewhat disappointed that the Squad has not taken this timely opportunity to demonstrate stronger leadership in their individual or collective response to these attacks.
As I see it, their defensive approach only fueled the fire, keeping the public eye riveted on Trump’s false accusations (for example, on his implication that they weren’t natural-born citizens when three out of four of them were born in the U.S.) Here’s the thing: by reacting to the president’s words through refuting his specific language and inaccurate claims, they played right into his hand and kept his sound bites alive and repeated for much longer than they might have been. This resulted in no new leadership messages of their own—no words that might have overshadowed his much more effectively than continuing his dialogue by entering the fray and fighting directly against it—and no constructive solutions. By responding in such a way to untruths, they in essence dignified them.
By demonstrating lack of a unified voice, this disruptive approach also resulted in frustrating and dividing the Democratic Party at a time when unity is critical. I’d compare this to the example of taking a new product and then marketing it with no strategy behind the message. The resulting messaging and voice comes off as much less relevant or credible than it could have been.
In terms of leadership in this instance, these four highly intelligent and in many ways admirable women unfortunately inadvertently supported Trump’s strategy, which was to call out their lack of experience as freshman and question their support for their country. Where have we seen this before? Regardless of the credibility of his statements, Trump won an election and beat Hillary Clinton by highlighting material that true or not, put a negative spotlight on Clinton. The tactic keeps working because it grabs the attention of the media and the public and makes memorable tweets.
The Squad represents a hopeful new generation of leaders within the Democratic Party—and potentially someday at the top of the caucus—but their kneejerk response to Trump’s taunts revealed their current status as newbies to the Democratic Party, even as their goal is to win the votes of their party. Despite their best intentions, the four simply lacked strategic leadership in this instance; in fact, Trump is now feeding on this event, having gained the upper hand despite making statements that the media proved were unfounded.
As a counterpoint to this disruptive approach that lacked a visionary strategy, Speaker Nancy Pelosi by some views has demonstrated leadership strength by focusing on her intention to serve the people rather than having her messaging focus derailed by barbs or disruptive views. Just this week, the Los Angeles Times ran a story about the success of her leadership style in helping her win over Democratic centrists—a turnaround from nearly being blocked from her role as House Speaker last year for what was labeled as “divisiveness.” No longer—as the story emphasized, “…Pelosi’s position atop the Democratic Party—which she leads until there is a 2020 presidential nominee—has never been stronger.”
What’s Pelosi doing differently now than she did before, and differently than the four green Congresswomen are doing? In Pelosi’s own words as quoted in this Monday’s LA Times piece: “‘As speaker I have to bring unity to our caucus and to do so with the boldest common denominator,’ she said Friday, comparing herself to a weaver ‘at the loom just making all of those threads come together in the boldest possible way.’” The key phrase here that differentiates Pelosi’s leadership style from the Squad’s is “unity.”
As I wrote in my last post, women politicians are in a unique position today to begin shifting the dialogue from what has in the past kept women stuck on what I’ve termed “Sticky Floors”—to exchange polarization and disruption for collaboration and inclusion. To do that, they need to follow Pelosi’s lead and rewrite the script in their own words, rather than following someone else’s to places they don’t want to go.
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Rebecca Shambaugh is a leadership expert on building inclusive and high performance cultures. She speaks at major conferences and to executives on an inspiring vision and roadmap for driving greater levels of innovation and performance through a unified voice for leadership. Rebecca is the Founder of Women in Leadership and Learning, a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, and blogger for the Huffington Post. She is author of the best-selling books It’s Not a Glass Ceiling, It’s a Sticky Floor and Make Room for Her: Why Companies Need an Integrated Leadership Model to Achieve Extraordinary Results.
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