Success in Advocacy: “Just be Human”

When I think about who I’ll be, and what I’ll have experienced 20 years from now, I’m fairly certain I’ll still be working on the basics, the fundamentals, of my work.

Maybe it’s from playing sports growing up, performing on stage, or my time in the Marine Corps. Regardless, at some point I accepted the fact that mastery isn’t flashy – it’s grounded. But even accepting that, and putting it into practice in my daily work around advocacy, I still get frequent reminders of just how important those basics really are.

Yesterday was a perfect example.

I was chatting with a colleague and she told me about a conversation she’d just had while working to prepare a group of advocates to go to Capitol Hill. When asked what she was going to focus on in the training session, she said it as bluntly as I often think it: “I’m going to remind them to just be human.”

If you’re just nibbling around the edges of politics – interested in it, but a little intimidated by it too – participating in the process can seem daunting. The prospect of putting yourself in the room, to speak on an issue – any issue – is probably going to have you more than a bit nervous. That nervousness can take a lot of forms.

For me, the nervous energy sits in my stomach. The morning of a big advocacy day I HAVE to go for a run. I need to push myself hard so that I feel depleted enough to make sure I actually eat something at breakfast. If not, that nervousness will find itself in a nice pairing with my morning pot of coffee and I can come across as agitated and a bit frantic.

It doesn’t matter how well you know the material, presenting yourself like that just isn’t a sound strategy. So I take active steps (like that morning run) to regulate myself.

But for others, their nervousness can present in different ways. One of the hardest to manage is an inclination to put on a grand performance. Here’s what I mean:

Have you ever heard someone deliver a speech on a political issue in the presence of a high ranking politician? What do they do? In far too many cases to count, they assume an air about themselves when they take the stage, and in the first few moments of their remarks they sound as if they’re aiming to add a new paragraph to the Declaration of Independence!

For others, their nervousness will have them hyper fixated on prepared talking points, unable to improvise and go off-script. Others become defensive and want to pick a fight. Still others find themselves frozen, rigid and silent.

Which one sounds familiar to you?

I’ve seen all of these scenarios, lived some of them, and can tell stories about many more. The reality is we all go through some iteration of excitement when we decide to put ourselves out there in some public way. The appropriate question is: how do we correct for it?

Just Be Human

One of my main goals in helping new advocates is for them to embrace the simple step of having a plan for the meeting that assigns small, accomplishable goals for each team member in the meeting. Doing that gives them time and space in their meeting to do one really important thing: be themselves.

When we feel like we are on the hook to deliver a “yes” for our cause, we double down on all the psychological and physiological factors ramping up our excitement or nervousness. By dividing the labor, we can redirect that energy, focus it, and in many ways mitigate it. We can’t eliminate it. But we can help advocates manage it, whether they know that’s happening or not.

The second half of the formula is to reinforce the basics of relationship building. I spend time helping advocates understand who will be in the room and positive ways to engage with those players. I challenge them in practice scenarios to make them feel uncomfortable and help them practice hitting their internal reset buttons. But really what I’m doing is reminding them to just be themselves, and be human.

It’s great that you want to win champions to your cause. It’s commendable that you take the time to study and internalize the talking points. But what really matters is finding a connection point to the target audience so you can start the much longer work of establishing personal credibility. You can’t do that without just being human.

Be kind, be patient, share your story, look for common ground. These are the basics, the fundamentals, any advocate needs to find long term success. Basically, just be human.