Two weeks ago, I shared that our very first step to stand out as advocates should be building trust. Finding ways to connect with people before jumping into the politics of it all helps you play the long game. When you build that trust, you gain credibility over time. But what about the short game? How do you stand out in an immediate task like hosting a meeting with a legislator?
I spent years meeting with advocacy teams from countless organizations. As a young congressional staffer, it was my job to listen, take in their positions and distill them down to what was relevant to our office. Day after day, I sat down with the people who shared our priorities and more than a few of the people who despised everything about our member’s politics. It was my job to make sure they left feeling heard – especially if they were part of the latter.
Here’s the problem: I’m not a smart man. I’m not one of those geniuses blessed with a 30 pound brain.
I study. A lot. None of it comes naturally. I devour books because I HAVE to. To get introduced to a topic, digest it, and walk away with a meaningful recommendation takes a lot of work. And I think – maybe pridefully hope – that many of my peers in the congressional staff world do their own fair share of studying too. We’re an inch deep, and a mile wide on issues, much like our bosses. And we’re constantly sprinting to catch up with others who’ve been running with a given issue for years.
Political staffers are not specialists. We are by nature of the business, generalists. And generalists simply won’t know as much as you do.
The issues that were salient enough to compel citizen advocates to come see our team weren’t easy. They were complex, confounding problems. Always. Which meant even more work on my part to understand their complexities. It also meant I generally had a TON of questions to ask. Questions that took us down rabbit holes. Questions that may have led the conversation in a different direction than expected. Questions that likely proved just how not in-the-know I really was.
The difference between the really impactful advocacy groups and the rest often boiled down to one common thread: did they have a plan on how they would educate me and direct the conversation toward their ask?
I’m still quite regularly taken aback by the number of folks I meet who think we can be truly, deeply successful in advocacy by reacting and making it up on the fly. We take it for granted that our cause – our solution to really big problems – is commonsense. We assume first, that a given problem can almost exclusively be seen how we see it. Then we compound that mistake by assuming that our expertise grants us instant credibility.
BREAKING NEWS: Both of these can be false at the same time.
Those assumptions put many of us in a bad spot. Because we CAN be technical experts and know the ins-and-outs of an issue in our field. But our targets likely aren’t. Our targets, including the general public, largely don’t deal with the same types of problems we do in our own fields each day. And if we assume we can make them experts simply by showing up, we do our causes a severe disservice.
The old saying from Benjamin Franklin goes: “if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” Go figure, an actual smart man calls it!
Winging it when you’re actually in the room – even as experts – is a bad idea. That’s why a significant share of my training with advocates is focused on equipping them with a B.A.S.I.C. model they can use to actually plan how they. will guide a target to their conclusions.
Is it foolproof? No. Your target gets a vote in how any advocacy meeting goes down. But it’s a step toward thinking through how YOU want that meeting to go, and how YOU can control bringing it back into focus when (inevitably) a dummy like me walks into the room and leads you down a rabbit hole.
In the coming weeks, I’ll be hosting a significant round of advocacy meetings yet again. And again, I’ll be working with volunteer advocates to craft plans on how they can manage these really intimidating meetings. I’ll lean on tools I’ve created (and a few I’ve stolen from others because that’s what great advocates do) to ensure they’re better prepared to work together as teams of strangers. And I’ll remind them that they’re dealing with real people on the other side of the table, not robots.
A solid plan on how you’ll engage with those real people helps keep you accountable. It’ll help you hit all of your talking points. It’ll ensure you craft and deliver a meaningful ask. And it will give you a framework on how to get back to the point when they drag you down a different path. A good plan gives you space for people new to the topic to be curious.
Real people need time, and patience, to get into the weeds on your issue. You’ve had years to learn the material, they’ve maybe had minutes. Building a plan for how you’ll equip them to get curious about your cause needs to be an early priority. Leave winging it to the people who are willing to lose.
p.s. Interested in how to build out a plan to be more effective in any type of meeting? Check out this previous post on ways to get right to your ask!
Part of the Possible 