This week I turned 43 years old. I am particularly excited and terrified about this year for a kind of silly reason: 43 has always been “my number.” As a high school and then college basketball player, 43 was always my jersey number. I have no idea why, but it stuck. I’ve had SERB43 license plates and still have memories flood back anytime I see a player wearing the number. So it feels like maybe this could be “my year.” Or it could be nothing, or worse. Either way, I’ve been spending some time reflecting on aging, learning, and growing. Maybe you do that when your birthday rolls around too.
One of the things I’ve been reflecting on is what I’ve learned in nearly 20 years in politics - and what that means for the movement for a New Way in our politics. I thought it was a good week, then, to highlight the type of leader (from my eight types) that I believe I am - a Guide. Maybe you’re a Guide too - or you know someone who is. Read on to learn who Guides are, and what they do for a movement.
What is a Guide?
As movements unfold they will inevitably face dark days. The leaders will wonder if all is lost. They will wonder if they’ve labored in vain and sacrificed so much for nothing. It’s in these moments that Guides step in to listen, encourage, shape and advise. They may even pray.
Guides are the “spiritual” leaders of a movement. This may mean what it seems at face value – pastors, priests, and gurus. Or it may mean those who play the role of keeping the others grounded in the larger truths that drive the movement and how it fits into the arc of history. Counselors are Guides. Mentors are Guides. Grandparents can be Guides. Every movement needs guides who are quietly rooted in firm, foundational truths and ideas and are not easily swayed, discouraged or intimidated by any particular occurrence of the day or week.
This doesn’t mean Guides never have doubts or are perfect. Trust me, I’ve had plenty of doubts and moments of wondering if I’m just wasting my life. And I’m about as far from perfect as is possible. But it does mean guides have seen, experienced and endured enough to know there is more to a story than what is happening right now. Guides are those who are able to contextualize any given moment in the movement and offer not only encouragement but important reminders. When visionaries are running up against what feel like insurmountable walls, the Guides will quietly share a story of movement leaders of old who faced the same challenges.
One such leader for me has been Pastor Ray Hammond. Pastor Ray began his career as an emergency medical physician – a Harvard-trained African-American physician at a time when that accomplishment was rare indeed. As life unfolded he found himself planting a church in Boston in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) tradition, and then leading many crucial culture-shaping endeavors in the city of Boston and the world. But I know Pastor Ray as a quiet, grounded, wise mentor.
Every time I’ve ever been around Pastor Ray, usually in the context of a movement gathering, I’ve felt more grounded and confident of the path forward. Why? Pastor Ray is a Guide. He almost always references a story from history – ancient and biblical or recent from the civil rights movement – which frames my own work in important ways. Not only does his wisdom encourage me, it humbles and inspires me. He reminds us, as does every great Guide, that we are part of a bigger story. That our role often is to simply be faithful to the work and keep going. That there is much that is out of our control. Much that is and will be a mystery. All these things are critical to the health and growth of a movement.
It is in this vein that I, too, try to lead. I am a Guide. It has taken me nearly ten years to come to terms with this, but as I’m embracing it more and more it is, much like I hope my upcoming book and this Substack will do for you, deeply impacting my focus and ability to figure out where I fit. Sometimes in things we care about we are tempted to do too much. Or to think too highly of ourselves. This is natural. Passion will do that to us. But I’m not a Builder & Maker, or a Sheriff, or a Reformer. I may have a Visionary streak that goes alongside my primary leadership strength. But first and foremost, I am a Guide.
What Guides Do
I have found that guides are particularly important in two key tactical areas: strategic planning and support of Visionaries. As plans are being laid for the movement, it’s easy to get excited and reach for the stars. I know because this is my own tendency. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but if our strategic plans are built on shooting for the stars without understanding the distance between the launchpad and the stars, or the challenges of exiting the atmosphere, or the extreme conditions of space and how that is likely to feel, our plans are doomed to fail.
Guides can introduce a grounded voice of reality into planning conversations, drawing from experience and wisdom and helping us ensure that our plans contemplate the challenges.
In these planning and dreaming sessions, Guides can also bring a sense of calm and focus on relationships that is critical to ensuring the foundations are built strong. Guides are attuned to the relational dynamics of a room, look for possible friction points or frustrations and help to bring them to light. During a key day of planning a Guide may, for example, pull another leader aside during a break to ask some probing questions like, “how are you feeling about everything?” Then by listening carefully, the Guide can help unearth important concerns that need to be addressed – and bring them up.
In my own work, I talk about how, in trying to elect independent candidates to office, I’ve tried to “take the hill” more than just about anyone, ever. I haven’t taken “the entire hill” yet, but I know where all the snipers and landmines are. And that is critical information for the next wave trying to take the hill.
My friend and former U.S. Senate candidate Craig O’Dear likened his 2018 run - alongside other brave independent candidates like Evan McMullin, Neal Simon, Bill Walker and Greg Orman - to the D-Day effort to take Point Du Hoc in Normandy. It was, in many ways, a suicide mission. But the guns on that point had to be taken out in order to allow the invasion to succeed. A highly trained and courageous group of soldiers took it, knowing what they were facing, in order that, in the ultimate sense, the entire beach could be taken, then Normandy, then the war.
Guides have been in the fierce, painful battles and lived to tell the stories - and share the wisdom.
Guides as Partners
Guides are also critical partners to the Visionaries. As we said, Visionaries relentlessly pursue their view of the world and cast and re-cast the vision over and over and over. This can get incredibly discouraging when people criticize you, or you’re not seeing that vision come to reality, or you are experiencing setbacks but feel like you can’t let it show. Guides have been there. They remind the Visionaries that it was never going to be easy. That their vision is good and right and true and the challenges of the moment don’t change the truth of the vision.
Guides will often have the characteristics (or even hold the role in their professional lives) of counselors, spiritual guides, and mentors. Their contributions to the movement are usually quiet, often in the background, and centered on encouraging, directing and serving the other types of leaders in their work.
Sometimes a Guide will play the role quite literally – of helping other leaders to navigate a particularly difficult stretch of the work. Maybe it’s dealing with a crisis, or a leadership conflict, or significant outside attack. The rest of the movement leaders will rely on the Guide’s steady hand, quiet wisdom and specific experiences as they navigate these tough times.
In these ways, Guides are also critically important to helping preserve relationships, mediate conflict and aim at strong cultural alignment. Guides often have a unique ability to get two people within a movement who are otherwise not aligned, to work together. And that’s often where real magic happens.
We should note here, too, some of the negatives – perceived or real – that can be present in Guides. As a Guide myself who tries to keep a calm, grounded demeanor, especially in times of potential conflict, my approach can be interpreted as aloof or not urgent enough. In an attempt to stay solid for the group, others can feel that Guides aren’t grasping or appreciating the urgency of the moment. I’ve even been told that by not matching the intensity – even in things like yelling or showing emotion which are common in movements – that I don’t care enough. This is a risk that Guides will run.
Additionally, Guides are often focused on the arc of history more than the heat of the moment. Because of this, it can sometimes seem like Guides don’t understand the tactical needs of the moment. Indeed, they may not. This is another reason why having all the various types of leaders is so important. A Guide sometimes won’t be able to direct what needs to happen this week or next. A Builder & Maker will though. They will know, like any great builder, what comes next. You don’t build a house by putting on a roof. There are a million little steps, that need to happen in sequence. Guides typically aren’t great at seeing that – and even worse at having the tenacity of the moment to drive on each step.
Without Guides, your movement will suffer from discouragement, lack of foresight and a shallow foundation. You will lack relational stability and be more prone to unnecessary interpersonal conflict. Leaders will burn out and hard times might just kill the moment before it becomes a movement.
Every movement needs Guides.
Thanks for being a guide! At age 78, here's My Sad Take on Political Matters
I have clear political beliefs developed over time. I was a conservative Republican, then a Freedom School libertarian, then a classical liberal, which I guess I still am.
I believe coercion and violence against others are wrong. I believe in the sanctity of life which means that killing in any form is wrong and the well-being of others should be a priority. I do recognize that extreme circumstances such as self-defense in a variety of forms can leave us little choice but to commit that wrong, but this should be rare for an individual or a country.
I believe free enterprise—freedom—is good and continues to bring a better quality of life to people around the world.
I believe it is important to try to know and understand both political history and philosophical and religious history although all we know has been presented with a degree of selectivity. I believe the US Constitution is a masterful framework although not perfect as neither its framers nor we are perfect.
However, my beliefs are abstract. Many factors determine how things happen in real life. Our republic and the voters, candidates, and elected officials are impacted by educational, regional, social, and economic factors. Politicians and the media are motivated by money—money to stay in business and succeed, money to pay for campaigns, money given out by the government to please voters and large contributors. No vote is ever free of these financial considerations. Education and the media—major sources and social media sources—also determine voters’ points of view.
No one has ever understood all of the factors in history that contributed to today’s various cultures in our country or in other countries. Well-meaning—and also financially motivated—groups form to influence politics. We naturally prefer or subscribe to those that fit our point of view; and our positions are, in return, formed by that. But we can’t know for sure if those groups need money to continue their work or if they continue their work to make money.
We instinctively support countries that are being attacked by dictatorships and hostile regimes, but we can’t know what the loss of life on either side will lead to in the future.
When it comes to me, I will vote for the lesser of evils or for things that might positively rearrange future policies and outcomes (such as ranked choice voting or other forms of voting that give voice to more people).
But when it comes to real world politics, I will never be able to be sure what is best.