EP6. The Power of Democratic Leadership.

We have to have candidates and political leaders who are liked, who are charismatic, who connect, who are warm, who unfortunately are not at the national level know how to be in front of a camera, right? That is what we're doing. Now maybe in four years or two years it's all going to be AI and it's not going to matter. But if we keep electing or trying to elect people who aren't charismatic who are good technocrats, that's not working. Like have them be a chief of staff. We need charismatic, warm, courageous leaders. Did you ever wonder how authoritarians keep winning? They have a playbook. Now so do we. This is the anti-authoritarian toolkit podcast series where we flip the script, expose the top moves used to dismantle democracies and equip you with the best tools to fight back. We are Democracy Hub. Alongside global strategist and frontline defenders, we're here to help you crack the code and beat authoritarians. Are you ready to dive in? Join us. Our episode today is really close to my heart. As a politician, I have long resisted the idea of the lone man in command. Firstly, because it's limiting to everyone who's not a man. The most important leap because I've seen firsthand how open, inclusively leadership leads to more effective and efficient decision making. Yet, today, it seems the word is increasingly drawn to a different model. More and more people are willingly choosing and voting for authoritarian figures. The only wolves who claim to have all the answers, but who often lack empathy, compassion and genuine honesty. This is the only way to leadership. Well, we don't think so. And that's why today we bring to you a new idea of leadership with leaders who embody kindness, inclusivity and true strength. Leaders who represent the very best of democratic values. This episode of the anti-authoritarian toolkit is all about that. My name is Federica Vinci and I'll be your host today. And I am honored to have an extraordinary guest with us, Lisa Witter. Lisa is an incredible human being. She is a world-winning executive serial entrepreneur and powerhouse in politics, philanthropy and behavior change. She's the co-founder and executive chairman of our political, a global network revolutionizing public service by connecting government change makers to the best ideas and solutions. Lisa as advised Nobel laureates, CEOs and policymakers founded assembly for a weak or rep-applying behavioral science for social good and spent over a decade leading at Fenton, the US top public interest communications agency. A world economic forum young global leader, speaker and writer featured in Fast Company sent for social innovation review and more, easier to share her insight on what is democratic leadership. Lisa, welcome. We are really, really honored to have you here. Thanks, Federica. So much I was thinking about maybe doing this interview in Italian, speaking that's where you held from and knowing that I came from there. And then reminding myself that the last time I spoke Italian with any fluency was 1993 and figuring out that that's the year that you were born. So I love that in some ways this is an intergenerational conversation because leadership is not static. It keeps reflecting different generations and experiences. So it's an honor to be with you, a former and hopefully future politician and I look forward to this conversation. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here and yeah, I hope as well to be F for like I am a former and I hope to be a future politician again and that's why I'm extremely interested to this conversation today. But before we jump into the real conversation, why don't you send me a little bit of what it's bringing you here? Like why are you here talking about democratic leadership? Well, thank you. I really, I'm not going to give you my whole life story, but I think it's really important because why I'm sitting here today, I am convinced that it is because democratic leadership. You were born in '93. I was born in 1973 in the United States near Seattle, Washington, a town called Everett. And at that time, very pioneering people had very boring legislation called Title IX. It was titled Title IX basically meant that the federal government of the United States would only release certain amount of money for boy sports if they provided equal opportunity for girl sports, democratic leadership, political process, finance, budget, gender equity. And I would not be here today if that was in the case because it was through being an athlete. I played volleyball, basketball, softball and soccer. My nickname was animal that I got a sense of strategy and a sense of confidence and a sense of team. How do we pull things together to do things together? When are we losing? We stay together. And I also went to church every Sunday with my grandmother. Now she grew up Catholic, but she lived in public housing and the only bus that came through the Everett housing was a free Methodist church bus. And my dad comes from seven. So she's my grandmother had lots of grandkids. And I was the one who kind of got obsessed about going to church with her because I found being in church, being part of something bigger than myself. So if you love politics, and one of the reasons I love politics because it combines winning, which I learned in sports and being part of something bigger than myself. So I got involved in politics very young and I did politics to do policy. Now just quickly I came back after college and I got involved in my political party and I noticed that the political party was recruiting people to run for office that could raise money, give good speeches and hopefully win. And at the time I was working at a leadership training organization focused on bringing the public sector, the private sector and the nonprofit sector together. And I thought, wow, this is transformational leadership. We were studying someone called Robert Greenleaf, which is about servant leadership. And I thought none of this is existing and how the political parties were recruiting or training people. So audaciously, I think in leadership you have to be audacious and humbul, kind of balance that all at the same time. We'll talk about this FedAM. Here is your perspective. I think of leadership traits as dials, not as on off switches. That's an important metaphor. What you dial up and dial down as a leader. But I said, why don't we think about politics differently? Why don't we bring in people and train them on transformational leadership being a third? The politics of the context. So in many places it's who's ring you have to kiss, how the political system works in your area. And then one third actually being a policy makers. Because basically no politicians go into politics knowing about policy making and how to be an effective policy maker. So I'm really proud to say that nearly 30 years later, the organization I co-founded called Institute for a Democratic Future not only is alive and getting new and diverse people into the system, but it's also being replicated in very different ways. And across the world with the A political foundation. And the reason why I bring that up is for 30 years I've been thinking about this question about what makes a good political leader. Because it's never static. The world, the human brain isn't even changing right now or expectations or dopamine rushes. I hope we get in that later. But that gives you sort of the background about how and why I've been in this issue for so long. So I'm curious about you Fed. You said that you've been a political leader and you hope to be a political leader in the future. What took you in the path of politics and political leadership? I think things that are very similar to what brought you in as well. So there was definitely the idea of being part of something bigger and seeing this something bigger, being devastated or destroyed somehow. So since I was very young, I was a strong Europeanist. I've seen in Europe my path to freedom somehow because I come from, as they were saying, a super small town in the south of Italy, which is very majestic, very close-minded. I was the first daughter of the first divorced woman in town. So you can only imagine what it means to grow up in a place like this. So you have like 67 old women looking at you ready to call your mom, whatever you're going to do wrong. So when my mom decided to send me in Europe at that time was the UK to study English. It was the first time in which I felt really, and then I felt part of something bigger than me, bigger than my small town. So there was a moment specifically in my life, which would Brexit, in which I felt that what I felt to be my house, so Europe was really in danger. And in that moment, I realized that one of the reasons why it was in danger was exactly because of the lack of leaders that embodied values that were democratic. I saw myself surrounded by leaders that encouraged hateful speech or leaders that encouraged a vision of the word that was on the other side of what I thought it was right. So a very close-minded view of the word, a very hateful view of the word. So that moment I thought that the only way for me to change things was to actually get involved into politics. And that was the first time in which I, myself, as you decided to join, actually to create my own political party, a European political party. And then a few years later, when COVID happened and I found myself into my super small town, again, blocked because I couldn't go away because of COVID, I started wandering to myself. why is it that I feel and about I've always felt this need to escape from what actually is my home? Why can I just leave here and be part of it? And I realized that one of the reasons was because I was represented by people that didn't represent the idea of politics or the idea of democracy as well that I had. Again, a lot of hateful speech, a little, a lot of like ideas that went against minorities or people that I actually loved. So that moment was another pivotal moment for myself in which I felt like if I want to live here and if I want to be feel myself at home here, I need to get engaged myself. And so that was a moment in which I run for elections in my hometown. And I became deputaneer and I've been deputaneer for the past three years. But then I think we're going to get there soon with the podcast. I totally burn myself out and this is going to be one of the topic of over conversation today. And so I decided to leave and I say that I hope to be again a politician because I really believe that politics is the answer to most of our problem. But I also feel that it's becoming harder and harder to be a democratic leader. So before getting into that, let me ask you one question. We are talking about democratic leaders and how important they are. But how would you define to our listeners that have never heard the word democratic leaders? How would you define a democratic leader who would be the best example that you can think about about democratic leader? Thank you for sharing your story and I can't wait to dive into more of your lessons and learnings and thoughts about the future. And I just want to ask Drics all of this to say I am constantly learning about all of this every day. I don't come here a report to to know all the answers, but I will share with you not just how I'm thinking, but the extraordinary team that we work with from Jordan to Brazil, from Pakistan to Bolivia, and the network of folks from academics to former politician. So we're a giant learning lab and doing that. And I want to be a little provocative just for a moment because I hear this phrase democratic leader thrown out a lot like we need democratic leaders and we absolutely do. I mean, democratic leaders, when it comes down to it, believes in democracy and that's democracy beyond just elections. It means that they believe in a rule of law and protection of minorities, so the basic liberal democratic tendencies. But I find a lot of people confuse democratic leadership for calling people that they don't agree with how they do their politics, if it actually is democratic on democratic. So there's a difference between disagreeing with someone's political views, how they feel about the world, then whether or not they're anti-democracy. And I just want to be very careful around that because those things get conflated a lot. Now, one cannot any moment disagree with somebody else's politics, but are we talking about disagreeing with their politics? Are we talking about those people standing to destroy institutions, to take away the rule of law, to take away minority rights, to withhold people's opportunity to elect their leaders? And I would even say one of the challenges we have right now is that the metaphor for leadership is a bit broken. Now, we have today democracies that are basically run on 18th century politics with 19th century governments, some 20th century institutions, oftentimes 20th century technology while we face not just 21st century problems by 22nd century problems and possibilities. And so not only do we need to sort of ask ourselves what is democracy today, but what does it need to be? And traditionally, often democratic leaders have been seen as public servants. And for many people today, they want more agency and deciding on things that impact their lives at a time when the world is more complex. So it's a very complex time to be a democratic leader because if you're a deputy mayor and you're a small town in Italy, you don't have a lot of control over the war in Ukraine, yet it may greatly affect the inflation rates in your city. So these are complicated times. I'd love to get more into the exact traits that we're looking at and for because I've learned a lot over the years that I've made a lot of mistakes. I really want to show those with a listener's too because I think there's a lot to learn from that. That's really interesting and especially like I completely feel what you're saying, especially because I remember when the where the new current started and I was deputy mayor back then at the time. And I remember the huge amount of people that were actually putting together stuff just to send to Ukraine and I saw how it changes so much when people started to realize that inflation was connected to the war. And so we had to practically deal with what ones will support for Ukraine people and for us getting engaged to the into the world to what then where the action impact of it. So and it was incredibly hard to maintain a discourse that was supporting and that made people understand what was it that we were trying to do and why the world was changing so much. So I feel that when you imagine a democratic leader and you have to get into the straights, how would you define them? What would the straight look like? Yeah and sort of what has changed over the years and that I think is important for us to talk about. So first and foremost but not only you need to have someone with the fancy words in trinzic motivation. But it basically means pro social motivations beyond themselves. I'm a little bit nervous with people that say they have no ego because that's usually a lie. I'm not calling it an a liar but there's a little bit of ego obviously in you when you decide to raise your hand or even take on the call to run office. And again as I said I don't think leadership are on off either don't have an ego or not or either pro social or you're not. There's varying degrees of when these things come to play. But if you are not clear about your why and you're doing it to please your parents or because you're not coming from a place of enough, I'm not saying you have to be a Zen Buddhist and sit in a corner and levitate. I'm not saying that at all but it has to be because you really care about people and the planet. I mean one of the reasons why I haven't run for office is because I haven't lived where I'm from in a really long time and I don't feel like I could actually serve the pro social motivations that I have away from a constituency that I'm not intimately engaged with. So that's number one. Number two is Fedda can you take a maybe a deep breath with me? We'll have a moment of just quick breath. So what I look for and leaders are people who can take a pause. Why? Because you're going to have to make very very difficult decisions. And in that pause is a moment of self awareness and self reflection. So we need democratic leaders that are pro social that are self aware of their biases of their bodies of their reactivity. That's really really important. Next is I would say curious with a growth mindset. So growth mindset is a little bit wonky again. But in today's world you have to be very curious. I think you've always had to be but look at you. You're a deputy mayor and you were dealing with Ukraine. If you're a deputy mayor you know 100 years ago yes there would have been some other foreign policy issue but not at the bold face of Ukraine. Climate, AI, all these externalities are really really big. And so you have to be curious to learn new things. You have to be open minded and you have to have a growth mindset. Meaning you have to be able to admit when you don't know something. You have to be wow this is really really cool. I get to learn something so you have to lean into that. Now we talked a bit about burnout and I really want to get into your story and how you have pulled yourself out. The thing I look for and leaders now is something called anti fragility. Which is more than resilience. Being a politician today is harder than it's ever been. 80% of women globally have threats against them. So this is hard hard work. But we need people in politics. And it's one of the reasons I hadn't run yet because I think I don't always take criticism very well because I like to be perfect. I like to do things right. You're never going to have all the people agree with you. So anti fragility is seeing wow things are really hard and what can I learn from this. So it's connected to that growth mindset. And I say there's two other really important things. There's many. We work with something called leap, which is sort of an excellence in political leadership council. Because we're really looking at these issues in the 21st century. But never before have you needed to be so charismatic. Now what does it mean to be a charismatic leader? This doesn't mean that you are the best talker in the world. But charisma comes down to two elements that get bowled up and bowed down. Strength, which is a combination of sort of how you present yourself, the quality of your ideas, your confidence level. But that doesn't matter unless you have a bit of warmth and connection with people. So if you think about someone like Nelson Mandela to you, someone, he had both strength and warmth. Right? He had this very warm everything from his smile. He also had clear convictions. And he also did crazy really things that people may not have thought of if you followed his not renaming the world. rugby team because it was an old Afrikaans name and said no, we need to unite this country. This is the movie In Victus. If you haven't seen it, we're going to keep this name. That is conviction. So strength and warmth. And the last is, and I wish this wasn't so important now. It's probably always been important, but just massive courage. The backlash that so many of our leaders from their own constituents from external forces is so strong, I wish that we didn't need to call for so much courage. I was just with an amazing gentleman named Felix Moraga, who ran for president in Nicaragua, was tortured and solitary confinement. And he was talking about a story and a donor stood up on the room and said, I just want to thank you for your courage. And Felix said back to him, thank you very much. But I want you to know that courage comes for a price and we need to fund courage. It just doesn't come from the inside. We need to support these courageous people and doing the job of being a politician. So that's what I really look for. And the mistake I made, Fedet, that I want to hear your thoughts on this is, if you think about political leadership as a full circle impact path, so deciding to get interested in politics, being trained to get involved in politics if you are joining a political parties, sometimes that can happen in a different order, running and either losing and deciding whether to go again or how to contribute another way or getting into office. Being effective while in office, we often don't find that part sexy, right? We love getting people elected, but we often don't support people as much when they're in office or really beat them up because they have to compromise, which is fine if you want to, but sometimes you need support and then helping people leave, right? I, the mistake I made running these programs is I thought if you trained people in things like self-management, well-being, ethics and negotiation, political systems, that would be enough. But if you don't screen the right people in with pro-social motivations, reflective, opening mindset, charisma and courage, you can't train those. Those are things that are in you that you can make bigger or smaller, but they're sort of in you. And I made a mistake of thinking I could train in a lot of these things instead of looking for them and then nurturing them along for the things that you can train for. I'm curious, what do you think? You look back at your time in office. What was the skill or mindset that you leaned on the most as a politician? That's a good question. First of all, let me say that I can really share, especially the last thing that you said in terms of motivation. You cannot create it if you don't have it. And I feel like what I missed around me when, as an elected office was having people that knew their story so much that they could find in their story the reason why they were running. So as you were saying, most of the time I found myself surrounded by people that became politician because they wanted to make their mother happy or because they wanted the popularity out of it. Because they had a particular constituency or particular interest and were connected to their personal interest, not the community interest that they had to serve. So this was really connected to the fact that at one point I felt incredibly lonely. But on the other side, as you were saying, one of the things that I leaned into the most and that I think let me then also to burn out was the work where two things. One was being really committed to my reasons, to my why, to the why I was doing what I was doing. And then the other was being really sort of self aware, but also, and this is a treat that is generally attached to women and extremely big perfectionists. And so I, this might connect to my second question, which is a dilemma that I felt talking about the reason why I left. One of the path to burnout for me was one of the characteristics that I most led in, which was empathetic listening. So I was connected a lot to my community. One of the reason why I was elected was because people felt listened by me and they felt like I was really trying to understand where they were coming from. And this was, I think, one of the not only the most important trade that led me to win the elections, but also an important trade because people felt more engaged in politics and they for the first time felt listened to. However, on the other side, when I got elected, what happened was that reality is really much harder than just listening to people and answering to their problem is harder than just listening to them. So when they saw that the answer came later than expected or was not as good as they expected as they and or better, it didn't make them feel as good as they felt when they just had someone listening to them. I was surrounded by relentless criticism that also came from this opening up to people. This obviously affected both my mental health and my capacity to remain empathetic. So I felt like I was part of this big dilemma. On the one hand, I wanted to keep listening to people and I wanted to give them answer and I wanted to be empathetic. On the other, I felt like I was constantly criticized that whatever I was doing was not enough and that I didn't have the answers that people were looking for. So how do you feel that this dilemma could be overcome? Well, again, I really want to congratulate you for, as we say in English, getting in the theater. I don't know how you say that in Italian, I forget. But actually doing the work and I'm sorry it was so hard on you. Thank you. Sincerely, I know how my skin politicians put in the game. We just did the first ever survey of the mental well-being of politicians and sort of why it's important. And it's really important to be able to get a good job in the world. And basically the mental well-being of politicians has never been really studied before. Think about it. These are roughly 6.5 million politicians in the world. There are around 49,000 MPs. This is one of the most important jobs in the world. They decide war and peace, famine and food, education, your future, your healthcare. They're really working to change that, but I think it's a big, a bit of blind spot we don't understand it. Anyway, the mental well-being was about the same level or lower than a first responder, so the person who shows that, but like a car accident. And so imagine, you know, what that would be like all the time. But yet, every politician we said, it's still an honor to serve my constituents. And I think the first principle problem, even ahead of figuring out sort of what you can do, is that we have a society who wants, and it's increasingly getting faster, want quick returns. And these are very complex problems. And to be quite honest, our governmental systems, I talked about these 20th century systems, aren't made to respond that quickly. And part because these are complex problems, we have to think them through. So I'm actually really excited just to take us for a moment to the promises, even though there are big concerns of AI getting better at sorting some of these problems and delivering on some of this stuff faster, what we deal with the more complicated stuff a little bit more slowly. Now, back to your particular issue. So there's two kind of things I've learned. Besides we've got to help citizens better understand their role of a citizen and how things work that goes back to civic education. And that's another conversation. But there's two things. Number one, I find politicians that are most successful, when I say successful meaning, they can get a lot done and they don't burn out. Because those things sometimes go together or not, is I often ask who are the five people that you spend the most time with. Because if you have five really good people around you, from a combination of taking away your phone, like I ask a lot of chief staff, what's the most important thing you can do to support your politician? So there are some things you can do to surround yourself with the people who are your wise, the people who are your political insidious, someone that you love and doesn't care about you being a politician. So it's a question I often ask. So if you're aspiring, your current politician, who do you spend the most time with? I think it's really important to your heart and soul and protection and advise you get. The second is during COVID, many of us went and did things and I so enjoyed deep time with my beautiful boys and family, but I also wanted to deepen my ability to do this work. So I went and got a certificate in brain-based leadership. And in that, I was reminded of the technique that I work with politicians on called standing in the balcony. Have you heard of this, Betty? Yeah, of course. Of course. Right. So that may have worked for you and your work and were you able to do it, like what it is, and if you were able to do it? I think it's really connected to one of the traits that you were talking about, which is self-awareness. So realize that how you're feeling in a certain situation and how you're seeing the problem, extract yourself, extrapolate yourself from the problem or the situation and trying to be able to see it from a balcony, from a different angle and understand what's going on beneath you, who are the people that are having influence, who are the people that are moving the traits of a certain problem so that you can really the touch yourself, extract, pollute yourself from the situation which you're living, seeing it from a different perspective and being able to understand and modify the way which you relate to the problem that you're living. This is the theory to me. - Yeah, it didn't work. - It really depends, right? It really depends on how much you're emotionally attached to the problem. In my case, it depended a lot on what was the issue that we were talking about. I wasn't charged of use policies. So whenever it comes to youth policies and I was in charge of a big project that was a youth center, I remember that this was particularly hard because for me, because I was emotionally attached to the issue. When it came to other issues like, I don't know, water, for example, and the water department. Now, water had to, how much water had to cost, for example, then there I was much able to do it because it was not something that was as close to my art as dealing with youth policies. But again, as you were saying, I think that the idea of self-awareness, it's really crucial when it comes then to get into the balcony. But yes, coming back to the balcony, I think that it's a really good trade and it's a really good tool, especially for leaders to sort of get detached and not even get so much overwhelmed by what is going on. And I find ironically, after being involved in political leadership recruitment and support all my life in some ways, working with politicians, candidates, failed and not. Sometimes this might be a little controversial, that activists don't make great politicians because that doesn't mean that we don't need activists, we absolutely do. Some can make the change over to being an insider in the system and we need more of those people. But some are so driven by that same emotion that allows them to be great organizers, great communicators. Some of them cannot make that switch from kind of going, "Okay, I'm on the balcony, I have a perspective, there's a system that I need to work on. I may care a lot about this, but if you think about it, the best type of problem solving in government is, and politics is interconnected to one another. And oftentimes, the problem we have is that we bring policy solutions that are very siloed. A human being is one person, they don't have like the department for the arm and the department for the head or they do in surgery, but it's a whole body approach. So I have found myself talking to activists being, "Are you sure you are willing to give up or you want to, give up a passion for a topic?" Because once you have that, your ability to look at the system is a bit shaded. So that's just one thing if you're listening, some of you will want to make this switch and say, "Okay, I'm at the balcony, and I know I care more about this issue than the other, but I have to work within the whole system because politics is about compromise, if you believe in a democratic system, right? If you really believe in democracy, they're going to be people of different points of view than you. Not saying you compromise on everything, you're very clear about what you can and what you can't, but not all of them do that. I think that's really hard to come to grips with, right, in politics, but not always activists make the greatest politicians." That was a hard learning for me. Like, as you were saying, I've always thought that the natural path from an activist was to become a politician, and I still believe that as you were saying that we need more activists and politics, yet I feel like this being one of the big dilemma of becoming a politician or of being a politician, since that most of us, the one that are really connected to our why, we start with the idea that we have something that is really close to our heart. And then when we get to politics, we have, and this was my problem as well, we had such a hard time in letting go of the idea that this is the only thing that matter, and that we need to look at system as them being system, and that we need to compromise and compromise, especially to activists, or to people that I had a past of activists, it's one of the hardest things to do. Hello, dear listeners, I'm Felix Maradiaga, a Nicaragua political strategist and democracy advocate. In 2021, I run for the presidency of my country with a campaign grounded in the fight for freedom, democracy and human rights. For that, the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, responded by imprisonment for 21 months in arbitrary tension under extremely degrading conditions in a maximum security prison. I was eventually stripped of my Nicaragua citizenship and expelled from my country. But that experience only strengthened my commitment to the cause of freedom and democracy. Now, more than ever, democracy defenders must stand together, connected, inspired, and learning from one another. That's why I invite you to join a growing global community of pro-democracy leaders at dhab.org. There, you'll find the support, strategies, and tools you need to push back against authoritarianism, whatever you are. Visit dhab.org today. Get inspired, take action, and let's defend freedom and democracy together. And talking about compromises, I feel like we are now living in a world where the word compromise is more and more abandoned. In the sense that we see that things being more and more black and white, and we see more and more politicians, leaders, having political discursive that are more polarizing than ever, that go away from the idea of the gray area or as a united policies. In this word, where we see leaders feeling the need to polarize, to being heard, but also understanding that polarization is doing the harm to our societies. We are more and more divided. We tend to see more and more things black and white. I believe that one of the trade that democratic leaders should have right now is to unite people under this gray area, that it's a more unifying the democratic one. First of all, I'm curious to see, to listen to you, I'm curious to understand whether you feel the same, but also if this is the case, how do you think that leaders can depolarize the political discourse while still having a chance to be heard and to win? Yeah, it's the most intense time in my 51 years with it feels like the highest potential consequences, although whenever I tell my teenage kids that, they always say, "Mom, I think every generation thought that," but it really does feel this. I think a lot about this. We run a program within our accelerator, within our foundation, called advancing the public interest in times of polarization, which is very, very important. I just want to go back and say one of the norms we're trying to change at the A political foundation for the field, not for us, be served a field, is that having actual training, being screened for and having ongoing adult learning to be effective at doing the job of being a political leader is not normal, and we need to change that. You are not born knowing how to depolarize things. Born knowing how to stand on the balcony metaphorically, you are not knowing how to be a great communicator. Some of us may have it more in us. I think all of these challenges, the first order is to change the norm, but you actually have to have a practice of being a political leader that it's something you actually, I'm not saying you need a license for, but you need to spend a lot of time cultivating that in yourself, and we hardly ever do it. We're trying to change that. The work that we've been doing on polarization goes a few ways. Number one, it's creating situations where people have the opportunity to solve problems together, and with certain methodologies, you realize that you have more in common. This is great organization, more in common that what divides us. Now, polarizing politicians are really good at pointing out what divides us, and the people, and I really think it really comes down to communications and marketing, just being better at it. The non-polarizers often aren't as good at it. Now, there's a number of reasons why they're not good at it, as much as because the reptilian brain is more attracted to fear. This has gone on. This is probably why the human race is alive, like we were afraid of the lion, and we ran from the lion. People feel like sometimes what polarizers do is they create a lion to run from. We know now through behavioral science that that's the fear. I find, and this is a bit of a dilemma, that number one, if we got much better about using better, doing communications better, using brain behavioral science better, using humor, now it's micro-influencers, we just got better at comms, strategic political communications. A lot of this problem could be solved, because I think a lot of people who aren't polarizers believe that you shouldn't have to sell your ideas that just should be enlightenment right, and that's not the way the brain works, particularly now. when we get dopamine hits. So we need a real call and really good communication studios for democracy. And it's something that is not supported as much because it's seen kind of below us, right? When you have polarizers who work to divide us, the best way through is often to bring us closer together and to bring yourself closer to people and the problems. It's proximity. And I'm thinking a lot about this, that in some crazy ideas I've been having for my country, where it's very unclear if the algorithms that people are getting a lot of their news from are even fair and open. It's not so unclear. It seems like they're not. So if we don't have options to the communications airwaves, then what do we need to do? We need to get hyper-local. And we need to not have the answers, but just do a lot of asking people what they think the answers are. I worked for a politician who I just greatly appreciate. It's not a big name. He will never hurt of him. He's kind of dorky. He was an architect. And what he was really good at when the polarized people came in is he straight talk them. He said, I know when you come in here, you want me to tell you that I'm going to solve this problem. I'm going to solve that problem, solve that problem. I want to be really honest with you. I want to listen to you. But I want you to know that my job is not to just represent you. It's to represent all of the people in this city. And I have to make decisions that are good for most of the people while looking at the morals and the law here. And I know that's going to be hard for you to swallow, but can you be in my shoes for just a moment and think about the good of the whole? I would say like 80% of the people just appreciated the straight talk, right? Wasn't bullshitting them. Wasn't saying this was going to be easy. Wasn't promising them the moon. Just told them to their face the truth. And a few people will walk out mad and they're wrestling people like, OK, I get it. We're in a system and it can't just be that this is going to work for me. It has to work for the entire ecosystem. So I think there's a lot of work we can do to get closer to people, to be just much better at comms. It's not that it's not rocket science. We know how to do this and test it. It's harder because we aren't peddling hate, right? But we're also not peddling opportunity and reimagination. Right? There are peddling going back many people. And we're not doing a good job of asking people, how do we co-create a future that we want? We need to do that in our communities and we need to listen and we need to co-create and we don't even ever use that word co-create. We just listen to people about, what do you want for your future? It's become almost like we're too clever. Just go sit with people, listen to them, and explain it's going to be really hard. Are you on? Are you on this journey with me to do hard things? Most people will say, yes. I'm here is what you think. What did you do in your town that helped? Address polarization, FedEx. This was such a great and big challenges for us. But also I want to focus on two things that you said. And then I go back to my experience. But one of the things that you need to be trained to know how not to polarize anything. Or you need to be trained to understand that you need to involve your people. I was a politician in a super small town. And I was with the majority of the other politicians that not the totality of them had no idea of what could create, to create a policy process meant. And if you're surrounded by people, which is most of the time the case, that don't know it and don't know how to implement it and do not understand the value of it, then what happened is that even if you're one fish that would like to move the ocean, you will fill alone and it's not going to that path. Even though I realized that this was, I realized so many times that this was the right path. And it came to me, I did it with young people. It was really hard to get people in world. Yet when I did it, it worked. Like I remember when we had to design the center for young people, I sat down with all the different school leaders of the different high school of my town. The first thing that they asked me was like, did we do anything wrong? But I mean, for kids, of course, I've never been listened to my politicians. And then when they realized that I was there to listen to them, we came up with really good ideas that now created the center in which they are actually living. So I think this was a good example of how it didn't take literally anything. It just took the time and the open mind and the curiosity, as you were saying, as traits of democratic leader, to sit down, realize that you don't have the answer, engage the people that might have the answer because they are the constituency that are going to be part of your policies and design policies that are for them. Yet I have to admit that as you were saying, this is something that you can do at a hyper-local level and not always reflect then at a regional national or even international level. And I see that what one of the challenges that we are facing beyond the local level, which is especially understanding the value of including people when policies have to be made, is when we go to the national level where we see that what people are voting for right now, are leaders that are strong, how spoken, that do not have any doubts, that have what we call the middle finger energy. So even though people might appreciate that a local level, someone that is authentic enough and it's brave enough to say that they don't have the answer and they have to go create them with the population, a national level who's winning is someone that is on the other side of the spectrum, someone that seems to have all the answer. But we know that democratic leader, what they should express are also values like doubts or kindness or fragility or authenticity. So now, a question to you and I want to hear your thought about it is, how can leaders at higher level that do not have so many chances to get day-to-day with people? How can they reconcile this image of strength with the need that we're looking for, which is kindness and fragility endowed and open-mindedness? Thank you for that. I don't know that everybody wants the hat. I think that's something that we have to be very prepared to understand which makes this complex. I mean, I worked very closely with the Cognitive Scientist linguist, the guy named George Lackoff. He's one of my teachers and guides and I worked on a book that he wrote called Don't Think of an Elephant. You were saying, "Fede, about, we have to be trained not to polarize." And when I say, "Fede, don't think of an elephant," what do you think of an elephant? So to give you an example, some trainings that we did at the time, was we were seeing that in 9/11, a lot of people were coming out trying to create a more open and inclusive society and really worried about the attacks in the United States against Muslim. And yet we saw people go on TV and say things like, "Not all Muslims are terrorists." And so we know if you understand any brain and behavioral science, if I tell you, "Don't think of an elephant." Imagine what that happened. And this is where like Cognitive Science, this stuff is really, really important, right? And you're not known, bro, and how to do that. So we have to continue, we have to have sort of brain and behavioral neuroscience experts. I don't want to overly complicate it, but there are things that you can learn to not make the polarization worse. Now, to your good provocation, yes, it is much easier, although it's not always done to be closer to the people and their local communities to help co-create solutions. But there are examples of engaging agency across a country. Every year, we're really honored to do something called the Democratic Politicians Hall of Fame with the Athens Democracy Forum, where we recognize leading democratic leaders from Kenya, to Mexico, to the UK, and more, who are actually doing some people call it citizen engagement. But just much more engaging citizens in the actual process. And let me give you an example of someone that I greatly respect. So there's a woman named Grassef Fineska. She was Deputy Mayor of Lisbon, and went on to be the Minister of Culture for Portugal. And she thought, "Wow, why are the politicians sitting making all the decisions on the budget? Why don't we do a citizen-wide, country-wide call for citizens to give input on how to spend that budget?" She's not the only one that did it, but she was the first to do it country-wide. And so not only did she do things like, you know, for the people like me, who would like walk 10 miles to give my vote, maybe you would do that too. But what about the busy person coming home from work? So they worked on it so that when you got money out of an ATM or cash machine, there was an opportunity to vote. This is the politics that we need today, bringing the democracy, bringing the agency back to people. Now, I will tell you again, I'm not going to, I don't have a silver bullet, because some people just want the other people to make the decision. But you have to have the ability for people who want to be heard beyond elections to do that. We put out a guide, maybe we can put in the show notes, FedEx, called Circular Power Politics, where we kind of reframe power being, get me elected, I go and work for you, and then you check whether I'm good, and you elect me again, saying that you get elected, and then you keep engaging your constituents at the federal level, at the local level. And we have case studies of Republican from Oklahoma to Grasza to crowdsourcing how candidates get chosen beyond political parties, really movement-based political leadership. So I really point people to very specific how to's, five ways with case studies. about how politicians at every level can do more of this circular power politics and give more agency to those who want to be engaged, but not everyone wants to. And that's okay too. - That's a really good point, because as like my question then, to be really practical and on the ground would be, how since you have big, kind of people that have their own life and that they get three minutes per day to politics, but then you have another kind of people that on the other side they want to be listened, they want to be engaged and they just don't know how, and they sort of like, so the first tongue of people would more welcome the strong, the iron fist type of politician, why the second one, but probably what, the one which is more doubtful and then meet them to answer to their questions. So, how would you balance or in which way would you move yourself or would you present yourself so that either to have a balance or to sort of like, try to understand how to move yourself between being yourself authentic and maybe full of doubt so being the strong man who has the answers for those who needed. - This is the billion dollar question, right? As we're facing these times, and I just want to back up one place and say, again, there's a certain amount, there's lots of literature around this, and I'd left to go deeper into the literature with you and whoever's listening at some point to look at there, certain groups of people who find change scary. Think about what we're dealing with right now, right? Most of us are living in, for those of us who are, 80% of us are not living in democracies right now, and even if we are living in a democracy, there's really fleeting sovereignty, and I mean, like we live in a globalized economic system and a globalized war system in some ways. So, how much control your local politician has or not, or even your national politician has is quite limited. So, okay, so things are super chaotic, technology has changed faster than ever. We have a climate crisis, we have growing income inequality. Oh my God, there's so much going on. Some people, me, I'm an entrepreneur, not judging whether it's good or bad, 'cause I've got some craziness to me too. I thrive in complexity. I see complexity, I'm like, this is an opportunity, how do we connect it? But I have a lot of empathy for people who are just like, I don't want complexity. And so, my tips around this, and again, I'm learning a lot. Number one, we have to have candidates and political leaders who are liked, who are charismatic, who connect, who are warm, who unfortunately are not at the national level, know how to be in front of a camera, right? Now, maybe in four years or two years, it's all gonna be AI and it's not gonna matter. But if we keep electing or trying to elect people who aren't charismatic or good technocrats, that's not working. Like, have them be a chief of staff. And what we're also experiencing right now is the swing. It's like, you see this in history, it's very dangerous. And who knows what's gonna happen? See people, I want a strong leader because things are chaotic and I wanna captain of the ship. And then the other side you want. I want an open-minded person and someone who's quite liberal. And these are kind of natural swings that I think we see that we have to be careful about. And I think the tip I have is, there is complexity. You need to calm people. You need to understand that their dealing with such stress, meet them whether at calm them down. Not everyone is gonna like you, but you need to communicate about this complexity and non-complex ways. You can't keep telling them how bad things are over and over again. The other side is doing that. You have to offer them hard hope. Hard hope isn't just saying we want things to be better. It's specific ideas and you can't give them 35 ideas. You need to give them three ideas that are cross-cutting. This is where you cannot separate political leadership from policy. So I wanna give you one last example that I want to hear what you think. I think we need to have a massive move in and democracy to do something called multi-solving. So picking policies that are much broader than I'm gonna protect women's rights or I'm gonna regulate pesticides and I'm going to make vaccines required. We have to have packaging that starts at the value. What is the value that we want in our society that has phrases that people understand. So I'll give you an example. One of the things we see work quite effectively and changing policy at local levels is thinking about something called urban 95. So how do we design a city for a 95 centimeter child? So in that is health policies, transportation policies, climate policies, housing policies, but I don't have to sit around as a politician and sell 80 policies. I hang it off of does this city work well. So I think the combination of communicating complexity not so complex, but packaging things where people can be aspirational, where they can understand, but not talk about every single policy. If you watch debates often, people are like listening and then I would do this and then I would do that and then I'd do this. So I'm just saying, we're gonna do these three things together and really focus on, I think it helps. Now, all of that being said, this is hard. And if you don't have the right messenger, it's tough. It's really, really tough. Charismatic, connection, warm, courage. Remember, charisma is strength and warmth. You need both. I'm curious, what are your thoughts? How do we do this better? - Well, this is such an interesting conversation and interesting insight. I wonder, so as you were saying, what the other side is doing really well is to inspire fear. And then once they've inspired fear, make people feel protected with their own policies. What you're saying that the democratic side and the democratic leaders should be doing is to give people hope. Now, I remember one sentence, which is one of my favorite sentences from my angle, and she said that people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did, but will never forget how you made them feel. So if what we want to inspire into people is hope, as you were saying. And I think this is very much connected to giving them a specific idea of the word and then getting into the practicality of this specific idea. What do you think is the feeling that democratic leaders should look at? What is it that they should inspire into people to bring them into feeling hopeful? And how should this message be delivered? - A really good resource that I spend time with is a guy named Thomas Coombs who has something called hope-based communications. And if we go back to the context of which, not all of us are living around the world, but many of us, that's a very fast-paced dopamine-driven world. Lots of incoming outgoing pressure, time, change. And what we know is this greatly impacts our nervous system. And fear plays on this, and then you outsource someone to protect it as you said. And what we know about hope and feelings of strength with warmth, strength and deep care, everyone's gonna read into what they want. They will project into people what they often want at the time. You cannot get through problem-solving unless you start from a place of kind of, I feel okay, you know? I would even say it's hard to get to problem-solving unless you have some joy. It's not enough. I mean, I find a lot of the campaigns that are run just way too serious. I mean, they're selling whoever they are, but many people sell, hey, and we're selling rational decision-making, let alone the feeling that you quoted, let alone joy. How can we solve problems with joy together, imagine feeling good about getting up every day? So I know from a neuroscience perspective, we need hope, we need joy, we need a sense of awe. All of this is possible with the right comms, and I don't mean robotic comms. I mean, humans and people telling stories and micro influencers in their local level saying, this is what, but it's also the messenger. And we have to be particularly at national levels, at every level, fortunately or not, very careful for who we choose as our leaders, because it used to be the smart person in the corner who knew everything was the best leader, like the technocrats, and we need them, for sure. I've said it before and must say it again, we need now very charismatic, very courageous, very pro-social people, very curious people to run, and lead, and continue to run and lead, and continue to be supportive. We have to be so careful about our candidates, and then we have to surround sound with all of the ecosystem support that we need, and that doesn't happen often. It just doesn't. We need to be better at that. - Yeah, absolutely. - Not just during campaigns, but during governance as well. We kind of have this feeling, you get these people elected and you leave them alone, I mean, Fed, it wasn't an easy, you got in, you just got everything done. No, being involved in your society means you're with your leaders, and I think one of the big things we need to think about is changing this from a metaphor, a public service, to public facilitation. I'm not outsourcing leadership, but maybe if we thought of ourselves as politicians as facilitating, like you did with that youth group who now has a center, a little bit more of that agency piece, I think that helps with hope. - I think so too, and I think this would be an incredible switch if we manage to make politicians be like, they are not the people that need to have all the solutions, I need to be the facilitators to bring about this change and the solution. I think this would be a massive change. This would require also a lot of working with what actually now it's blocking what you're talking about, which might be political parties, which might be also the idea that people have a what politician should be. But I think this should be this is essential to what we see as bringing up democratic leaders. But let me just ask you one question before we go into the wrap up. Is there anyone in particular that you feel like today embodies the figure of the democratic leader? So I was prepared for this question and I kind of want to overwhelm you with people you've never heard of because it's very easy for me to throw out the big names of people. But what I want all of you listeners, you're listening because you care. This is not about hanging our hopes on big names. It's about hanging our hopes and working towards all of us in some way being part of our democracy and getting behind extraordinary people in their facilitating process. So if you can give me a minute, I'm going to read out a few. So there's Joe Ho Young. She's a chairwoman of the Seoul Metropolitan Council in South Korea. She broke total ground political landscape traditionally dominated by men by being the first chairperson. Then there's Graham Allen. And he's a democratic reformer really doing sort of this work that we're talking about bringing politics closer and a former cabinet member every day. He's retired. He works around democratic innovation. Aaron Veeoli, probably never heard of him unless you're from Australia. He introduced groundbreaking deliberative process to ensure his constituents in Australia. Casey Australia were actively shaping national policies. He's a member of parliament. Then there's the majority of minority leaders of the Kenyan Senate, Stuart M. Masato and Aaron Kippri Kuh Tiroto. Their leadership really strength in public engagement and the democratic process in their Senate. You know, it's all around the world. Are you getting? Are you getting what I'm talking about? There's Kate Cheney from Australia. There's Carlos Fernández Galán, mayor of Bogota doing citizen engagement and highly deliberative processes. Mayor Bratislava, Matuzvalo. He had a camp Bratislava, which was a 4-day festival for the new generation. Carlos Angeles, he's a city council member from Peru. And so on. Mick Cormatt, former mayor of the city of Oklahoma. He said, if our community is overweight, I'm going to put myself on a diet. I am a obese too. We're going to do this together. Hemena Perredo, she's a secretary of citizen participation and the state government at Nuevo Leon. And so on. Nahid Nenshi, former mayor of Calgary doing challenged people to do three things for Calgary every day for innovation. Joan Burton led the citizens assembly in Ireland. I go on like this because I'm not at loss for giving examples. There are people in your community. I know that are doing this right now or want to do it. We need to help them. We need to change the metaphor. We need to get behind these good people who will never be perfect and not all of them will make the headlines. But they are there. We just need to spread the word and make it popular and powerful. Yes. And talking about, whoa, I feel like this is the perfect way to start our wrapping up because it gave me so much hope to listen to all this list of names. Made me feel a huge less alone and also made me feel like what we talk about, this democratic leaders, not only they are possible, but they are actually existing and working in our lives and society. So first of all, I huge shout out to all of them. And I huge thank you to you because you just brought up real people that are actually doing a real good and that are implementing everything good that we talked about. So this makes me feel like we are now seeing all around the world leaders that do not represent this idea of leadership that do not represent democratic leaders. But on the other side exists people that actually and have all these traits and that are working for our societies. And so our job on this side is to make them emerge and to make them at least known so we will have hope and they know that this is possible. So coming to our last two questions, what final advice or recommendation would you give to leaders that want to be an aspire to be democratic leaders that want to get involved or are already involved into politics? I think number one, congratulate yourself for even caring. This is a bold and courageous time to stay in or go into politics and we are the ones that we've been waiting for. It's us. It's not just one person. It's many of us. And so I just want you to stop and like take a moment and say, okay, this is cool. You know, this is going to be hard. I'm going to be anti-fragile. I'm going to be I'm going to learn, but I'm really dedicated and I'm sticking to my why. And just like in anything in life, you have to keep practicing. You don't become a leader and then it's done, right? Leadership is a daily practice. Leadership is saying, am I taking care of my health? Leadership is saying, have I told the people I love that I love them? Leadership is learning something new. Leadership is admitting carefully sometimes when you have done things wrong. So we are doing more and more at A-political to work with civil society and political parties around the world to bring this new forever curious dial based versus switch leadership. So if you're listening, we'd love to stay in touch with you on this. We'll put in the show notes way to do that. We can connect you with people all around the world doing this in new in different ways while not losing sort of the old human touch to politics. Thank you, Lisa. I think this is the next-lend time to end. And so what are free book recommendations for your for our audience? And I don't know, like a podcast you like. So quick three book recommendations. I'm a former recovering or I'm a recovering sweaty try hard. So if any of your listeners know anything about playing online games like Fortnite, it's people who are like trying really hard to be really good. So I only used to read nonfiction, sleep with it, underline it. I wanted to like fill my brain with everything possible and then I realized I you know my attention span was going and I wasn't really having fun doing it anymore. So I've switched to fiction not entirely, but mostly so my first pick is playground by Richard Powers. I love everything by Richard Powers. It combines humanity, ethical decisions and our planets, climate with with some big big questions. This latest one, they're forming characters and the big conflict is a high stakes, political decision on whether to improve something way out there. I won't give too much away, but why you should read it. It talks about decision making under uncertainty. You'll see kind of an accidental politician, the role of power and influence and multi stakeholders and really leadership in a complex world. One of the things that it got me thinking about is there's a Russian philosopher that's quoted in here, which says in about the 1930s, who was followed by many real people's real person, that maybe the next step for humanity is to end evolution meaning create a way for human beings to live forever. And I think this is very active in our politics right now. I talk to a lot of high network individuals and this is an ethical question we're going to be confronted with that are really pushing the longevity and maybe really how to live forever, cloning, making babies in and incubators. This isn't science fiction anymore. This is really in front of us. So many of us are you know doing hard democratic. We're going to you know make sure we're going to protect our rights when I think some of the day at the questions about what is the future of humanity will be human noise. These are real and present and you need to be on top of it or not, but I really like being in the future and thinking about it. That's my first one. My second one is nonfiction. It's the best book I've read that combines the role of the politician and their challenges and behavioral science. It's called the political mind by Greg Powers. It's really beautifully written real stories from people in the field talk about excuse my French where people have fucked up taking technocratic approaches to human problems and thinking about political leaders as robots instead of people with real feelings and needs and how they navigate their own psychology and their families and their motivations couldn't highly recommend it more. I think the dehub should have them on in some way. And then the last just goes to my deep passion for brain and behavioral science and maybe for a sub conversation fed I ran for president on a reality TV show on Showtime and I learned a lot about brain and behavioral science and how to communicate effectively with voters. And so I go back to just my guru recently deceased at rest and he is Danny Coniman. He wrote a book called Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow. Everyone should be reading this if you're interested in politics and what I love most about it and then I'll leave you with a podcast is toward the end of his life he was interviewed about what he's learned most spending time and behavioral economics and behavioral science. And the thing he says is there's one piece of advice I can give everyone is quit beings whole hard on each other. You can dislike the the actions or the outcomes but everyone's doing their best from what they have and for the most part I absolutely believe that and I think it's why I do my work is because I really believe people are doing their best and how do we change the environment why I work in politics you go upstream for doing that. And the podcast that I'm obsessed with, I think many of us are. are obsessed with. As I listen to Ezra Klein a lot, I have an American. I'm really, really worried about the state of democracy and my country. I find it a blend of just really smart political analysis and really smart guests. But what I don't want to leave you on is just that. I also listen to political podcasts across the political spectrum. And my hot tip is to read ground news. You talked about Fed a little bit earlier before what to do with polarization. I actively work on depolarizing myself, getting out of filter bubbles. And so ground news is a way to see how news bias is in different programs. And so I actively make sure that I don't become part of a bubble. This is a great tip. And I hope that all our listeners will try to depolarize themselves. Because as you said, democratic leadership is not something that only attached to politicians, but we do democratic leadership every single day. It's an act. So we can commit to this act also in this way. Thank you so much, Lisa. It's been wonderful having you here. Thank you. And have a joy learning about you and your journey. And for all of you out there on this journey, be easy on yourself. You don't have the way to the world on your shoulders. You can do what you can do, do it in community, and make sure you take time. As we say in America, to stop and smell the roses, don't discount the beauty and joy of today for the future. Do both. We need it. [MUSIC PLAYING]