Leading with Laughter

By Petrea Marchand

The white blanket of snow across the entire National Mall created a cold, quiet beauty and added to a contemplative moment as I read the tall words carved in limestone on the Lincoln Memorial:

“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced…that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

President Abraham Lincoln’s spoke in 1863 at the site of the now Gettysburg National Cemetery to an audience who barely heard the speech given the unusual brevity of the remarks for that time, little realizing one day the nation would inscribe the speech in foot-high words on the wall of a marble monolith honoring his leadership.

Of course, the words were aspirational; at the time, “of the people” meant white men. Black men secured the right to vote in 1870 and all women in 1929; and of course, the 1965 Voting Rights Act finally prohibited discriminatory voting practices.

Still, the words resonated with me after three days in Washington, DC learning about deliberative and collaborative leadership through the Presidential Leadership Scholars Program (PLS).  Former staff and supporters of four Presidents, President Lyndon B. Johnson, President George H.W. Bush, President William J. Clinton, and President George W. Bush worked together to design the PLS program to honor their leadership.

I started PLS with trepidation, full of self-doubt and fresh off a failure to inspire a series of team members to help grow Consero Solutions, the social impact consulting firm I founded 12 years ago to empower local organizations to improve people’s lives, enrich communities, and protect the environment.

I had hoped my firm’s tangible work to implement projects in local communities would attract and inspire team members sharing my dedication to achieve social impact; instead, three strong team members left in relatively quick succession over the course of a year to pursue other opportunities. I preach learning from every hard experience, so I tried to view the departures as an opportunity to grow; the pain was raw, though, and contributed to a rather bleak mood at the start of the program. Would the program teach me how to improve my leadership skills and build a strong team to expand our impact? 

I was quickly introduced to 57 fellow scholars also working to serve their communities. I learned one of the criteria for selection to the program was humility; the people in charge actively looked for people who had established their leadership skills, recognized their weaknesses, and demonstrated a willingness to grow.

The PLS program succeeded in bringing together a group of the most self-aware, authentic, kind, and giving people I have ever met, all motivated to create good in the world. Each member of the group was quick with a quip and full of laughter, too. I was reminded Abraham Lincoln used to tell jokes during cabinet meetings, sometimes long ones, because he loved to laugh. And here I was in a group of leaders chosen from around the country who also loved to laugh. Was there a connection between strong leadership and laughter?

To refresh our knowledge of our country’s history and system of government, the National Archives opened for a private, after-hours viewing of the Magna Carta, the U.S. Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence. Congressman French Hill (AK-2^nd) personally guided us around the U.S. Capitol in the late evening hours, teaching the history of the institution based on his decades of experience.

We sat in the House chambers, in the same seats as legislators and Supreme Court justices during the State of the Union, with the enormous portraits of President George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette gazing down on us. We took photos from the Speaker’s Balcony, looking out over the twinkling lights and monuments on the National Mall.

The program also introduced rigorous coursework to teach deliberative and collaborative leadership. Dr. Mike Hemphill, former Co-Director of the PLS program, defined collaborative and deliberative leadership as the mindful exploration of all sides of an issue and a willingness to let others inform and influence a decision.

Nicole Bibbins Sedaca of the George W. Bush Institute coached the need to understand the motivations of people who you want to devote time or funding to your cause. If you flatten people into one identity, such as a political party, when each person has many identities (e.g. parent, athlete, working professional), you may lose important partnership opportunities.

Mike O’ Leary of Georgetown University’s business school summarized decades of research on the best ways to build and sustain teams, including ensuring leaders listen, ask questions, and encourage all team members, regardless of position, to participate.

Keith Hennessey of Stanford University emphasized the U.S. system of government is designed to create tension - and even seize up - until we work things out; it is designed for compromise. He also introduced us to Jonathan Haidt’s research on how morals inform people’s policy views, further described in Jonathan Haidt’s 2012 book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Disagree About Politics and Religion, helping to understand why people’s positions on policy issues may differ. Throughout these serious lessons, we learned about each other and their own identities, core values, and backgrounds – all while finding plenty of time to laugh.

On the last day, our facilitator Todd Connor challenged each of us to name a single person who we are working to help through our personal leadership project, a requirement of the program. The names filled the quiet room as each scholar said a single name aloud. The exercise reminded me of a quote from one of my favorite leaders, Bayard Rustin, who is credited with the difficult, behind-the-scenes work to organize the now famous March on Washington in 1963: “The proof that one truly believes is in action.”  Every scholar in the room intended to act to improve someone’s life.

My visit to the Lincoln Memorial, a ritual every time I visit Washington, DC, coincided with a major winter storm that shut down traffic and covered the city in white. I walked two miles through quiet streets to read the words I had read so many times before, this time in the context of my new leadership understanding.

I understood clearly that each of us in a civil society must support a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, by both furthering community work we care about and working with diverse individuals to identify common ground and shared priorities.

The work is not easy.

People come from different backgrounds, perspectives, experiences, and moral foundations. But if we ask questions, develop relationships, and seek a deeper understanding of people, we may expand our ability to improve people’s lives, enrich communities, and protect the environment. Most importantly, I learned from my fellow scholars that joy – and the accompanying laughter - is an essential ingredient of this hard work.

I left the Lincoln Memorial with a smile on my face, remembering the laughter of the last few days, and a renewed commitment to serve.