I went to law school because I wanted to make a difference. Even as a kid and then as a student, I chose law not primarily because I wanted a career as a lawyer but because I saw becoming a lawyer as a logical stepping stone to success in politics and government.
The image I had then of how to make a mark was one of personal “greatness”—ambition yielding accomplishments that would win acknowledgment, perhaps adulation, and a place in history.
In fact, as a student and thereafter, I did dive into many activities and acts of service and often assumed or rose to positions of leadership that helped foster my idea of myself as a leader making my mark. While I now can wince at the young me’s sometimes shallow ambition (“fancied greatness,” as one of my heroes, Abraham Lincoln, described his youthful sense of self), I’m also proud of what the young me set out to do and did—not just scoring points but service in good causes.
Now, I’m no longer young. After graduating, I began practicing law as a prosecutor by day while volunteering as a pro bono gay rights attorney on nights and weekends. I then became a full-time lawyer at Lambda Legal, one of the nation’s preeminent LGBT legal rights organizations. I went on to found and lead Freedom to Marry, the campaign to win marriage for same-sex couples nationwide.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Though, over time, I became much more mindful of actually doing good, not just being “great.” Several important truths were embedded in the younger me’s image of achieving greatness.
I now spend the bulk of my time advising and assisting other movements, causes, and countries, eager to adapt the lessons of how to win to other urgent work here in the United States and abroad. And when I teach the elements of success, I make clear that one key element is, indeed, leadership.
A good leader (and an effective organization) must have and propound clarity of goal, strategy, vision, and hope. It takes courage and determination to make the choices that setting a bold goal may require, even as those around you press other priorities or express resistance or fear.
It takes tenacity to persevere and rally others despite the inevitable losses, setbacks, objections, criticisms, competing pressures, distractions, delays, and churn. It takes strength to keep going and to keep others going. That is leadership.
One thing I wish I’d known earlier and learned faster is that alongside leadership, a key element of success is the team. A good leader builds, relies on, and elevates a good team. A good team can also encourage buy-in, confidence, and partnership, even among some potential stakeholders or contributors who may not especially cotton to the leader.
What I came to understand as I worked in organizations, litigated, debated in movement circles, took my case to the public, founded a campaign, and, yes, had to hire and fire coworkers as well as attract and deploy volunteers was that I needed to know when to play to my strengths as a leader and when to step back and let others step up, take the lead, do some things their way.
Instead of taking refuge in the notion that “I’m a good leader but not really a good manager,” I had to find ways to fix or at least work around that. I strove to do better at personnel, budgets, and so on. Most importantly, I recruited talented partners to take responsibility for the parts of the work that may not have been my strength or sparked my interest. Not just the leader but the team.
A corollary is that alongside your vision, knowledge, drive, and skills, you should value the relationships you create and maintain with others, even through disagreements.
A secret weapon of the LGBT movement—and a key element of our success in bringing forth a strategic, affirmative, and sustained campaign to win the freedom to marry—was that many of the activists had worked together and come to know each other well, through many battles over many, many years.
We laughed together, fought together, and even fought with each other sometimes—for decades. We also welcomed in and had the benefit of new people coming in, the next waves of talent.
As a leader, I was prepared to deal with the reality that not everyone would agree with or approve of my vision or call to action; I frequently declared as an important precept of leadership and strategy: “You don’t need every, you just need enough.”
But I also made a point not to close the door on people, not to write people off completely, not to assume that just because someone wasn’t fully with me, they were an opponent or even someone to be disliked. I stayed true to my frequent admonition that “Not everyone who is not yet with you is your foe” and mindful of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s advice for a happy marriage: “Be a little deaf.”
I considered most people “reachable but not yet reached” and tried to stay on the high road, even with those I might have found frustrating.
As a law student and then as a young activist, I got a kick out of a quotation often attributed to W.H. Auden, “We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know.”
Having led a campaign to victory, I now do know.
A committed life is found not in just the ambition to be great but the ambition to “do great”—to do for others. And it takes others joining you—it requires persuading and inspiring others to join you—to deliver the change you envision.
