Lessons Learned while Running for Office

A year ago I ran for City Council in my hometown of Carmel, Indiana. I learned so much about my community, my neighbors, politics, and myself.

I loved knocking on doors, meeting my neighbors, and having important conversations about the future of my community. 

One of my favorite parts was how blessed and connected I felt to my community when people invited me into their homes to say hello to their kids, to give me water, or just to chat. I truly enjoyed connecting with my neighbors (AND getting to pet so many dogs)!

It’s taken me a year to truly process my first experience running for office - the good, the great, the bad, and the ugly. Let’s face it: It’s politics.

There’s one thing I learned during this process that I want to share with you because it doesn’t just relate to my experience with campaigning. It relates to LIFE. 

Through the process of meeting so many of my neighbors while running for office, I honed my skills when it came to how to listen to and respond to criticism.

I developed a process to listen to and respond to complaints in a positive way.

At first while I was campaigning, it was soul-crushing to listen to so much complaining. I am an optimist by nature. But, the truth is, when you’re running for office, people want to tell you their concerns, their frustrations, and their complaints.

Listening to complaining is hard on a human being.

But, running for office and knocking on doors, I learned how much this statement is true = People will complain. 

People will always complain about something. It’s human nature. I complain sometimes. Everyone has things they aren’t happy about. 

It’s really about what we do in response to that complaining that matters most.

Running for office helped me better address criticism and complaints. Sometimes the complaints were about things within the city government’s control. But, more often than not, people would complain about something that - even if I were elected - I’d have little ability to change.

Here’s what I did in response to criticism:

1. Seek first to understand. Listen to the complaint, and if I didn’t understand what they were complaining about, I’d ask questions.

2. Instead of spending time correcting and convincing, I offered facts and resources.
   
   I often began with…
   
   ”Did you know that…”
   
   Then I would state a fact. And then I would tell them, “If you’re interested in finding out more information about that, you can find it (HERE)…”.
   
   Or, if I didn’t know where to go, I would ask for their contact info and let them know I would send information.

3. Then, I would follow through. I would get back to them with the information or the resources.

The outcomes varied. Sometimes they were interested to know what I had shared with them and were glad to know the additional information and told me they would give it some thought. Sometimes they just listened and said “okay” and wouldn’t really do anything with that. Other times they would just continue complaining. They didn’t want me to help them - they would just continue to vent.

At the end of the day, I had two options.

OPTION 1 - Correct and criticize, which just creates barriers and promotes disagreement.

OPTION 2 - To inform. I instead gave people an opportunity to learn more and grow as a person that they maybe would not have otherwise had. In that way, regardless of the outcome of the election. I was enriching people’s lives and getting to know people in my community.