What every professional can learn from the US presidential campaign

As soon as the third debate ended, my friend said to me, "Ready for this campaign to be over?" I rolled my eyes. "Absolutely. Who isn't! " And then he said to me, "I hate politics, but this is the most I've ever paid attention to it." We went into a deep discussion that led, partially, to the two reflections in this post.

How to Influence

First, there's a lot that we can learn by what happened and what didn't happen over the last few months. To continue, let's level-set. The fundamental currency of change, in work or politics, is pressure. Sometimes it comes from the top. Sometimes it comes from the bottom. Now, the key to building pressure is to change hearts and minds. Whether it's funding for a project, battling a deadline, fighting for reform, or winning the presidency, the key is to win and change hearts and minds.

How do we change hearts and minds, though? It's not zingers. It's not attacks. It's not even facts... These are ineffective means of changing hearts and minds and, yet, they're used by both politicians and professionals alike ad nauseum. Thinking about someone in your office or yourself right now? Good. Let's keep going.

Changing hearts and minds comes through building understanding. It's done through creating revelations, large and small.

Creating revelations is a critical element of influencing both the masses and people in power. It's no secret that storytelling is one of the best ways to create revelations. The a-ha moment, the "I get it" moment, the thinking-differently-now moment -- this is your goal in changing hearts and minds, both individually and collectively.

Why stories, though? The human mind can't help but pay attention when stories are told about other people - it's built into our brains. This is why you see politicians often try to tell stories (authentically or not, you decide) in the manner of "I met a young worker named so and so who's struggling to put food on the table or make his business work" and so forth. Often they do it to try to connect with people on a human level or hook them in (I tried in my opening). However, too many politicians and professionals don't leverage the stories to build understanding, disrupt the way people think, and actually change their hearts and minds.

Building understanding requires people to ask questions and listen actively. That's the only way you can deliver a really effective revelation. Every time we close ourselves off to understanding different perspectives and viewpoints, we decrease our ability to change and win hearts and minds and create the pressure we need to deliver real change.

Being a Busy Professional Cannot Be an Excuse for Disengagement

The second thing this election season teaches us as professionals is that we must stop the pattern of disengagement that occurs in between Election Day every 2-4 years. Reflect on the impact that your absence from the political process in between elections has on our country, on our daily lives, and on our children's future. If you're not talking to your electeds in between elections, then make sure you know who is.

Look, I get it. I was a busy management consultant working 65-hour work weeks for years. I know it's hard to be involved. And I wasn't alone - millions of other people don't have enough time to be involved beyond work, family, friends, and a little bit of play. I so deeply believe that this engagement is key to our future that I left my job to launch a startup focused precisely on the problems that prevent us from being engaged. But I digress - watch my TEDx talk for the soapbox speech.

Bottom line: if you think that the same thinking, the same engagement, the same people, the same approaches that "got us here" are going to help us "get there" and create that better world, then you really haven't thought enough about your role in what's going on or how much power we actually have to change this system-that-we're-born-in-and-is-not-of-our-own-design.

True corporate social responsibility begins with workforce engagement in the real world beyond the office and our families and friends. An annual volunteer day or a policy against printing or a tax-deducting donation to some corporate charity is simply not enough. We need corporations to draw the line on working hours so that, among many other reasons, people can be engaged in the their communities. The lack of disengagement is tangible and, consequently, the gap between leaders and communities has been growing wider. You may have noticed this trend if you watch or read the news.

Incidentally, people in power can nurture greater engagement locally, nationally, and globally (both politically and professionally) through active listening, storytelling, building trust, and creating the conditions needed to support change.

Trying to see how all of this is relevant? Consider this. In an ideal world, we should have seen debates that were smart, fun, funny, collaborative, exploratory, revelation-ary, and intellectually-curious... a celebration of America.

But we didn't. Is that ideal world out of reach for us? No. Will it be out of reach if we don't get involved? Yes.

Get involved, listen, share stories, and start changing hearts and minds. Our future depends on it.

Jesse Chen is an experienced leader, technology strategist, and the co-founder of Powerline, an exciting mobile app and web platform that helps leaders and communities interact in meaningful ways. Jesse gave a TEDx talk in May 2015 "Redefining Democracy for People's Power" that urges people to get involved in between elections in order to strengthen democracy. He was recently elected to the Board of Directors for Civicus, the global civil society alliance. Jesse recently launched a podcast called Connect the Dots, now available on iTunes.