Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?

by Alyssa Mastromonaco

For me, leadership has always been much more about rallying people around a project or cause than about being held up as the Boss.

Often, being a leader is not about making grand proclamations or telling people what to do; it’s about balancing all these priorities and constituencies.

Women need to know they are right before they stand up. Men are OK objecting if they just think they might be right. I thought, but I didn’t know.

There is no bigger compliment than being intellectually curious about what someone else spends his or her days doing—it turned out that not having the answers did me no harm. The feedback I got was that the WHMO directors all “felt good about my leadership.”

Preparation is protection you can create for yourself; for some people, the hard part may be balancing precautions with paranoia, but in my experience, you can never be too prepared.

Politics is often associated with secret dealings, competition, and corruption—and those associations aren’t necessarily wrong—but, fundamentally, it’s also about people and personalities. Working at the White House is obviously heady, but it’s also humbling—you’re around the most brilliant, decorated brains in the country. They don’t have to do anything for you, but they often do. If you approach it with grace—and a willingness to accept that many people know much more than you—you can walk away a much better person than you were when you came in.

While many people are disillusioned with our government and the political system that enables it, I just cannot think that way—even when it’s too frustrating, or upsetting, or terrifying to watch. Although I have no idea what will happen next, I do know that it would be a denial of everything I learned working for Barack Obama to give up or opt out. Politics will always be a twinkle in my eye—the thing that makes me say “What if?”