“I challenge my staff and those around me to ask it,” he told me. And he challenges himself with it. His first test, and the controversy that was to define him as a politician, came less than two weeks after he was elected mayor, when he attended President George W. Bush’s 2004 State of the Union address.
The galvanizing issue was one that reverberated back in San Francisco—same-sex marriage. The president previously had expressed his fierce opposition to it. He was a staunch supporter of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as a strictly heterosexual institution. But in this speech, Bush went further. He said he supported a constitutional amendment enshrining marriage as a union between a man and a woman. The speech disturbed Newsom, but a comment afterward enraged him. As he lined up to leave the chamber, Newsom overheard a woman talking about how proud she was of the president for standing up to “the homosexuals.” Newsom left Capitol Hill fuming, thinking it was a good thing that few recognized the new, young mayor from gay-friendly San Francisco.
The first person Newsom called was his chief of staff, Steve Kawa—the first openly gay man to serve in that position. Newsom told him they had to “do something about this.” When he got home, Newsom convened his team. He posed the questions he’d been asking himself over and over again since the president’s speech.
What is this really about?
What values are at stake?
What was the point of becoming mayor?
What did we come here to do?
By now, Newsom viewed the issue as a fundamental matter of fairness and equity. He was leaning in favor of unilaterally instructing City Hall to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Initially even his gay chief-of-staff was opposed. “He fought me,” Newsom explained. “He was emotional about it.” Kawa saw huge political risks; he knew that it would put everyone in the spotlight and stir up more controversy, even in San Francisco.
“He said it was hard enough to come out to his family,” Newsom recalled. But the mayor decided gay people had a right to get married if they wished.
When City Hall opened for business on February 12, 2004—just three weeks after Bush’s State of the Union speech—gay couples could apply for marriage licenses for the first time ever. Thousands showed up. Sure enough, Newsom’s act of defiance drew the wrath of Republicans and Democrats alike.
“My party leadership was furious and read me the riot act,” he said. California senator Dianne Feinstein all but accused the young mayor of sowing the seeds for the Democrats’ defeat in the fall’s presidential election. Newsom wasn’t sure he would survive the storm, but he held his ground. Defending himself on CNN, he said that denying the right to marry “is wrong and inconsistent with the values this country holds dear.” He added, “And if that means my political career ends, so be it.”
His career did not end. On the contrary, he won reelection with 72 percent of the vote in 2007. He is now lieutenant governor of California with aspirations for higher office. In the decade since San Francisco City Hall issued its first marriage license to same-sex couples, judges, legislatures, and, in 2015, the Supreme Court voted to legalize same-sex marriage. Whatever you may think of Newsom, his role as a change agent on this issue can be traced to those questions he asked himself after hearing a speech. They forced him to step back from the noise and the risks and look at the issue differently. They led him to think differently and defiantly about a once-unimaginable future. Simple questions.
What is this about?
What are our values?
What was I elected to do?
Creative questions ask you to close your eyes and imagine. They are aspirational, often inspiring, and sometimes subversive. They embrace risk and challenge our brains to look through a different lens. While they can be adventurous, even exhilarating, they can also be lonely and controversial.
You can ask these questions of your inventive colleagues or your reluctant stakeholders. You can pose them as a game or as a challenge. You can frame them around the future as you ask for new ways of thinking and doing that will get you there. Creativity questions are daring, liberating queries that invite you to stick your head in the clouds, ask more of everyone, and imagine just how far you can go.
What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
CHAPTER 8
THE SOLVABLE PROBLEM
Mission Questions
HOW CAN YOU USE the power of questions to build a team, clarify your mission, and define your goals? How do you ask people to join you in partnership to make a difference in the world or in your work? You may be trying to raise money for a cause or organize a neighborhood activity, looking into a mentoring program at the office to work with at-risk students, or launching a social media campaign to mobilize people to combat global warming. Perhaps you need to invigorate your team to compete with the new business in town that has hired a bunch of young hotshots.
?
Mission questions ask more of everybody. They help you draw people into a genuine conversation about shared goals and what everyone can bring to the task. They help you convey your priorities. Mission questions require you to talk less and listen more.
In this chapter you’ll see how you can connect people to purpose and forge a common mission. You will learn how to ask questions that can take you from conversation to collaboration. My friend does it to feed the world. One of the most iconic brands did it and turned shared values into a recipe for success that built a legion of loyal employees and customers. A leader in philanthropy draws from pages of great questions to nurture relationships and raise millions of dollars.
Get good at these mission questions and you will be able to do more than build a team. You will inspire it as you help people discover their purpose, find a role they can play, and collaborate to get things done. In asking people to sign on and pitch in you’re asking them to:
Identify your mission. Determine interests and see where experiences intersect. What do you care about? What would you like to change or fix or build?
Share values. Find out if you’re rowing to the same place. What are your bedrock principles? Where is your true north? How can we partner?
Play a role. Figure out what each party adds to the equation. What are others prepared to do about the problem? What’s their expertise, their passion, their capability?
Aim high. People are excited by big ideas. How bold can we be? How will we change the world?
Whether you’re raising money for a university or trying to get your kids to participate in a local charity, asking people to commit time, energy, or money to a cause is a big deal. They have to care about your endeavor and want to be a part of it. They have to believe in you and in your objectives. So, ask about values and priorities. Find out what resonates and where your common interests lie. The answers may lead to collaboration and commitment.
Listening for Common Goals
Ed Scott and I met in New York in 2012, when I was speaking about the sorry state of American politics. Pretty bad, I said. Polarized, paralyzed, nasty. And the media? They’re not helping. Happy to swarm a controversy or scandal, slow to cover solutions or compromise, the media bring a 24/7 microscope to the bacteria of politics. The public bears responsibility, too, I said. Voters should do their homework so they can separate what’s real from what’s noise. They need to hold politicians, the media, and themselves to account.
After my talk, Ed said he had some ideas he wanted to discuss. We scheduled a meeting a few weeks later in my office. As I prepared for our meeting, I learned that Ed cared about a lot of things—public health, HIV/AIDS, autism, education, civic engagement. I learned that he’d made a bunch of money in technology and since getting out, he’d quietly invested in causes as well as businesses. He helped start the Center for Global Development; Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria; the Scott Center for Autism Treatment at the Florida Institute of Technology; and the Scott Family Liberia Fellows Program.