Leadership that Lasts: Essential Principles for Successful Organizing

YDSA National Co-Chair Carlos Callejo III outlines successful leadership tactics necessary to creating and maintaining healthy, inclusive YDSA chapters. 

Introduction
Creating and maintaining a thriving YDSA chapter is an art. It is not an easy tightrope to walk, but there are good practices to ensure you succeed as an organizer and maintain the health of your chapter. I have organized in Y/DSA for four years, and in the broader left for another four years before that. During this time, I have had the privilege of being mentored by so many wise socialist organizers from a variety of backgrounds and movements that stretch back to the 1960s. In my time in YDSA, from co-founding a commuter public university chapter, becoming deputy YDSA-LA coordinator, and being a member of YDSA national leadership, I have had the pleasure of developing the organizing skills of many diverse socialist organizers and building their YDSA chapters up. I have also noticed trends and bad organizing practices that have either kept chapters from not getting off the ground or wither away in due time. This piece synthesizes organizing advice for how to build a robust and healthy organizing space in your chapter while developing lifelong socialist organizers, starting with yourself.

Everyone can be a leader in their own way!
It is my firm belief that anybody can become a leader, it is not some “natural phenomenon” that can only be attributed to the extroverts and charismatic public speakers among us. Becoming a leader is not easy; it requires a strange blend of growth, patience, and passion. I have a speech impediment meaning that I stutter. I work hard to manage – not overcome- my stutter. Quite frequently that meant failing publicly, but always using each failure as a chance to learn and grow. There is a good chance that you do not see yourself as having “leadership attributes” but that is wrong. Everyone has strengths necessary for building the socialist movement, and overtime we all train and build key skills. Effective leadership begins in a concrete set of skills and practices. It is not easy and we all stumble, but you will come out of it doing what you think you could not do and finding out who you really are.

Delegate! Delegate! Delegate! Make that ask!
Being the primary organizer that everything operates around is a very easy situation to find yourself in. I can not express how much you should avoid this like the plague. This is an automatic ticket to burn out. I understand how you get to this point: you eagerly attend all the trainings, calls, and volunteer at every turn. You gain all this insight and begin taking on a leadership role in your chapter. Eventually you do become a reliable leader and people start expecting you to take on more work and have all the answers. You must properly delegate, develop, and collaborate with members to ensure you do not burnout. Delegating is a sign of maturity as an organizer and an important step forward as a developing leader. If we want to build and mature as an organization that engages in mass action through student strikes and reaching more of our working class base through student unions, proper delegation is key to success. 

Be a humble collaborator, not an arrogant lone wolf

No matter how much accumulated experience or knowledge you have, you should seek to be a humble collaborator in your organizing space. Good organizing can never be a solo project. Acknowledge your blind spots and always seek to collaborate and work with your peers! Have a willingness to learn from others and truly heed their advice. They may have valuable insight and experiences that could prove beneficial towards your shared campaign but also yourself as an organizer. Using your shared experiences and insights, you can make your existing campaigns stronger and even push your chapter out of its comfort zone. 

Work with others to push the boundaries of your organizing and try new things together as a chapter. One of the worst things for a chapter’s health is a sense of stagnation. With an air of cooperation, try to step out of your comfort zone and attempt new types of campaigns or organizing models like departmental organizing.  Don’t operate on a sense of fear that things can go wrong. All of our work has a level of risk to it; defeatism helps no one. What is key is that you create a culture of teamwork and openness when engaging in this type of work. As principled socialist organizers engaged in a collective project to build working class power, we are not in the business of individualistic, egocentric, performative activism. You are one piece of a broader puzzle that can have a long lasting influence. 

Be a mentor, but don’t seek to create an exact clone of yourself

Don’t let your past successes and failures go to waste! Make sure to pass on what you have learned. Pass on your strengths and victories, but also missteps and failures. Failure can be the best teacher! Share your knowledge and experiences so that new members can avoid some common organizing pitfalls. Mentorship is not developing an exact political copy of yourself. Allow mentees room to experiment, learn, and develop their own unique style of organizing that draws from their own background and identity. The eventual end goal is that these members you develop will grow and eventually run the chapter. I stepped down from leadership from a chapter I co-founded years ago. Moving on from your chapter can be tough, but empowering the leadership of new capable hands is worth it. Your successors should retain some good core organizing practices from previous leadership, but make changes and change the direction of the chapter if deemed necessary. This is the sign of a healthy chapter.  As leaders and mentors, we are what mentees grow beyond – this is the goal.

Find the next generation of diverse YDSA leaders on your campus! 

It is never too early to identify possible leaders and begin the process of leadership development. The late great labor organizer Jane McAlevey discussed the concept of an “organic leader” in her 2016 book No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age. In short, an organic leader is someone, often without a title, that people respect and trust. In my personal organizing work, I synthesize a version of the organic leader model that utilizes a firm grasp of intersectionality. Be conscious of who you identify and look for comrades from underrepresented identities to recruit and develop.
All too often comrades of color are overlooked because of subconscious bias of what a “leader looks and acts like”. Being the loudest person does not automatically mean someone is leadership material. Public speaking and articulating your politics is important but a chapter needs a wide variety of leaders, like a comms team to create graphics and post on social media or outreach coordinators to concisely and maturely build bridges with potential allies. A functional chapter needs many diverse voices to ensure campaigns do not have potential cultural and strategic blindspots. Fundamentally everyone, regardless of background or temperament, can lead in their own way so be encouraging and foster their strengths! 

Be the model organizer – good organizing ethos shape your chapter culture

Like it or not, newer chapter members and your mentees will mirror your behavior as an organizer and leader. Bad practices and behavior—like secrecy, cliquishness, and ego—can shape your chapter culture. This type of behavior can lead to members not feeling heard or appreciated. As a leader, be humble and acknowledge your mistakes and work to rectify them. Foster a culture of transparency, community, open mindedness, and humility so that people feel heard and safe to express disagreement. This is especially important with people from underrepresented identities and backgrounds like comrades of color, femme, and queer comrades. You are setting the standard and culture for your chapter. Be mindful of this!