Last week, New Yorkers elected Zohran Mamdani to be their next mayor. And while the city’s first democratic socialist mayor hasn’t always been a favorite of the business community, Charter Workplace Summit panelist Amanda Litman argued in October that private sector leaders have a lot to learn from Mamdani.
“Zohran Mamdani—putting aside ideology, you don’t have to agree with him on everything—is embodying what a next-generation leader looks like,” said Litman, the co-founder and president of Run For Something, an organization that recruits and supports diverse, progressive candidates in down-ballot races. “Every business leader could take some cues from him.”
We recently followed up and spoke with Litman about the specific lessons business leaders can learn about building, leading, and energizing teams from Mamdani and other grassroots candidates. Here are some of the takeaways from that conversation:
Contextualize a shared vision for success.
For Litman, one of the biggest factors that has made the Mamdani campaign successful is his ability to connect the dots between the election’s outcome and New Yorkers’ everyday lives.
“Really good candidates are able to explain how what they’re trying to accomplish can both imagine a better future but also exist within the context of reality,” she says. Beyond energizing voters, that focus on a shared vision “reinforces the fact that leadership is not about the leader, it’s about the people being led.”
For business leaders, that means communicating clearly about how the organization’s goals connect back to individuals’ aspirations, concerns, and values—and how individual contributions impact customers, collaborators, and the organization as a whole.
“For any leader of any business, it’s not about why you, the executive, want to succeed, but why the team wants to succeed,” she says, encouraging leaders to remind workers about the “why” behind the work, beyond “because the boss says so.”
Litman gives the example of someone working in compliance at a company that makes toothbrushes. It’s a role that may feel disconnected from the organization’s product, but “it matters that you do your job well so that those toothbrushes get out the door and some kid can brush their teeth.”
Leaders might remind workers of that impact by connecting individual feedback and recognition to an organization’s larger goals or by sharing customer testimonials and social media shoutouts via a shared Slack channel dedicated to fan mail.
Take the work seriously, but don’t take yourself seriously.
“Mamdani sets a really good example of taking the work seriously but not taking himself seriously,” says Litman. “The work is serious, the crisis is serious, and he is a serious person. But the vibe is joyful.”
His social media feeds, for example, are short on memes and TikTok trends and instead feature videos that spotlight New York history and campaign issues in a way that is engaging yet still substantive. That joyful vibe extends to in-person events like the campaign’s August scavenger hunt across the city.
“Thousands of people came out and just bebopped around the city on a beautiful day, got to know each other, learned a little bit of New York history, and participated in the campaign,” explains Litman
Within organizations, that might look like forgoing “forced fun” that has little connection to the organization’s work for moments of levity and connection that feel more intentionally connected to company values, products, and culture.
For example, instead of an organization-wide field day, Valvoline holds an annual “Oilympics” competition for its oil-change technicians. Beyond challenging technicians to compete to deliver perfect oil changes in the shortest amount of time possible, it encourages stores to retrain employees ahead of the busy summer-travel season, builds camaraderie and teamwork, and rewards employees with recognition and networking opportunities.
Be intentionally authentic.
Mamdani “understands how to be authentic, but with boundaries,” says Litman. “He doesn’t talk that much about his personal life, and that’s a good thing. That careful balance that requires leaders to go beyond bringing their “whole self” to work and instead be “thoughtful about the way you present yourself in a way that helps you achieve your goals.”
The key, she says, is “understanding who you are, what you’re trying to accomplish, what your team needs you to be, what your customers need you to be, and what the overlap is between all those things,” she says.
For example, she points to the fact that Mamdani is always wearing a suit wherever the campaign takes him, whether that’s watching a soccer match with Spike Lee or surprising partiers at a Brooklyn club on Halloween.
“Is that truly how he’d dress if it were just up to him?” Litman asks. “No, probably not, but It serves the story he’s trying to tell of someone who takes the work seriously… That is both authentic and intentional—both of those things are true at the same time.”
To help leaders think more intentionally about the way they show up at work, Litman recommends taking a deep dive into a social-media influencer’s account. “Break down the parts of how they construct their image. Think about how they dress, the language they use, the emojis they use, the tone of the audio,” she says.
The goal is not for every politician or business leader to become an influencer, she says, but to build awareness of all the small details that can shape employees’ view of you, from your Zoom background, the language you use in email, the fonts in your slide deck, or the comments you make on LinkedIn.
“There isn’t necessarily a right or wrong answer here, so much as there’s either an intentional or haphazard one. And what you want is for all of it to be intentional,” says Litman.
Keep up the momentum when you win and offer a path forward when you lose.
Even after Mamdani’s historic primary win in June, the campaign kept working to keep up the momentum through the general election by continuing to give volunteers ways to get involved, talk to their neighbors, and connect with the campaign.
It’s a mindset Litman has observed across many of the most successful candidates.
“Today we celebrate, and tomorrow we get back to work,” she says, whether that work is the general election, the hard work of governing, or—for business leaders—the next quarter’s sales goals.
While Mamdani’s campaign delivered a resounding victory last week, Litman notes that political campaigns also offer a blueprint for moving forward after failure, whether that’s losing an election, releasing a product that flops, or cutting staff in a layoff.
She cites Hillary Clinton’s 2016 concession speech, which reminded supporters of the millions of volunteers and voters who showed up at different points of the campaign trail before urging them to stay involved.
The best concession speeches, says Litman, grieve the loss by being clear eyed about the mistakes they made and any headwinds outside of their control. They remind supporters and team members of the positive impact they managed to make, whether that’s changing political margins, attention on an important issue, or the number of people engaged.
They also offer a path forward, for supporters and opponents alike. Litman quotes one part of Clinton’s speech that has stuck with her over the past decade and which now hangs on her daughters’ bedroom wall: “[T]o all the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.”
That line did two things that all leaders must do when moving forward from failure and disappointment: “She speaks to both how sad people were feeling, and to what it meant to see it happen.”