Hi there. My name is Chris Hayes. I’m the careers coordinator at the Leadership Institute here in Washington DC. Today, we’re gonna talk to you about the art of professionalism. I’m joined by Caroline Levitt.

Yes. Great to be with you, Chris. My name is Caroline Levitt, and I am a former political appointee in the Donald j Trump administration, where I served in the White House press office as an assistant press secretary. In the eyes of many in the world, this every 4 year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle. In America, we understand that a nation is only living as long as it is striving.

Only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive, and will prosper. Whether we go forward together with courage or turn back to policies that weakened our economy, diminished our leadership in the world, America’s future will be in your hands. Alright. So we’re here to talk about professionalism, the art of professionalism.

There are a few things that you’re gonna wanna keep in mind as we’re having this conversation today. The first of those is that things are a little bit different now than they have been in years gone by. So the days of working at a company for 50 years and getting your gold watch at the end of it are probably over. We’re more in the place where people wear sneakers and jeans to work. So things are a little bit different.

There are, however, some things that haven’t changed, and we’re gonna talk about what are those characteristics that make a professional a great professional. So we’re gonna talk about all of that today, and then we’re gonna get into, how does a professional interact with their colleagues? How does a professional interact with their boss? And how does a professional interact with others in the movement? So as you find your way into a presidential administration, what are going to be the ways to set you up to be the absolute best professional that you can be?

We’re so blessed to have Caroline here to tell us just how she did it when it was her time to step up to the plate. Alright. So the first thing that any professional needs to know is that there’s no such thing as a good professional who can’t do their job. So competence is the first thing that I want you all to think about when it comes to professionalism. What does competence mean?

Well, it means that whatever your job description is, your boss is relying on you to do that on time and with excellence. And so you should be striving for those kinds of things. And this this sort of brings up a question that I have for Caroline. Caroline, what were some of your day to day duties, your job duties that you had to make sure you never missed some of those core responsibilities? It’s a great question.

And as a political appointee, you will be you’ll get the books thrown at you on your first day on the job. And one of the characteristics on this slide as well is knowledge, and that’s a very important characteristic to have. However, you have to understand, as your first day as a political appointee, regardless of which branch you serve in, which agency you work under, you’re not going to know everything. You’re not going to have all the knowledge, but confidence is key. You have to be resourceful.

Don’t go to your boss, who is definitely going to be a lot busier than you are, and ask them questions that you could have the answers to yourself first. So that’s a great piece of advice that I learned first hand was figuring out all of the answers to all of the questions that I had using my colleagues, using the resources that were given to me in the White House press office before I took that to my boss. And many times, you’ll realize you can solve problems on your own before you bug your superior with them. That’s so spectacular. Resourcefulness is on the list 100%.

If you want to be considered good at your job, not only by your boss, but by your boss’s boss and by your colleagues, being able to problem solve is going to be a part of it. So sometimes things will happen, and that’s not your fault. It’s not even part of your job necessarily. But if all you do is bring that problem to somebody else, you’re really just making their day harder. If you are if you’re somehow able to instead solve it or get halfway to the solution before you bring it to somebody else, you’re going to put yourself in a much better stead with that person and with the people around you.

So I think that’s excellent. Excellent. Thank you so much. You talked about knowledge, too. That is critical.

So in addition to being good at your job, you want to be someone who knows answers. Right? So there’s what am I supposed to do? What am I getting paid to do? And then there’s the background, the theory, as it were.

And that’s sort of like if someone picks up the phone and calls my department with a question, not with a request, but just with a question, do I know how to answer it or how to steer them towards the person who knows how to answer it? Am I what we call a subject matter expert? Am I an expert? You should be an expert at your own job. That is a true professional.

I think there’s a few different types of knowledge too that I came to learn, during my experience as a political appointee, particularly in the White House press office. There certainly is an institutional knowledge that comes with being a first time political appointee, and you’ll find that as you work weeks, months, and years in administration, you come to acquire that institutional knowledge over time. But knowledge that you can go and get, is that day to day knowledge about your specific job. For me, as an assistant press secretary, that was reading up on the news of the day. It was part of my job to prepare the press secretary for her daily briefings in the White House podium, and I wanted to make sure podium, and I wanted to make sure that I knew the news as much or if not better than she did.

So if she had a question, she could come to me and I would provide her an answer. So being well read is a great way to acquire knowledge. You have the resources that you need at your fingertips in this digital age, so use them. And the most well read person in the room is usually the one who’s going to have an answer for their boss. That’s such good feedback.

Thank you. I couldn’t agree more. And I really, really also appreciate your comment about institutional knowledge, specifically when you’re heading into a place like a presidential administration where so many of the jobs are specific. They don’t exist elsewhere. And so there’s no way to know precisely how this has been done in the past except for to find someone who’s done it.

Right? And so to understand, if I don’t know the answer, who does? Like, to get to that answer, that’s your job. And so finding that answer is critical. Either solve for it, know it ahead of time through your own research, or find the person who does know.

Yeah. One of the things that I did when I, was hired in the White House press office and moved from another office in the White House was I wanted to know how previous press secretaries ran their office. And so I actually ordered books from Dana Perino, who was the White House press secretary under George Bush. She was only the 2nd female press secretary to ever do it. I also read what Sarah Huckabee Sanders, put out there in the media when she was the press secretary.

So I could understand the challenges that they faced in that role, so I could better help my boss in her role. So some of so moving on from knowledge, there are a few things that have to do with your own character. And we’ve used conscientiousness and integrity to talk about these things. Those are the watch words, but I encourage you to think about however it is you think about this, I want you to focus on it. And what I’m talking about is do what you say you’re going to do.

So be reliable. Be someone that is dependable, who if you say something will happen by Friday and it’s Thursday afternoon and you’re not where you wanna be, looks like you might be having a late night at the office. Right? Because I said I would get it done by Friday, and a professional gets done what they say they’re gonna get done. And the other thing is if on that in that same exact scenario, well, then it’s, like, 6 PM, and I get a phone call from a family member.

I’ve got to go respond to something, and so I don’t get this work done by Friday. I have to own that. I have to say, I know that I said it would be done by Friday, and I’ve failed to it. Here’s here’s why. Here’s what’s going on.

It’s my fault, but here’s what I’m now gonna do. Here’s the new deadline. I will hit that deadline. And so owning that, so owning your own mistakes, but also being dependable and being a person of your word. So we’ve talked a little bit about the skills side of things, and now I’d like to talk more qualitatively.

We’re going to move into the second four characteristics, respect, emotional intelligence, appropriateness, and confidence. So let’s talk about the first two together, respect and emotional intelligence. Respect here generally means treat other people with respect and treat yourself with respect. So don’t be groveling and don’t be arrogant. Carry yourself as though you’re someone who deserves to be where you are because you are.

By the same token, so do the people around you. And treat them as if they are also someone who has earned the right to be where they are. And I like to use a phrase called assume positive intent. So even when there might be a dispute among employees, assume that everybody has the best outcome in mind, but they might be in disagreement about how to reach it. So those are the first 2, and emotional intelligence is is critical to understanding how to navigate those.

So, Caroline, do you have any thoughts on situations, the high stress environment, any anything you can remember where assuming positive intent to treating other people with respect led to some good outcomes? Absolutely. There will be many a times where you are working in an administration, and there are very high pressure situations. In my experience, working in the press briefing room where the news cycle is ever changing, it’s 247. And we would spend all morning from 7 AM to 1 PM briefing the press secretary, preparing her for the daily briefing.

And then 5 minutes before the briefing call, major news breaks or the president, would put out a statement. And it would really, change the way that we knew we were going to be questioned by the White House press corps. Those were some of the most high pressure moments of my life, knowing that the White House press corps was out there going to berate my boss on something that we had not covered throughout the day. And rather than get stressed out, cry, or have a negative emotional response, you have to pull yourself up from your bootstraps, you have to be prepared, you have to, execute in that moment. I mean, you have to be there to support the people that are counting on you, to do your job.

And when you’re the boss someday, you’ll be hopeful, and helped by your employees who are there to help you and assist you in those moments. So, high stress environments will come. That’s the nature of working at the highest level of our government. Just be prepared for those, and if you fail to prepare for those moments, prepare to fail. That’s why reading and those previous characteristics we talked about about having knowledge and being well read really come in handy in those very critical moments.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And the the emotional intelligence to keep a cool head and not let a bad situation get worse Right. Is so critical to being a respected colleague Mhmm. And so helpful to the overall movement, to the goals, and what we’re all here for.

By the same token, we’re also going to call your attention to confidence and appropriateness. So confidence kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier, which is you deserve to be there. But you can either be so this is a personality type thing, and some people take confidence and they take it to a place of arrogance, And other people maybe are confident in their ability, but maybe timid in a room, and they don’t know how to interject in a conversation, even when it’s appropriate that they do, because they can steer that conversation in a good way. So always remember your voice is there to be heard. You are there to contribute.

However, not to dominate, necessarily. And so you do want to strike that balance, and this is something to be aware of and to focus on. Appropriateness is essentially the idea that when you’re at work or when you’re getting coffee before work or at a happy hour after work, you are with the people who you work with. And in the movement at happy at all kinds of events unrelated to your work your day to day work life, you still want to carry yourself in such a way that your behavior towards people is appropriate and that you’re there because of the movement and because of you wanna engage with the people around you. Caroline, can you think of any times where maybe even in your own experience, you wish you would have said something, it would have been helpful, but you just kinda let the moment go by.

Or on on on the positive side, a time when you were nervous about interjecting, but you did, and it was really to everyone’s benefit. Yes. Absolutely. Confidence is key. You have to have it or else you’re going to fail.

Know that you are here for this moment, you were hired for this position, you were chosen for this position, and that in itself qualifies you to be there. You’re not gonna know everything as I said previously. Sometimes you’re gonna have to fake it till you make it a little bit, but you should always be prepared and have knowledge. And to your specific question, there was a time in which I approached my boss with an idea that I thought would be helpful for our for our office and for our team. I was nervous to do so because it was a little out of the box thinking.

It was a bit creative. I will give the example. The president had been calling upon, the families of gun violence in inner cities in our nation. And, I decided that it would be helpful that if we were going to name these victims in our press briefing, the president should send hand signed letters to the families of those victims. It had nothing to really do with our press office, but I thought it would be a nice touch.

The president and the press secretary ended up loving the idea. My former boss actually wrote about it in her book. And if I had not had the confidence in that moment to bring that idea to my boss and propose it for her, it never would have happened. Those families would have never received that joyous letter from the president of the United States. So if you have a good idea, don’t be afraid to pitch it.

The worst that happens is your boss says no. Wow. That’s an excellent example. Thank you. And a really beautiful story.

Thank you. Thank you so much. You’re welcome. Alright. Now let’s talk about your boss.

The first thing that everyone should know about their boss is that their boss has a boss. Even the president of the United States has people that he or she would answer to theoretically. Right? Certainly the American people themselves, but also their own deadlines, their own things that they’re concerned about. And so when we talk about bosses, just always remember that, that your boss has things on his or her mind that you might not have thought of yet, and they’re not just waiting for you to come talk to them.

So the big thing that you always want to remember is attitude. Always go to your boss with the appropriate attitude, never with a sort of, petulant or kind of complaining. There’s going to be times when you vent, you might have a good relationship, but there should always be, I’m coming to you with something productive to discuss or something to contribute productively to something that you have going on in your world. Part of that’s going to mean managing up. Right?

And managing up does not mean it specifically does not mean being tricky in any way, but it does mean anticipating. It means knowing what your boss needs from you even before your boss has thought to ask it of you, because you know what you’re going to present your boss with and what their next question might be. So you want to be ahead of that. You want to help them look good. Making your boss look good if the organization is built in a logical way, making your boss look good is sort of your only job.

Because your boss’s job is to make his or her boss look good all the way up to the president whose job it is to make the American people look and feel good. So if you’re doing that, if you’re focused on that, your boss’s priorities, it should all filter. It should all filter upward in a good way. And I think a critical juncture here is communication. So your boss should never ever be caught off guard by something you already know.

So if you see something on the horizon and it could be an issue and you’re working to solve it, let someone know, if you really think you you might not have it. But you don’t want that to come to your boss’s attention and have it be something that they’ve never heard about in their life. Meanwhile, you’re already working on it. So everything that comes to everything that is about your boss, it all boils down to making your boss’s life as easy as you possibly can is almost a direct equivalent to you being excellent at your job and being a good professional. Caroline, do you have any thoughts on how you may have as a as a supervisor or for your supervisors had any interactions that were just really, really great or maybe some that you thought were good learning experiences?

Yeah. Definitely. First of all, your boss is not your friend. Okay? So don’t try to be friends with your boss.

You work for your boss and that’s very important to remember too, especially in an administration. And also don’t pester your boss with things that are unnecessary to bring them to their attention. You should approach your approach your boss when necessary, when there is information that you need to bring to their attention, when you are finishing a project for them, or when you have legitimate questions that again, you have not already done your due diligence to figure out on your own. Having supervised folks myself in the administration and elsewhere in my career, I can tell you there is nothing more annoying than having people come to you with things that are completely unnecessary. You are not your boss’ top priority.

Your boss has their own job to do. You are there to support your boss. So don’t try and play favorites. Don’t try and be in their face all of the time. Show up every day, execute your job to be helpful to your boss, and I guarantee you, I know for a fact, they will remember you for being that worker who showed up on time, did what they had to do, didn’t complain, didn’t annoy them.

And that’s the best way to serve in your boss’ good graces. Absolutely. That is so smart. I think Machiavelli said I’d rather be feared than loved. I would rather be respected than loved in a professional setting.

I would rather be known for doing good work in a timely manner than for being so much fun around the office. Right? Being my boss’s favorite person to talk to. And part of that’s a personality thing too. It’s it goes into what we’re gonna talk about next, which is building relationships.

People who work for me know that if they give me a problem, I’ll try and solve it even if it’s not my job because I think that way. So they know that even if we’re having a casual conversation, they shouldn’t bring up work things they’re working on unless they want me to be thinking about it, because I’ll start to solve the problem, and that’s their job. So again, all of these things come up, and it’s up to you to navigate and manage those relationships. You’re part of every relationship you’re in, and it’s always your job to manage that. So everybody works with people.

Your colleagues at work, in some ways, are no different than the people around you in your life, starting with your family, your friends, your classmates, eventually the people who live in your neighborhood, and then your colleagues at work. It’s all you in a community of people. So there are going to be certain rules that apply across all of those different dimensions. There are also some things that you should really remember when it comes to being a colleague. You can be a team player and be a leader at the same time, and you do that by just doing the things we’ve already talked about.

Right? So if you’re an expert at your job, that means that you’re able to, for example, just the other day, somebody approached me at work and they gave me something that actually doesn’t help me, but it helps one of my colleagues elsewhere in the company. So I was able to immediately flip that, send that over to that person, and now they’re going to be able to take it and run with it. Now I’m not that person’s supervisor at all. That’s just my colleague.

But because I’m doing my job and I can quickly determine what’s useful, where what belongs, etcetera, etcetera, I’m able to present myself as a leader to my colleagues without being their leader. And that’s an important distinction to me. You can be seen as a leader without giving instructions or commanding anyone or trying to dominate anybody. As we talk about relationships with colleagues and leadership in general, it’s important to remember that being a servant leader is absolutely the best kind of leader and is also the best kind of colleague. Being helpful to the people around you makes everything better.

Of course, as we mentioned, you’re going to want to treat everybody with respect. You’re going to want to conduct yourself appropriately. But ultimately, with your colleagues, your goal is to make their jobs easier just the same way as it was with your boss. So focus on how does my work, how does what I do make somebody else’s job easier? In my professional capacity as a consultant, a lot of my deliverables were critical to the next stage of the process.

And so to the extent that I was able to complete my work well and on time, my colleagues were able to then do their jobs. Can you think of any times, Caroline, where you or a colleague of yours just made your life so much easier just by doing what they do? And it was just nice to have them around. Yes. Colleagues, I think we have long memories.

You remember the colleagues that helped you very fondly, and you remember the colleagues that weren’t so helpful, not so fondly. And in political administrations, there’s a lot of turnover when it comes to political appointees. There’s also a lot of shifting around of roles, especially in the executive branch. People will move from one office to the next quite quickly. And so those those people that are in your current office might not be there forever.

They may move to another office or position or agency that you’re actually gonna have to report to one day. So your colleague today could be your boss tomorrow. That’s very important to remember. You may think you are on an equal playing field with someone. That person could be the next president of the United States.

So you wanna be in great favor with not only your bosses, of course, but your colleagues too. That’s keenly important. And they will remember you, likewise. Just like you’ll remember your colleagues that weren’t so helpful to you, and you’ll remember fondly those who were, they will think of you the same way. And in one way or another, your professional careers and paths will absolutely cross again, and you may need that person’s help one day.

And if you were a good colleague to them, chances are you’ll get that help that you need. That’s absolutely true. In my time at the Heritage Foundation, I had a number of colleagues. I now work at the Leadership Institute. I have new colleagues.

Wouldn’t you know it? Some of the folks from my previous career with heritage were now working together at leadership and vice versa. Some folks from leadership do now at Heritage. So I promise you it’s true that your colleagues are the people who you don’t just work with today. They’re who you’ll see around as well.

And so you want to maintain those relationships and nourish them. So let’s talk really quickly about the other kind of colleague in the mix, and that’s a coalition partner. So this is going to be someone who you work with, but maybe not in your department, or maybe not even in your organizations or administration. And I think a good example of this, which kind of ties us together, is Leadership Institute. We have a lot of guest lecturers.

And so that’s my colleague in a certain sense. And Kaylee McEnany is one of them. And so she’s helped us out with a lot of great, a lot of great events that we’ve done in the past. And you know Kaylee as well. And And that kinda makes us all coalition partners.

Yeah. And the way that I came, to Kaylee McEnany’s being on her team in the White House was, through a former colleague of mine in the White House, but he was also sort of a coalition partner too because he worked in an entirely different office. But our job descriptions commingled. We had to help each other out with projects, getting them across the finish line, and it came to a position where he became close to Kaylee. I had heard she was bringing in a new team of press staff, and he put my resume on her desk.

And that was someone, when I was just working with him, I was just there to do my job and execute at the time. I never imagined that he would be kind of that building block, that coalition partner, that link to getting me to the job job of my dreams in the administration. And so anyone you come across, whether they work directly in your office, department, organization, or not, treat them with respect, do your job on time, they will remember that, and then they’ll be willing to put their neck out for you and recommend you for a job later if that time comes. Absolutely. That’s so true.

There’s nothing better than a sterling reference from a trusted source. And so remember that that reference could come from anywhere, and it’s all going to be based on your level of professionalism and your ability to execute. That’s an excellent story. Thank you so much. Welcome.

Alright. So we’ve talked a little bit about colleagues and coalition partners and how to conduct yourself in your workspace, but let’s talk and bosses too. Let’s talk about when you’re the boss. And so you’re probably not the big boss unless you’re the one person in the whole country who’s the president of the United States. But you will be in a position of leadership and, you’ll have a title and authority over the people who will be working for you or reporting to to you.

So how do you handle that professionally? What does a good boss look like? And what I’d like you to the image I’d like you to have in your head is a duck on water. Right? So the water can be can be really, turbulent, tempestuous, but the duck is floating on top.

And the legs are are are if you’ve ever seen web the little duck feet under the water, they’re moving really fast. Right? And so that’s that’s the image I want you to have in your head, because as a manager, there will be a 1,000,000 variables that your boss and your direct reports are all feeding to you at the same time. And it can be a lot. And so think about yourself under a stress situation.

What’s your personality? Not when you’re happy, but when you’re under a lot of stress. Because that’s what you’ll be. That’s the situation you’ll be in. That’s the personality that needs to be cool serene and calm.

Right. And the reason that you want to do all these things is because what you put out is what you’ll get back. So if you’re an angry boss you’re going to have angry employees. They’ll be mean to their co workers. Your boss is going to not want to talk to you.

You’ll have a bad relationship there. And that’s bad. So you want all of those things to not happen and that means you stay calm. And so when you do that, you will become a champion for your department. You will be the best advocate for your direct reports.

You will be the one who makes your boss look good. And your department will therefore look good to your boss and your boss’s colleagues. Maybe they’re at the VP level, depending on the organization you’re in. If it’s presidential administration, they’ll be higher up, and they’ll be in different conversations. And you’ll look good in those conversations.

So those are all things that as a boss you wanna do. You wanna champion your own department. And you want to remember that the work that comes out of your department reflects on you. Even if people think you’re a great guy or a great gal, if the work coming out of your department isn’t top notch, it reflects on your ability to lead. So those are all things that you’re gonna wanna think about, in addition to the day to day, minutia of just doing the job.

Caroline, you’ve managed people, and you’ve done a lot of, entrepreneurial and really just prestigious stuff in your career. Can you talk to us a little bit about some of those experiences? Sure. Well, I had a u I’ve had a unique experience. I served in the Trump administration as I discussed previously with some real world examples.

And post Trump era, I, moved over to Capitol Hill, and I was a staffer for a congresswoman, for a principal. I was a communications director, and I learned so much in that role about serving my boss and answering to her needs. And then when I became my own boss and ran for Congress myself aspiring to be a congresswoman, I then had staff who reported to me. And I very much took everything I learned as a staffer serving that congressperson with me as a boss. I remember things I liked and didn’t like, tried to treat my staff with respect, tried to have a team camaraderie, and have each and every person understand, you know, you have a job to do.

Let’s not get in each other’s lanes if we all execute our job. As the famous Bill Belichick says, do your job and you will win the game. And I think that’s very important when you are a boss to encourage all of your employees and your staff to be their best selves, to understand they’re in a position because they’re an expert at that position, not to interfere with their colleagues. And if we all execute, we’re all gonna be happy together at the end of the day. I think that’s fantastic.

What better example of a great boss and a great employee than Bill Belichick and Tom Brady of the New England Patriots. Amen. Go Pats. All right. So today, we’ve talked at a high level about some of the characteristics that you want to foster and nurture within yourself as a professional.

We’ve talked about the changing nature of professionalism and some things that stay the same no matter what. We’ve talked about how to be a colleague, how to interact with your boss, how to be a movement partner, and how to be a boss. So these are all the things that you’re going to want to focus on in addition to just competence, which is critical. As we leave you today, I would invite you to think about these things and areas in your own professional toolkit where you feel like you could maybe grow a little bit. And find an outlet to do that, to grow in that direction.

It might be getting involved at a community center, in whatever your faith tradition is. You could volunteer at your local place of worship. There are a lot of ways to try and build your skill set so that you can hit the ground running in a situation like this. One of the resources that you could use is the Leadership Institute, where I work. What we do is we help train young professionals to take the next step in their career in the movement.

That could be in digital. It could be in campaigns. What I do is professional services, so skills like this. But you should definitely look into the various things that we would make available to you to try and help you get where you need to be to serve your country. Caroline, do you have any parting thoughts for our audience?

I sure do. Just know when you get into a presidential administration, when that day comes, it is really an honor to work for our federal government. Don’t forget that your salary comes from the good, hardworking taxpayers across this country. Don’t ever take a day for granted, and continue to move up the ladder. And remember, everyone you meet in the workplace will help you get to another place someday.

So nurture your relationships, cherish the people you meet during this journey. It won’t last forever. No administration does, of course. This is a democracy. So enjoy it while you have it, and it will certainly bring you to the next level in your professional career, whatever that may be.

If you execute, if you have that confidence, if you’re well read, if you remain resourceful, and maintain those positive relationships. So best of luck, and, if you need us as a resource, we are here to help.