Millennial lingo: 5 things I learned from campaigning for Emmanuel Macron

‘This is it’. All of us are craving for experiences at work that are filled with ‘this is it’ moments. ‘This is what I am supposed to be doing’. ‘This is what I am enjoying the most’. ‘This is who I am’. A lot of our time is spent wondering what shape “this is it” could take for us. Should I work hard to get promoted faster? Is starting my own company the right next step? What about this book I’ve had in mind for years?

For me, ‘this is it’ took the shape of a 9 month sprint-paced political campaign in New York City to help Emmanuel Macron become the next President of France. From organizing the very first rally to working daily with a team of 30+ volunteers and convincing 35,000+ voters to choose Macron over his opponents (particularly Juppé then Fillion), I enjoyed one of the richest “this is it” phases of my twenties.

Now that the dust has settled and Macron has been elected comes the familiar feeling of chasing the next ‘this is it’ and understanding what exactly defines it. We constantly read about what makes for a ‘dream’ job in articles on LinkedIn and Twitter. Drawing from my recent experience I decided to strip away the millennial lingo from these descriptions and add my personal contribution to defining what makes for a “this is it” job.

• Lesson 1: impact comes from your team

We all want to have ‘personal impact’ in our jobs. While the word gets thrown around a lot, we forget that most initiatives that make a tangible difference on people’s lives are the result of a group of people working together towards the same goal. As much of a smart individual you might be, the impact your work will have on others will not only be lesser than the impact you can have a team, it will also be of a different nature.

Working on the Macron campaign in New York, I realized very quickly I wouldn’t make any tangible difference on the polls with the power of my sole voice. Assembling a team of volunteers who were as excited as I was allowed to unlock resources (e.g. budget from the campaign headquarters) and initiatives (e.g. a bi-weekly rally every 18 day of the 9 month campaign) of a different nature than what we would not have achieved individually.

Think beyond personal impact. Think about the impact your team can have, and how to maximize it by being a valuable team member.

• Lesson 2: ‘Meaning’ is a collective story

Few things are generally thought to be more personal than the meaning you attach to your career and your life . Yet the knowledge that you are working on something meaningful for yourself can rapidly turn to bitterness if you are not understood or appreciated by your peers. Think about this. The meaning you attach to your work is similar to a story (it usually involves a hero, a quest and a looming danger) and what makes a story strong is its being told and repeated by other people. So to work on something that you believe is meaningful, what you need is the story of why your work is meaningful being shared and amplified by a collective.

The Macron campaign was meaningful for me because we were a collective of believers who, at a time when Macron only had a 10% chance in the polls, knew he had to win. I drew meaning in what I was doing for a long period of time because the group around me also shared the same faith.

Figure out what ‘meaning’ is for you and sustain it by finding your fellow believers.

• Lesson 3: ‘achievement’ is a long journey

Like a great many other victims of social media, I often get distracted by the punctual celebrations of my acquaintances’ achievements on social media. What is easy to forget as a result is that one does not experience ‘this is it’ bliss in isolation from the journey that led to it.

En Marche was a memorable adventure because the party started from nothing in April 2016 and eventually, after a full year of battle, achieved a majority stake in Parliament. The many moments of frustration and self-doubt we encountered on the journey were an important part of the final achievement.

If you’re looking for a real adventure, avoid cheap thrills.

• Lesson 4: ‘Fun’ comes from reasonable hardship

Having fun in your work does not necessarily mean fun & games. You’re having fun when you’re learning and getting better at what you do, a feeling which ‎Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described as the “flow”. You get it when the task at hand is hard enough that you feel energized by it but not too hard that you feel discouraged and stop making progress.

En Marche was a fun experience because while we felt we could contribute to Macron’s victory, we didn’t know for sure. To keep the team motivated, we had to adjust the perceived (im)possibility of the challenge. During the first phase of the campaign, we had to make the challenge look easier to keep the team engaged, by showing how even simple things like bringing friends to a rally could improve our share of voice on social media and in the press. Reversely, during the last phase of the campaign when Macron was by far the favorite, we had to make victory seem harder to avoid the team feeling disengaged. One of the ways we did that was by sharing select US press articles from election day firmly declaring Clinton would win the elections.

If you want to have fun with a new challenge, make sure it’s making you feel uncomfortable and confident at the same time.

• Lesson 5: ‘Values’ are memories

You often hear people say they want to work on a challenge that speaks to their values. Yet values like ‘generosity’ or ‘perseverance’ can be so watered-down from being used in different contexts that they’re not the most helpful when it comes to meeting with your next ‘this is it’.

At their core, authentic values (the ones you actually believe in) are memories. Volunteers who helped Macron from abroad were 100% aligned with their values because, as expats, they had personally been through and impacted by the traumas of Trump and Brexit winning the polls and contradicting everything they knew about the joys and perks of a more united world.

If you’re not sure what to do because you’re not sure what to believe in, go back to your memories. Which opportunities resonate with something that you’ve actually been through?

Understanding what drove my ‘this is it’ moment unveiled for me the importance of assembling a team to drive impact, the collective nature of meaning, the endurance behind each great achievement, the hardships that drive enjoyment and the memories that create authentic values.

Now that the campaign has passed and new challenges come my way, I will do my best to remember the lessons from the campaign and resist temptations to boil down the characteristics of a dream job to the “me”, the “here” and the “now”.