August 10, 2026

It was the summer of 2020. Amid the chaos of that year’s global pandemic, economic free fall, and presidential election, a Black man in Minnesota was killed by white police officers. George Floyd was just the latest in a summer of civil uprisings over race relations in the country. George Floyd was the latest in a series of deaths that had ignited a national reckoning over race. His death followed those of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky and Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, all of whom had, by that point, become household names. Protests were spreading across the country and communities were looking to their leaders for some acknowledgement of what they were watching and feeling.

At the time, I was advising several municipal leaders in New Jersey. One was the mayor of a highly visible and diverse community. He called me because he wanted to make a live statement.

I told him I didn’t think he should. My concern was pretty straightforward: emotions were extraordinarily high, every word from an elected official was being scrutinized, and one poorly chosen word or phrase could very quickly make the mayor the story.

More than that, I worried about the optics. There are moments when leaders need to speak. But there are also moments when inserting yourself into the conversation can look performative, regardless of your intentions. I feared this would be seen as the latter.

He listened to my advice before effectively telling me, “Whether you write the statement or not, I’m going out there.”

Alright, then.

So I wrote something brief and clean. Enough to acknowledge the moment, recognize what people were feeling and then get out of the way. Say what needs to be said. Nothing more.

Once we got the live feed up, he stepped out onto the steps of town hall and began his statement. He began with exactly what I had written before quickly going off script. Not ideal… except, he was good.

He spoke directly to the Black community and acknowledged how difficult and exhausting this moment must have been. He talked about continuing to reach for something better. Most importantly, he spoke directly to what people in his community were feeling. He was really good.

He was factual without being clinical. Emotional without making the moment about himself. Passionate and, most importantly, authentic. I was speaking to get out of the way. He was speaking to his community.

After his speech, nothing blew up. There wasn’t a communications crisis waiting for us afterward. There wasn’t some poorly chosen sentence that suddenly became the headline. Instead, I watched a mayor speak directly to his community during a moment when they needed to hear from him.

I had seriously underestimated the guy. I wasn’t making up the risks I’d identified. A live statement could have gone badly, resulting in press and social media coverage that could’ve lasted days or weeks, damaging the town’s reputation and the mayor’s credibility, to say nothing of the social impact. Restraint was a perfectly defensible recommendation.

And yet, here I was with egg on my face. I was living in the world of strategy and cost-benefit ratios rather than reality.

The mayor, on the other hand, was living somewhere much closer to reality. His community’s reality. He understood his community better than I did. He knew the people he represented, understood what they were feeling and had an ability to communicate with them that I hadn’t fully appreciated until I watched him do it. He trusted them more than I did.

That was a teaching moment for me. Part of being an advisor is telling people things they don’t necessarily want to hear. It’s just part of the job. If I think a leader is making the wrong call, I’m paid to say so.

But good counsel also requires understanding the limits of your own perspective. I had evaluated the communications risk. I had not evaluated the human risk. He didn’t really care about the communications risk because he understood the human risk.

I’ve carried that experience with me ever since. I think about it from time to time.

Often in my field, there’s an instinct underpinning our work to keep emotions at bay. Avoid acknowledging the emotional toll so you can preserve a more level-headed appearance. Stick to the facts. Don’t add fuel to the fire.

There’s good reason for that instinct and, often, it proves correct. However, sometimes meeting emotions where they are is exactly what the moment calls for. And if you’re savvy enough – if you know your audience well enough – you can spot the difference and you know exactly how to meet that moment.

– Max