Photo Credit: The Atlantic
Looking for leadership lessons
In this Looking Through a Leadership Lens series, we analyze leadership lessons from Kamala Harris’s loss in the presidential race. This exploration is not about critiquing Harris but about understanding why even a “perfect candidate” with remarkable qualifications and support failed to win over voters.
Kamala Harris was perfect candidate
Kamala Harris was the perfect candidate and yet she lost a race that was perfectly staged for her victory. She is an admirable 60-year-old multiracial woman of color who has served in all three governmental branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. She had all the attributes the country wanted to vote for. Half the electorate is women. She supported a very important women’s right: abortion. Her party had the support of labor unions. She had access to a limitless election treasure chest. Corporate media supported her candidacy and were friendly to her. Hollywood actors and producers, music celebrities, and wall street moguls offered full financial support. Kamala Harris checked off all the criteria for an ideal presidential candidate.
In America, a nation that champions the underdog, she still lost both, the popular vote and the electoral college count and lost the Senate, House, and presidency.
Why?
Voters did not know Kamala Harris
The voters simply did not know who Kamala Harris was.
Harris had the support of Americans of all races, genders, and colors, who value character and civility, women’s and non-binary rights, reform of policing, justice in courts, and other systemic inequities that disadvantage marginalized citizens.
Harris’s supporters hung their hope on her to support the causes they valued. She was their candidate of hope and progress in social transformations to give every American a chance to live as they chose. This reality failed to materialize because the rest of America needed to learn more about her to vote for her.
Even though her campaign had friendly media, limitless budget, celebrity endorsements, and the support of activists, the voters never learned who Harris was as an individual and a leader.
They did not connect with what Harris said she supported through her own struggles, experiences, or values as a multiracial woman of color. They did not hear the stories of her youth growing up in a broken home, an attorney general shaping a legal system in a time of out-of-control crime, a senator in a high technology expertise economy, and a vice president in global turbulent times. Hers is a story of potentially inspiring insights and big challenges. What was her life as the daughter of a black father from Jamaica and an Indian mother? Who were her mentors and who bullied her and what did she lose and win at which price?
An unknown Harris never became humanized. By not sharing her stories, she appeared robotic and unrelatable.
Missed opportunity #1. Being Black.
If America had believed that she is a black woman with legitimate credentials and leadership experience, she would have won this election. Black America wants to have a role model black woman President to show that they can lead with pride and confidence. America wants a Black woman President to to show its fairmindedness.
Being black for many has meant overcoming struggles and discrimination, being shut out and ignored, and being marginalized and diminished.
The power of her blackness never materialized in her speeches, interviews, and talks. Harris did not relate her journey to a black American’s life.
Missed opportunity #2. Is Harris Indian?
Kamala Harris’s 19-year-old mother came as a Ph.D. candidate from India to the University of California at Berkeley as a breast cancer researcher. She met her husband, also doing his Ph.D. at Berkeley, at a civil rights demonstration. When Ms. Harris was seven years old, the parents divorced, and her mother raised Ms. Harris and her sister alone. What kind of headwinds did the mother and daughters face? What was their connection to her Indian values? Why or why not? What were her identity struggles as a half Hindu child living in a Judeo-Christian country? What were her sources of strength and inspiration?
The Indian community never got a good understanding of Kamala Harris’s Indian roots and values.
Missed opportunity #3. Ms. Harris’s invisible life lessons.
Harris has an impressive track record of professional success. Few have made advances like she has.
- As an attorney general of the most populous and the richest state, how did she balance public safety and freedoms versus strong-arming citizens. What were her lessons of working with police unions and key collaborators? Where were the red lines and how did she negotiate them? How did Harris interact with the wealthy celebrities and all that comes with glamor and entitled attitudes? What role did her legal frameworks play in securing a safer life for all of the California residents.
- As a senator, what was the transition like from a state legislature to the US Congress stage? Who protected their turfs and who welcomed her? How did she navigate the growth? What was her reason to compete in the presidential primaries and drop out early?
- As a Vice President, what were her successes and struggles. How did she navigate the corridors of power on the world’s stages for economic, climate, and humanitarian causes? What sacrifices did she make and what privileges did she get?
Voters gleamed glimpses but not meaningful insights into Harris’s roles in charting her path to the top.
Conclusion
Every one of us, regardless of race, color, gender, or class has suffered undeserved rejection, bullying, and nepotism. These are everywhere and are a human phenomenon. Every one of us makes choices about how rise above adversities and contribute, educate, collaborate, and integrate into society. We constantly test what part of our values fit well and where to draw the line. We decide how much to bend and what is our breaking point. Young, old, black, or not black, straight, or non-binary, wealthy and poor, we all make these choices every day.
In Kamala’s story, surely there are many inspirational and heartwarming moments powerful enough to light up our lives. Instead of showing admiration for her courage and goodness, America rejected Harris, and Black Americans and Indian Americans voted less for her party than they have done in thirty years.
Kamala Harris’s journey underscores the vital role of storytelling in leadership. Relating to others is not just about policy positions or professional achievements—it’s about revealing the personal struggles and triumphs that shape one’s values.
Whether a leader is speaking to a room of executives, addressing a nation, or mentoring a team, the ability to connect deeply with others through authentic stories is what builds trust and inspires action. Harris’s campaign reminds us that relatability and vulnerability are as critical to leadership as competence and vision.
Aspiring leaders can learn from Harris’s journey that relatability is forged through vulnerability, personal narratives, and the courage to connect deeply with diverse audiences.
This is the last of the 3 blog post series: Why Kamala Harris lost – ->Looking through a leadership lens.
I penned this series from a technical leadership perspective because the lessons contained here can be useful in other life and leadership situations as well. The election is over. With so many other important priorities needing our attention, we must direct our energy to progress. The best we can do is the best we must do. Now!