Here's the career advice President Obama gives to his summer interns
Sitting in intern orientation just steps away from the Oval Office, I surveyed the crowd of bright, ambitious, but inexperienced 20-year-olds and couldn't help but feel a little too old to be an unpaid DC intern.
At 27, I had just finished five years of active duty service as an Officer in the United States Navy, the majority of which was spent deployed in some of the world's most challenging flashpoints.
I was fascinated by the way America's national security strategy was crafted and applied to the White House Intern Program the summer before I started business school.
So, I was now in the literal halls of power, but what professional lessons could a military officer like me possibly learn at an unpaid internship like this?
It turns out quite a few. Through the White House Internship’s Speaker Series, I was privileged to hear senior government officials, from the President on down, address the intern class and share lessons they learned from careers that landed them at the pinnacle of political success.
Below are the top five pieces of advice I’ve taken with me that I believe interns everywhere can learn from.
President Barack Obama: "Worry less about what you want to be and more about what you want to do."
President Obama. Alex Wong/ Getty Images
Washington is full of people thirsting to become a senator or president. At elite colleges and graduate schools, many students fight their way through corporate recruiting to become a management consultant or corporate financier. Both groups talk a lot about the power, prestige, and compensation of their desired jobs, but rarely about the work — what make it enjoyable, interesting, or impactful.
By focusing your career on a particular challenge rather than job title, you open up a much wider definition of success. Those who dream of working as a Product Manager at Google only have a 0.2% chance of being hired. If you find yourself among that unfortunate 99.8%, that's the end of the road. On the other hand, if your goal is to advance self-driving car technology, you can work at other technology firms, automobile companies, startups, government regulatory agencies, and advocacy groups, and know that you're achieving satisfying levels of impact at each step in your career.
Vice President Joe Biden: "Know which issues you are prepared to lose over."
Vice President Biden. Joe Raedle/ Staff
Every vote cast in Congress is a decision between principled stands and political expediency. Those who compromise every time fail to achieve anything with their power, while those who refuse to compromise fall on their swords so much that they dull their blades. Effective leaders stake out battle lines in advance by identifying which issues are worth fighting for — that way, even if they lose an election over their views, it will only be for their most important and principled ones.
Far lower down the totem pole, we all face similar dilemmas. For example, do you risk straining relationships with a coworker in order to confront him for telling sexist jokes? In high-stress jobs with long hours, ask what you're willing to "lose" in you career in order to have dinner with your family every night, be close to a loved one, or achieve a higher level of impact. If you don't identify your "losing issues" in advance then nothing you "win" will be of much consequence.
First Lady Michelle Obama: "Live so you can afford public service."
First Lady Michelle Obama Win McNamee / Staff
Public service is expensive, just ask the Obamas. Before they pivoted careers, both of them were earning great salaries at high-powered law firms. Taking those lower public servant salaries meant smaller homes, cheaper schools for the children, and fewer vacations. Plus, had they not kept their savings high and spending low when they were earning good salaries, it is very likely that profligate lifestyles would have chained them, like golden handcuffs, to work that wasn’t their true calling.
Chief of Staff Denis McDonough: "The most important qualification for any staffer is the trust of the principal."
Chief of Staff Denis McDonough Chip Somodevilla/ Staff
If leaders had the time and brain power to make every decision in their organizations, they might want to. Instead, each employee hired pushes the boss further away from the work that drives her business. Competence can be gauged by prior work experience and sterling academic credentials, but a boss also needs to trust that the decisions she delegates will be made in the way she wants. Washington is full of absurdly young people advising top decision-makers and leading executive agencies because their principals – the nation’s elected leaders – trust their judgement and loyalty to make the same decisions they would.
As soon as you arrive at your internship, strive to earn your boss's trust by, first, over-delivering on prominent difficult assignments, and second, developing an intuition for how your boss would perceive and react to a problem.
Vice President Joe Biden: "It's always appropriate to question another man's judgment, but never appropriate to question his motives."
Early in his career, Biden found himself in conflict with the conservative Senator Jesse Helms over Helm's opposition to the Americans with Disabilities Act. When Biden complained that Helms had "a disregard for the disabled," a colleague told Biden about an advertisement Helms and his wife read in the newspaper. In it, an orphaned 9-year-old boy with cerebral palsy stated that all he wanted for Christmas that year were parents to love and adopt him. His colleague looked Biden in the eye. "They adopted him, Joe."
When you believe that someone is acting out of evil, self-interest, or corruption, it becomes impossible to work with them. But when you see disputes as honest disagreements, compromise and cordiality is still possible. Remember: no one is the villain in their own story.
Nathan Bruschi is a Navy Veteran and a student at Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School.
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