—Systemic change begins with personal change—
Josh Bandoch is the Head of Policy at the Illinois Policy Institute.
His research focuses on empowering people to rise out of poverty, increasing social mobility, improving housing affordability, and removing barriers to opportunity (e.g. burdensome regulations). His work has appeared in popular outlets like National Review, Real Clear Policy, RealClearMarkets, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Crain’s Chicago Business, The Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, and Discourse, as well as peer-reviewed journals like Political Studies.
He is the author of The Politics of Place: Montesquieu, Particularism, and the Pursuit of Liberty (University of Rochester Press, 2017), which has received numerous positive reviews. He’s currently working with his literary agent to submit his book manuscript on persuasion to publishers. He’s using his persuasion research to develop strategies to advocate for policies that expand freedom and prosperity.
Before joining IPI, Josh was a Research Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a speechwriter for numerous senior government officials, a strategic communications consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton, and a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
He earned his bachelor’s in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland, College Park, and his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Notre Dame.
Josh and I talked about a few aspects of his acting on his commitment from the Spodek Method. For one thing, since he and I both study, practice, and teach leadership, we talked about the technique, how it works, how it impacted him. Since leadership involves emotion, empathy, and related social and emotional skills, we talked about the emotional journey. If you ever want to infuriate me, maybe the most effective way is to get me talking about environmentalists who talk only science and policy, just what they consider the facts that make them right. They try to browbeat people into doing what they don't do themselves, as if integrity, credibility, and personal, hands-on, practical experience didn't matter for leading others. They're essential. Oops, I could feel the fury rising. Josh and I talk about what works in leading and influencing others. Listening works more than lecturing. Empathy more than instruction. Intrinsic motivation over extrinsic. Also we talked about finding and experiencing the beauty of nature, including something of his Kauai experience in Chicago, not despite but in part because he picked up litter too. As always, once people start picking it up, they find more than they thought, including in places they pass daily.
I participated in an online workshop in influence and persuasion that Josh led. We got in touch afterward and found our approaches to the practices and how to learn them overlap. We start this episode talking about his background and what led him to learning and training others in the practices. Then we talk about what we like about learning and practicing them, what works, what doesn't, misconceptions, and other aspects. Some related subjects include authority, extrinsic emotions, management, and such. We practiced the Spodek Method, him experiencing it for the first time. In this first conversation, he only experienced being led to share what the environment means to him and coming up with a commitment to help evoke that meaning. You can hear that beyond just participating in the exercise, he's also analyzing it as a professional. We'll have to wait for his second exercise to hear his experience and analysis of the whole exercise.