Love, Leadership, and the Truth about Decisions

by Mark Riccobono

From the Editor: Everyone who has contributed from the head and the heart has expressed how hard it is to distill into an article of reasonable length everything that Marc and Patricia Maurer have meant to them. This may have been most difficult for President Riccobono not only because of the position he holds but because he has known Patricia and Marc in so many capacities. I love the subject of his email that conveyed his submission: “The Long-Awaited but Hopefully Not Too Highly Anticipated Article.” He proceeds with his characteristic modesty and produces something that is second to none. Here’s what he says:

When I suggested to the Editor of the Braille Monitor that we consider celebrating the work of Marc and Patricia Maurer, I did not realize what I was getting into. I knew that I would be expected to write something, but I did not realize how difficult it would be to only write a small fraction of what I might say. Let me begin by extending to the Maurers my most heartfelt appreciation for their unwavering service to the blind of this nation during the past half-century. Having been mentored by them, worked alongside them, enjoyed their friendship, and even having the responsibility of guiding their work in my capacity as President over the past six years, I have a unique perspective on their contributions to the blind of the nation. I can say with complete certainty that they have acted with love and honesty in giving to this movement everything they have to offer. Personally I am grateful for their impact on shaping who I am. Organizationally this movement would not be as rich with love and determination had this couple not given in such a selfless manner. Thank you for what you have given to us, and we hope that retirement affords you the opportunity to more fully appreciate the difference you continue to make in the world.

This issue of the Braille Monitor is about celebrating. I also know from every celebration I have been in with Marc Maurer that the joy of recalling what has been only goes so far. At some point we are going to hear Dr. Maurer say, “Now!” in only the way he can to get the attention of a room. Then he will ask us all what is next. Thus, I will not use this article to praise what he has done but rather to use what he has done to teach some of what I have learned.

In 2020 it is most appropriate to talk about the side of leadership that rarely gets talked about—the hard and often lonely decisions. Leadership in our movement brings great joy. You can help impact people’s lives every day in a positive way. It also brings heartbreak and real struggle. When I came into the presidency, people often asked me what the hardest thing was. I told them that it was the realization that, despite our power, we only have so many resources compared to the things we need to do. The balance between utilizing the resources for good today and ensuring that we have a foundation to operate from tomorrow is very thin. I watched Marc Maurer do this many times, and I learned from him the character of who he is as a man and the nature of what is essential in leadership. That relationship stretches back to a letter I received in August of 1996 when he responded, to my shock, to a letter I wrote to him after my first national convention earlier that summer. Here is a small glimpse at what I have experienced knowing Marc Maurer.

I came to work for the National Federation of the Blind in the fall of 2003. Before that I served as president of our Wisconsin affiliate for five years, so I had a lot of experience calling upon Dr. Maurer in his capacity as our national president. My first assignment as a staff member was to fulfill a promise Dr. Maurer made to our national convention earlier that year. He told the convention that in the summer of 2004 we would have science programs for blind children. When I asked him what the plan was, he told me that was my job to figure out. Of course, I figured out later that there was a plan: identify someone with the passion, energy, and imagination to take the idea and make it into something in which the Federation could have pride—that was me. The idea that you could make a promise and pledge to take action based only upon a dream—an unshakeable belief in the people that dream was intended to benefit—was amazing to me. Of course, at the time I just understood it as a work assignment. However, through Dr. Maurer’s guiding questions and ability to push my ideas further than I thought was possible, I learned that the idea gains power when people are prepared to work toward making it happen regardless of how impossible it seems.

I knew blind people could do science, and it was my job to figure out how to get it done. I used the formula I had observed Dr. Maurer using. I reached out to as many blind people as I could—scientists, teachers, people who took science, and people who were excluded from it. I listened to their hopes and dreams, I synthesized the techniques they knew and the things they wanted to try but never had the opportunity to experience, and I invited people to help. We have been doing national science programs on various levels ever since.

Our President was always invited to participate in our programs and often served as the teacher. He brought genuine joy to every engagement he had, whether it was teaching youth how to cook hot dogs with a car battery, being pulled to the ceiling of the Members Hall in a chair rigged to a simple machine our students built, or speaking in the rain at the Lincoln Memorial (where the director of education—me—had not made a rain plan), Marc Maurer always took it as an opportunity to laugh, teach, and empower others.

Building stuff is not always easy, but it appears like lots of fun from the outside. Observing the excitement, the change in the participants, and the reinforced empowerment of our mentors is rewarding. However, there is a lot that happens behind the scenes. Getting the funding together, struggling to work through all the plans, ensuring we can manage emergencies and protect the youth who are entrusted to us, and facing difficult situations in the moment takes a lot of energy and requires that a lot of hard questions be answered behind the scenes. None of that gets any attention in the marketing or at the public celebrations, but careful planning is critical to the success of our work. We have been blessed to have Marc Maurer guiding those conversations behind closed doors for better than three decades. I knew when the call came to come to his office to talk through a plan or to consider a project that the questions were going to be hard. I knew he was seeking to find holes in what I put together. I quickly learned two things. The questions were always asked from a place of love—love for the organization but also love for me as one of the people dedicated to carrying out the work under his leadership. Second, the questions were to ensure that he knew where all the pitfalls were as much as I did. I learned that in leadership you need to trust and love your team, and you need to be prepared to own the actions the team takes. This combination of support and pushing me outside my comfort zone at the same time is what made my plans better and the Federation’s work stronger.

There is an even deeper layer to Marc Maurer that most people do not appreciate. As our longest-serving President, he shouldered personal responsibility for owning all of the hard decisions. When a program needed to be cut, when a staff member needed to be let go, when a request for legal assistance needed to be denied, and when a member needed to be removed from chairing a committee, he was ultimately responsible for taking the actions on behalf of the organization. The first time I truly began to understand this was in 2009 when we were in the middle of the NFB Youth Slam. During that summer the H1N1 virus was impacting many people (although comparatively small considering today’s coronavirus). We had a student who came down with flu-like symptoms. We isolated the student and began to analyze a plan for what to do. We did not know if it was the H1N1 virus or how many others in our program had been exposed to whatever was ailing this student. We did some research, including engaging with the health services at the University of Maryland College Park where we were hosting our program. I remember clearly sitting in the middle of this courtyard and really dreading calling Dr. Maurer. I felt like I had gathered all the data I could, but I knew he was going to ask me what I recommended as a plan of action. I really wanted him to make that decision—I just wanted to follow orders. I also knew that it was my job to advise him not the other way around. When I finally got him on the phone, it was clear he had been in the middle of something important. He gave me his full attention, and I gave him a rundown on the situation. He asked me one or two questions, which I had fortunately anticipated, so I was equipped with answers. To my surprise he told me the plan sounded good, and he trusted our work in executing the plan. Rather than raising the pitfalls and the concerns he might have had, he perceived that I was uncertain about my own ability to guide people through the situation, and he focused his time with me on telling me he had faith in my judgment. He was going to have to fix whatever went wrong, but instead of outwardly worrying about that with me, he chose to communicate his confidence, which in turn became my confidence and that of our program team. We worked harder on the plans because of his expression of faith. In that case, we minimized the exposure to other students and staff, and we called every single family to let them know what was happening. I believe that, as a result of the confidence that flowed from Marc Maurer to us and that we conveyed on the phone to parents, no parents elected to have their child sent home before the week was over.

I understood this in a sobering way in 2012. Uncertainty in our finances, significant growth in our staffing, and the demands of certain programs put our national organization in a difficult place. The goal is to operate our core activities while continuing to build a base for unexpected years (like 2020). In 2012, if actions were not taken, the sustainability of our movement and its future growth would be in question. By that time I was serving as executive director of our research and training programs and reporting directly to Dr. Maurer on a daily basis. He asked each of the top staff executives for proposals regarding the operations of our national office and the types of restructuring that might be done to put us on a stronger path for the future. I understood the gravity of the situation and that my most honest and well-reasoned reflections were needed. I drafted a document that included a number of recommendations including releasing staff members who I had personally recommended we hire and invested significant time in onboarding into our movement. I remember stressing about my recommendations and about the impact on the individuals involved. In the moment, I am certain I did not give as much thought to the impact on the person who would ultimately take my recommendations, as well as those of other staff leaders, and meld them into a plan that he would execute. I still remember quite vividly the management meeting we had to discuss the plans that the President felt would best put us on a path toward long-term success. In that meeting I realized that Marc Maurer, and only he, would have to carry the full weight of the decisions being made. It did not really matter who made what recommendations, and it would not matter who had the hard conversations with the employees affected. The responsibility and the weight of the actions, including any fall out, was on him.

As the plans unfolded, I observed how Dr. Maurer handled both the public and private aspects of the actions being made. This included observing him grapple with having to make the right decisions for our movement even though they negatively affected friends he cared deeply about. I have often said to people that the most difficult part of our movement is also its greatest asset. We come to know and love each other. We face adversity together, and we win significant victories together. These experiences bond us in a powerful way. Yet as elected leaders we are called upon to make decisions that are in the best interest of the organization overall which may at times negatively affect our friends. While debate can be undertaken about the details and ways those decisions are handled, we have to recognize that our leaders have the responsibility and sometimes the burden of carrying them forward.

During that period in our movement, I also observed how quickly people forget the real personal impact that has on a man like Marc Maurer who has accepted the call to lead our movement. As strong, intelligent, and dynamic as Marc Maurer is, he is fueled by a heart that loves generously. Anyone who knows the nature of love recognizes that this cannot be true without also feeling pain and ache for others, especially those closest to you. When those you love feel, even for a short time, that you have let them down, there is no way to avoid the personal toll.

I now live this reality every day as President of the National Federation of the Blind, and I strive to be like Marc Maurer in the way he truly puts his heart into this movement every day. I come from a business background, and I note that many of our emerging leaders have a similar orientation in terms of how they think about the work of the movement. My hope in sharing the reality of leadership expressed here is to say that the technical skills are not what make leaders. The heart is what makes great leaders effective, and it is the sharing of that heart with others that inspires hearts to action. I have been blessed to observe both the public heart and the private heart of Marc Maurer. I have been honored to sit with him when he has struggled, and I am honored that he has been vulnerable enough to share with me. I also recognize that there is undoubtedly more that he has not shared but that he still carries. In addition, I have recently watched him share with groups of Federationists things he might have done differently with the benefit of reflection, which affords us all the opportunity to grow. I urge all those seeking leadership in our movement to recognize that these are the qualities every leader should try to actualize in their own work and in their own way. Sometimes, when we only observe the public side of a leader, we neglect to realize that leaders are people who have been called to serve, and they carry all of the emotions that people experience—at least the best leaders do. You can understand the technical pieces of how our movement works; you can file the right reports; you can know the details of the laws. But if you do not put real heart and real vulnerability into the movement, you are going to miss the best parts of it.

I have had many opportunities to celebrate with Marc Maurer. Whether it was shaking his hand after I got out of the car I drove at Daytona, sharing the launch of the shuttle mission that carried our Louis Braille Coins into space, debriefing our NFB Youth Slam, or re-organizing a Federation affiliate, those times have taught me a lot about the joy of the work we do. However, so have the struggles behind closed doors trying to figure out the finances, how to navigate the details of hard decisions, picking apart plans that we spent hours on, and discussing the shared friends we have lost. Those of you who have had similar experiences with Marc Maurer know what I am talking about and are most certainly smiling right now. For those of you who have not been blessed to have those experiences with this leader of our movement, know that the most important question will always come, “Now! What are we going to do next?” What I learned from Marc Maurer and what I attempt to live every day is captured in this realization—that the answer always starts and ends with the heart. If you take no other lesson from the leadership of Marc Maurer, remember that the heart is a muscle, and you strengthen muscles by using them. The more we lead with our hearts, the stronger they get. This remains true despite the fact that sometimes they will break and sometimes they will ache. The more that we extend our heart to others, the greater the possibility that the next thing we do together makes them overflow with joy.