Essential Categories of Tobacco control Leadership

We need fighters, both inside and outside the government, to achieve our policy objectives—but they cannot do this alone. To effectively challenge and overcome the resistance of the tobacco lobby, a national tobacco control movement usually needs leaders that fill several roles. The categories essential for effective leadership include sparkplugs, visionaries, strategists, statespersons, experts, strategic communicators, and movement builders—as well as the inside advocates we discussed earlier.

Each leader who falls into one of these categories brings a special set of skills to tobacco control. Sparkplugs ignite movements. Visionaries raise our view of the possible. Statespersons elevate the cause in the minds of the public and the decision makers. Strategists chart our road maps to victory. Communicators deploy the rhetoric to inflame and direct public passion toward the movement's objectives. Inside advocates understand how to turn power structures and established rules and procedures to advantage. Movement builders generate optimism and goodwill; they infect others with dedication to the common good. When these leadership roles come together in harmony, the result is a successful movement.

Spark plugs

One of the best-known citizen advocates in the United States, Ralph Nader, calls outside advocates "spark plugs." A spark plug is the small energy source that ignites a whole engine and sets it in motion. Every tobacco control movement—whether at the national, state, or local level—needs spark plugs.

Spark plugs are agitators: They tell the truth to those in power. They operate outside conventional political (or other) establishments, free of the ties that bind "insiders." Sparkplugs can hold our governments and other established organizations to their own rhetoric of mission and commitment. They can ignite a movement, coalition, or organization, and keep energy flowing through it. Even an outraged community may not spring to action without the goad a spark plug provides.

And sparkplugs thrive on controversy, as Stanton A. Glantz and Edith D. Balbach show in Tobacco War: Inside the California Battles:

The sparkplug for a tobacco control movement may or may not have professional advocacy training David Bristol in St Lucia is an oncologist; so is Martina Poetscke-Langer in Germany. Akinbode Oluwafemi, in Nigeria, is a former journalist with the Nigerian Guardian. Shoba John was trained as a community organizer; she is now a tobacco control advocate in India. Yussuf Saloojee in South Africa is a biochemist. Cornel Radu Loghin in Romania is a sociologist. Konsantin Krasovsky in the Ukraine is a marine geologist. Inoussa Saouna, who leads both a national coalition in Niger and a multi-country West African coalition, is a journalist. (He was fired from his job at a radio station for attacking the tobacco industry.) Saifuddin Ahmed, who coordinates an alliance in Bangladesh, has a degree in accounting and had only one year of NGO experience before he helped start the alliance.

What do these individuals—these spark plugs—have in common? A passion for tobacco control, and tirelessness in pursuing that goal. Determination in the face of countless frustrations and discouragements. Confidence in reaching out to a wide range of individuals. Willingness to do the hard work needed to bring people together and keep then working together in harmony.

Visionaries

Tobacco control advocacy campaigns take flight through the imagination of visionaries. Visionaries expand our horizons. They set goals we never dreamed of or considered realistic. Visionaries challenge conventional views of the possible, aim high, take risks, and rethink priorities. Vision often comes from outsiders unencumbered by habitual movement thinking. For example, tobacco control visionaries saw the need to abandon traditional public health education and turn to lobbying—in particular, policy advocacy—as the central strategic path to tobacco control.

Strategists

Strategists sort out what parts of the vision we might realistically attain, and then they develop a road map to get there. They anticipate obstacles, including those raised by unruly coalition members. Strategists provide guidance to insure the movement remains headed in the right direction.

Statespersons

Statespersons are nationally known and respected, which means the media and government decision makers listen to them very carefully. They are the "larger than life" public figures—scientific, medical, and political leaders. They are seen as not affected by politics. Statespersons radiate credibility for the movement far beyond its core supporters.

Experts

Community-based advocates sometimes disdain experts with credentials as "elitists." However, the tobacco control movement is grounded on a solid foundation of science—economic as well as biomedical science—and authoritative experts built that foundation. Experts on your tobacco control leadership team can ensure that all new discoveries and public policy positions are based on facts and are well reasoned. Their credibility makes it much easier to convince the public that the tobacco industry is wrong when they call advocates "unthinking zealots."

Strategic Communicators

Strategic communicators are the public's teachers. They are masters of the sound bite—the sharp, short quotes that frame your messages so the public remembers them. They translate complex scientific data, complex public policy, and basic concepts of truth and justice into accurate, powerful metaphorical messages whose significance the broad public can instantly grasp.

Movement Builders

Movement builders are the quiet heroes of any successful tobacco control movement. They reach out to draw in new allies. They recruit new members and make them feel welcomed, valued, and needed—and they make longtime movement members feel the same way. Movement builders know that a movement is weakest when it seeks only a narrow, homogeneous base. They work to bridge generations, to link local movements with national and international advocacy groups, and to create space for knowledge gained through experience. They are experts at initiating new approaches to participation so each voice is heard and its requests heeded.

Builders are also healers. They can help you avoid organizational hurdles. They will convene and facilitate meetings, and seek to explore differences through civil discourse and debate. And they will help you steer clear of insensitive behaviors that could divide your organization.

A Word of Caution

While leaders who take these roles may be essential to the success of most national tobacco control campaigns, they do not always play their parts perfectly.

Outside spark plugs can become addicted to protest. They may accomplish nothing if they become too passionate. They may flash out angrily at colleagues. They may seem too militant. They may let the adrenaline of battle replace the pursuit of concrete policy goals and objectives. Or they may demand too much—the sparkplug can become disdainful of even the most reasonable strategic compromise and come away with next to nothing.

Inside advocates walk a fine line—between faithfully representing those they speak for, and too eagerly seizing opportunities that foreclose broad participation and full deliberation by alliance members. Inside advocates may accomplish little if they are seduced by the game of negotiation and the lure of the deal. They may begin to cherish agreement for its own sake. They may develop entangling relationships with negotiators on the other side. And they may accept too little at the negotiating table and come away with next to nothing.

Visionaries can lose touch with reality and clash with strategists. Statespersons can become blinded by ego. Communicators can degenerate into propagandists, manipulate science and the truth, and give experts a bad reputation. If the movement fails to address these leadership conflicts when they appear, they can arrest tobacco control momentum. Your potentially dynamic and complementary leadership can become a nightmare of dysfunctional conflict. And your national movement can disappear in a downward spiral of distrust, frustration, and anger.

We have learned, together, that all our leaders need internal balance and self-knowledge to ensure that their very strengths do not undermine preexisting weaknesses. We have learned that each leader needs to strive to balance advocacy and detachment. Sociologist John Lifton describes these essential qualities as "sufficient detachment to bring to bear one's intellectual discipline on the subject, and sufficient moral passion to motivate and humanize the work."