Youβre reading The Messy Middle: weekly deep dives on leadership, startups, identity, politics, and how to make high stakes decisions that are intentional and in-line with your values.
π₯ Even Worse Than Communism
We had the Kornacki Cam on in our living room for about 7 hours straight last night. We kept telling ourselves they'll call it any second...but it was almost midnight PST when AP News finally called the historic win: Abdul El-Sayed won the senate primary for Michigan last night by 1 point. If he wins the general election in November, he'll be the first Muslim ever elected to the US Senate.
As someone who grew up Muslim and brown-skinned in a post 9/11 world, it was a wild experience to watch a man with the last name El-Sayed winning the polls in counties that led to the Trump victory just two years ago. And knowing that this Muslim candidate overcame a $60 million campaign by his opponent - nearly half of which was funded by AIPAC and pro-Israel groups - was surreal.
Half the fun of election night is watching the internet react in real time, and somewhere between county updates and doomscrolling, I came across a post that perfectly captured why this race felt different, and like a big shift in American politics:
Considering how "communism" has long been one of the biggest political insults in American politics, this clip made me laugh, and then it made me stop and think about just how dramatically the political landscape has shifted over the last decade.
I grew up just a few hours away in Ohio, and it's hard to overstate how unexpected it would have been to hear a white suburban voter from Birmingham, Michigan say something like this, especially on camera.
So, what does this mean about leadership today?
β« The Rise Of Identity-Forward Leaders
Within the last year, we've watched two Muslim candidates, Zohran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed, build extraordinary grassroots momentum while running campaigns that many political consultants almost certainly would have advised them to soften.
Both centered issues they believed directly affected people's daily lives. Both argued that government should spend more time investing in healthcare, affordability, housing, and working families, while taking sharply different positions on US support for Israel than much of the Democratic establishment. Whether you agree with those positions or not is almost beside the point; what's remarkable is that neither campaign seemed particularly interested in sanding off its sharp edges just to become more broadly acceptable. Their campaigns communicated something deeper than policy: "If I'm going to lead, I'm going to lead as myself."
Two grassroots candidates, two first-generation Americans, and two campaigns built around the same bet: that fixing local problems beats political money.
For years, political strategy has largely worked in reverse: Raise as much money as possible, buy as much attention as possible, and persuade voters that you're the safest choice. El-Sayed and Mamdani flipped that equation.
Instead of asking, "How do we win the messaging war?" they asked, "What are people actually worried about every day?" Then they built campaigns around housing, healthcare, affordability, and cost of living. Instead of trying to out-spend their opponents, they won by out-listening them and then speaking directly to the problems constituents were living every day.
I think that's a leadership lesson far beyond politics.
π‘ Beyond The Political Game
For decades, we've treated leadership as an optimization exercise.
β‘οΈ Say the thing that appeals to the most people.
β‘οΈ Avoid controversy & stay polished.
β‘οΈ Don't make anyone uncomfortable.
I'm not convinced those are the rules anymore. Thanks to AI, anyone can generate a thoughtful email, a strategic speech, or a perfectly reasonable talking point in seconds; AI has made polished communication abundant...but when polish becomes abundant, it stops being a differentiator.
What remains scarce in leadership today is delivery, conviction, critical thinking, perspective, and a point of view that feels unmistakably human. It's the courage to lead from your values instead of constantly recalibrating to everyone else's expectations.
That's what I think made these two campaigns so interesting. Whether you agreed with them or not, both candidates bet that people would rather hear a leader's real convictions than another consultant-tested message. At least in these primaries, that bet paid off.
I think the same evolution is happening inside companies. The leaders people remember aren't necessarily the ones who deliver the best technical work or the most polished presentations; they're the ones who communicate with enough specificity, clarity, and conviction that people understand exactly what they stand for.
The future doesn't belong to leaders who try to be everything to everyone; it belongs to leaders who know exactly who they are, what they stand for, and have the courage to lead from that place.
π Navigating Something Similar?
One of the biggest privileges of my work is helping leaders navigate the tension between who they are and who they think they're supposed to be. Whether it's stepping into a bigger role, making a high-stakes decision, or communicating a position that won't please everyone, we almost always come back to the same question:
What does leadership look like when it's grounded in your values instead of everyone else's expectations?
If you're navigating one of those moments, Book a Discovery Call β
π₯¨ Snacks
π€ Public Speaking: Abdul El-Sayed answers this question brilliantly in an interview.
π§ Entrpreneurship: What most founders are terrified to admit.
β Hosting 8/20: If this newsletter resonated, you might enjoy our next Kismet Coffee Hour. We'll be talking about one of the hardest leadership challenges right now: building trust when certainty isn't an option. It's free, built for senior leaders, and feels much more like peer office hours than a webinar. Join us ββ
See you in next week's mess,
Arshiya
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