Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Clive has always aligned himself with the change-makers of the world and hopes to inspire true, positive change in the Big Apple. Through trial, error, and everything else in between, Clive has learned what it means to be an authentic, effective leader, but this hasn’t always been a role he’s taken up so easily.
“You always know where true New Yorkers stand. If they don’t like you, they won’t say good morning to you.”
As a kid, Clive wasn’t close with his family, so he sought his family elsewhere through friends and people he met in the Brooklyn area. He’s never been easily intimidated by talking to people, especially New Yorkers. Many people, often New Yorkers, are considered “rude”, but Clive considers this “rudeness” authentic. “You always know where true New Yorkers stand,” he said. “If they don’t like you, they won’t say good morning to you. Someone from Utah or the South would tell me good morning but still hate my guts.”
One day in his first-grade class, the teacher wanted the whole class to do the cha-cha slide, but Clive decided to sit it out because he thought the dance was stupid. Every boy in the class sat out with him, simply because he sat out. He got in trouble with the teacher who said words to him that would ring in his head for years: “You have influence.”
“[My teacher] probably handled it in the right way,” Clive said. “But how I perceived it made me want to not be a leader altogether.” Leadership had only gotten him into trouble up to this point as a 7-year-old.
He flew solo, avoiding the trouble he might get into if he did have influence. He hated any and all group projects because they’d always vote him the de facto leader. He didn’t understand why people were putting pressure on him to perform.
“When you mess up as a leader, the people that rally behind you aren’t really forgiving,” he said. It wasn’t talking to people that Clive found intimidating, it turned out that people following him and seeing him as the leader was what rattled him.
However, when he got into high school, he realized he didn’t want to just sit on the sidelines and play it safe, but rather be involved in a positive way and face his intimidations. So he went to work and during his high school career he became the youth representative of New York City. He’s spoken to some of the most influential people in his state’s politics and come out the other end with new contacts, and he’s led thousands of people at a time. He had found his calling, and it brought him closer to more people that his leadership, bravery, and consistency guided.
Experience after experience, he figured out that leadership wasn’t about having to perform perfectly or even telling people what to do, but it was really about empathizing with people, sharing and talking about common objectives, and guiding them in a win-win way.
“You’ve got to know your target audience… What does that mean for them because everyone is going to interpret things differently,” Clive said.
With this foundation, Clive uses his skills as a leader to spread positive change through understanding and good ideas with a signature flair of Brooklyn love. Maybe we could all learn from Clive and face our own intimidations and insecurities instead of running from them.