Professional Development Isn’t a Perk, It’s a Competitive Advantage for Political Firms
In a field built on urgency, professional and staff development often takes a back seat at political firms. But in a recent C&E interview, leaders from CampaignHQ and Empower Strategies made the case that developing talent isn’t just something that’s nice to have, it’s essential to sustaining and ultimately scaling your political business.
The conversation with CampaignHQ President Nicole Schlinger and Kate Sours, the founder of Empower Strategies, spotlighted the thinking behind investing in a structured program, even while a given election cycle is still moving. Empower Strategies employs a team of recruiters and consultants to build, train and further develop internal teams.
CampaignHQ’s Nicole Schlinger described a key structural reality for political firm owners and partners: the industry is full of professionals who emerge from campaigns, where teams assemble quickly and dissolve just as fast. Political businesses, however, face a different mandate. Building durability is critical — allowing employees to gain experience over time, grow into leadership roles, and carry institutional knowledge forward cycle after cycle. Even with the best of intentions, it’s not a skillset that comes naturally to most political entrepreneurs.
For Schlinger, a dedicated approach to professional development is a key element of how the firm improves outcomes for clients, especially as the company scales and the demands of campaigns intensify late in the cycle.
To build that internal capacity, CampaignHQ partnered with Empower to implement a structured workshop series built around the CliftonStrengths assessment, which was developed by Gallup. While comparable to tools like Myers-Briggs, Sours emphasized that CliftonStrengths is designed to be actionable: it ranks an individual’s natural talents and provides tactical guidance on how to leverage strengths while managing blind spots.
Rather than obsessing over weaknesses — a common instinct in competitive political environments — the approach helps staff focus on what they do best and how to apply it inside real work situations.
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The program was engineered for a modern political workplace — remote teams or organizations stretched across offices in multiple cities. CampaignHQ’s team operates across two locations, creating the familiar challenges of remote collaboration. The four-part series moved from individual strengths to team dynamics, manager-direct report relationships, and “powerful partnerships” that paired staff across offices. The goal was to accelerate what long-tenured teams build naturally—mutual understanding and rapport—so newer employees could operate effectively during the “last six weeks before an election,” when clients expect flawless execution.
Listen to the full conversation above for more on how the right approach to professional development can turn into a competitive advantage with lasting returns.
