A Conversation With… Rep. Nabeela Syed, About Listening and Changing Minds

If you’re reading this, odds are you’re an overachiever. Some residents entering our profession overcame 100-to-1 ratios of applications to program slots. And many of the readers here are the professors teaching those overachieving characters. Very impressive.

Perhaps that’s why the “A Conversation With…” section of Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research® is so well read. Recent guests have included an international aerobatic champion who became a PhD engineering professor [2], a bestselling author [5], and an Olympic alternate in fencing who now is an orthopaedic resident [4]. Overachievers, just like you.

This month’s guest fits right in. Ms. Nabeela Syed became Illinois Representative Syed in late 2022, at the tender age of 23, garnering some fairly dramatic coverage in the national media along the way [6, 8]. Impressive, sure, but stir this into the mix: Rep. Syed—a Muslim woman whose parents immigrated to Palatine, IL from Hyderabad, India—turned a solidly red district blue, defeating a two-term Republican incumbent. She did this by knocking on more than 20,000 doors herself in the predominantly Republican northwest suburbs of Chicago. In a hijab.

But door-knocking doesn’t cause people to change affiliations, and CORR isn’t red or blue. This is about a person, what makes her special, and what we can learn from her. Rep. Syed has the rare ability to engage warmly with people who don’t agree with her, and whose mindsets may be diametrically opposed to her own. CORR’s Director of Editorial Operations, Colleen Briars, lives in Rep. Syed’s district and commented that it isn’t just that Rep. Syed is brilliant (though she is), but that she was able to engage with the public at a level not seen before there. Rep. Syed has made “politics more ‘palatable’ and politicians more approachable for constituents,” Ms. Briars said. That takes a kind of empathy that we could all learn from.

After all, many patients come in to surgeons' offices with incomplete understandings of their problems but deep commitments to particular solutions that may not be the safest or most effective ones (thanks, Internet). We need to find ways to facilitate the kinds of open conversations that help patients make choices concordant with their goals, lifestyles, and risk tolerances. The first step to doing this is slowing down and allowing each patient time and space to articulate those values. But that’s not the only step, and this activity is not so different, really, from getting red-district constituents to hear out a blue-party candidate in a moment when politics have devolved from polarized to sectarian [3].

Rep. Syed seems to know a lot about listening and empathy. Let’s hear what she has to say. We may never run for office, but her insights may make us better in the office.

Seth S. Leopold MD: You’ve clearly figured out how to connect with people. How did you develop this skill?

Illinois Representative Nabeela Syed: I feel like I developed this skill at the doors. Very early in the campaign, it became apparent to me that people have really nuanced opinions on all sorts of matters—even folks who might always vote for a certain party have complex opinions about their own party’s stances. We are not as black and white in our opinions as the media sometimes makes us out to be. I gained an appreciation for the way people in my community developed and communicated their opinions to me at their doors, and it made it easier for me to share my honest thoughts. It also made me realize that there is so much power in conversation. Even if I don’t look like many people in my district, having a conversation helped break down those barriers. Being raised by a father who could strike up a conversation with just about anyone also helps. I've learned to appreciate that about him.

Dr. Leopold: When you’re on the campaign trail, you can’t help if someone closes a door on you, but let’s say someone leaves the door open and says, “You know, I really disagree with you on X. While we’re at it, I think your position on Y and Z stinks, too.” You may not get that person to change his or her mind on the issues. How do you get that potential constituent to be open to your viewpoint nonetheless, to keep the conversation going?

Rep. Syed: Before I was elected, I knew that the office I was running for was centered on listening. I recently came across a constituent at the door who completely disagreed with me on all the issues, but since that person was willing to talk to me respectfully about ideas and positions, I listened. And at the end of the conversation, that person thanked me, and we each went on with our days. I have to consciously remind myself that I need to listen to understand, not to respond, especially when there may be disagreement.

Dr. Leopold: How does your approach change if you sense the possibility that the person is potentially open to changing his or her mind on some important question, but maybe it’s just a glimmer? This, by the way, is not so unusual in surgeons’ offices…

Rep. Syed: If there is a chance that someone may be open to considering another opinion on a matter, then I certainly take the opportunity to share my thoughts! I find that talking about personal experiences or how I might have come to my position on an issue helps create a connection with someone at the door. Avoiding jargon also helps, as does speaking to each person as you would to a friend or a colleague.

Dr. Leopold: Sure, that makes sense. But what are your “pro tips” to discern who is open to listening and who is already closed down? (And, perhaps to help them to open up, if that is possible?). Your suggestions on this will be key for our readers, who really want and need to keep certain conversations going.

Rep. Syed: At the doors it’s a bit easier to discern who is open to listening and who is not, because if they’re not, they will just close the door in my face! For many reasons—sometimes people are busy, sometimes they are dealing with a cold, some may recognize me and not be a fan of my political beliefs, and others just don’t want to be bothered. The important thing here is to not assume why they may not want to have a conversation in that moment. And if I’m back in the neighborhood at another time, I’ll give it another go. There have been several times where it just wasn’t the best time, and if I had assumed their reasons for closing the door, I would’ve been too afraid to try to have a conversation at another time.

For folks who are a bit more reserved, I’ll focus on asking them questions: What issues are important to you? How do you like this community? What needs to be improved? And working to find common ground. With folks I disagree with, oftentimes I find that we agree on the end goal, but we just have different ideas on how to get there. Being genuinely inquisitive is very important to helping someone open up.

Dr. Leopold: There is some evidence that when the physician and the patient are of the same race or ethnicity, patients prefer the experience to race-discordant visits [7]. But having perfect concordance between physicians and patients is going to be impractical (the same goes for politicians and their constituents)—more than 350 languages are spoken in the United States. And some 9 of 10 orthopaedic surgeons are men (and 85% are White), 7% are Asian, and only about 4% are either Black or Hispanic/Latino [1]. What can each of us do to have better success when reaching across racial or cultural lines?

Rep. Syed: There is a lot of comfort in similarity. And while we should actively try to embrace the differences we might have with our neighbors—whether it be in thought, in how we look, or in how we were raised—I find that it helps to identify something we have in common when making that first connection. In most cases, there will be something each of us shares with the person we’re speaking to. I take a lot of pride in the fact that I was born and raised in Palatine, IL, and when I shared that with folks in Palatine, I could see them getting excited or happy that one of their neighbors was running for office.

Dr. Leopold: What has been the most unexpected moment of connection you’ve had, either on the campaign trail or in the statehouse, and how did it go down?

Rep. Syed: When I was at the polling place the day of the general election, someone came up to me and said that they had never voted for a Democrat in their life, but I was the first and only Democrat that they were going to vote for. And it’s because I showed up at their doorstep twice, so they believed I was a hard worker. That was an incredible moment for me, all the way at the end of the campaign trail. I felt like this moment proved the power of conversation. A conversation made someone who, in 70 years of life, had never voted for a Democrat, but that day they chose to cast their ballot for a 23-year-old daughter of immigrants, a hijab-wearing woman. It was very moving.

Illinois Representative Nabeela Syed