Jeffrey Sonnenfeld

Professor of Practice of Management at Yale School of Management, and Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Studies at Yale University

“There’s a great legend from Harvard, the guy named Jim Heskett, who asked: ‘When chief executives are speaking out on social issues, who do they represent?’ Because who are they without the title that they carry with them…or their company?”

Summary

In this episode of Leadership Matters, Alan and his good friend Jeffrey Sonnenfeld discuss what makes someone a successful leader, including statesmanship and focusing on values.

They discuss how Jeffrey grew up with an immigrant as a mother, who, despite being paralyzed, remained active in her community. Jeffrey attended Harvard, where he learned under numerous big names and leaders in the social sciences. From his education, Jeffrey decided he wanted to pursue leadership positions. However, he quickly learned the importance of differentiating yourself from the company you work for, leading him to a position at Emory University over other more prestigious schools.

Jeffrey is the Senior Associate Dean of Leadership Programs as well as the Lester Crown Professor in the Practice of Management for the Yale School of Management. He is the Founder and President of the Chief Executive Leadership Institute, a nonprofit educational and research institute focused on CEO leadership and corporate governance.

Mentions & Resources in this Episode

• The Hero’s Farewell is Jeffrey Sonnenfeld’s book about management and exit strategies for CEOs.

• Lester Crown Professor is named after Lester Crown, a “titan” of business leaders.

• The Ellis Island Honors Society honors the importance of immigration to America’s prosperity and celebrates the contributions immigrants have made to America.

• League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan league that encourages informed and active participation in government.

Guest Bio

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld (born 1954) is widely regarded as a leading international authority on corporate governance, corporate leadership, and a groundbreaking pioneer of CEO learning.

Before joining Yale in 1999, he taught for ten years as a professor at the Harvard Business School and nine years as a professor at Emory University's Goizueta Business School.

Sonnenfeld is known to have advised multiple U.S. Presidents and nominees from both parties, including Joseph Biden, Donald Trump, and Bill Clinton as a conduit between top business and political leaders. In the immediate aftermath of the 2020 United States presidential election and the 2021 United States Capitol attack, Sonnenfeld convened top executives for several high-level, off-the-record discussions to plan the collective response from the business community.

Sonnenfeld appears regularly on CNBC as a contributor and writes regular pieces for Fortune Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Chief Executive Magazine.

Follow Jeff on Twitter and Google Scholar.

Clips from this Episode

• “Generation Xers and Millennials are showing great courage, like those in the great generation of businessmen.’

• Should corporate leaders have a say in voting laws?

• “Members of the modern business community are finding themselves in an odd stage of adolescence.”

• "The media & academia have mislabeled what ‘Progressive’ Is."

Episode Transcription

Alan Fleischmann 

You're listening to Leadership Matters on Sirius XM. I'm your host Alan Fleischmann. It can be tough to understand why CEOs do what they do. The intricacies of big decisions are rarely understood outside of inner circles. My guest today, my friend Jeff Sonnenfeld, has taken that challenge head on and distill powerful lessons along the way. Jeff is the world-renowned expert on leadership. He's the Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Studies and the Lester Crown Professor in Practice Management, or I guess in the practice of management at the Yale School of Management, is also known as the founder and president of the Chief Executive Leadership Institute, a nonprofit educational research institute focused on CEO leadership and on corporate governance. Jeff is one of the most influential conveners for American corporate leadership, and his opinion is widely sought out on all matters of governance and governance questions. Jeff literally wrote the book on CEO transitions, and how leaders rebound from career disasters. Just a record of Awards and achievements is too long to list here. But suffice to say, he has been named one of the 10 most influential Business School professors, one of 100 most influential figures in governance, and he has advised multiple presidents and political leaders from both sides of the aisle. The challenge facing our economy or government, in our environment, all requires thoughtful, inspiring leaders. Jeff knows this problem. He also knows it solutions better than anyone. I am so glad that you're joining me today, Jeff, and I'm looking forward to our discussion. Welcome to Leadership Matters.

Jeff Sonnenfeld 

Alan, it is such an honor to be on this show with you. I enjoy spending every second with you. And the fact that we have people eavesdropping with us today is as just icing on the cake. I hope we don't bore them to tears. I must say, I love your introduction. Probably a third of the audience hates me already. But you've made my day it's It was so glistening; I have to make sure my wife does listen.

Alan Fleischmann 

We'll make sure that she listens. And I can tell you that a lot of people are listening. And there's a there's a lot of enthusiasm for what you have to say. And I think it'd be fun for people to know a little bit more about the early years, the Seinfeld early years here. Let's go back a little bit here. You were born in Philadelphia. But you went to and you went to school in suburban Montgomery county, right in Pennsylvania. And then your work in your parents retail store. What kind of work did they do? And what kind of work did you do? And I'm curious whether your parents were influencers and when you until ultimately became and and focused on were they tough bosses? And were they tough CEOs that made you decide you wanted to focus in this area, just curious how it all began.

Jeff Sonnenfeld 

I couldn't be happier that you asked me to reflect on my parents coming off of the last weekend. Of course, it was Mother's Day, which brings our, our mother's to mind for all of us. But also was the anniversary of my dad's passing. So I was steeped in reflective ruminations on the two of them and their influence. So you hit need especially good time to talk about that. They're very grounded people. My mom was a refugee from from Russia, and like so many of our mutual friends. She is my my passport, if you will, to her membership. And that the award award winning of the Ellis Island Honor Society award just because of the thoughts of her coming into the country as a frightened four year old and the way she made her life. She was paralyzed through virtually all of her adult life with a really bad form of, of arthritis that had her in leg braces and all the rest. But nobody kept her down. She was a city planner, very active in in losing causes and failing candidates and was valiantly out there on on many fronts on the state board of the League of Women Voters and active in a lot of interfaith organizations. But health care planning was was and environmental issues were her main callings. And then my dad, whose family had been here for a couple of generations, was a small merchant is probably he would have done it all over he was had a tremendous facility for numbers and coming out of the GI Bill had gone to Wharton and things he probably should have gone off to become an accountant or an engineer. But in those days, yeah, his parents and in laws all thought you should go out and business for yourself if you're really going to establish something and he went into the men's clothing business which just the exact wrong timing. It was maybe Okay, in the 50s after the Second World Wars, he went into the business, but by the 60s and Alan you're too young to remember this but some of your listeners will remember this. It was the mod Paisley explosion of Carnaby Street fashions with the British Invasion that came in the early 60s. So came a lot of this wild octagonal black granny glass piece medallion bell bottoms outfits that really kind of revolutionized men's clothing from being fairly prosaic, easy business to a bunch of peacocks that were very hard to compete with. And so young men's apparel in particular became really difficult. And he you know, he used to have a very, very simple approach to the types of textiles that you sell, sold in suits. And the haberdashery wasn't that hard, and you have, you know, fancy 599 dress shirts and work shirts that were maybe I don't know, half that and dungarees. There weren't, you know, these high style jeans but they're you know, dungarees and other and then with all this explosion, a problem that he had, that I had working with him is that we're both colorblind, you know, and that began to matter as men's plumes off so thankfully, I he would, he was keeping that business as the quote unquote ace in the hall, in case I disliked what I was doing for calling in I actually got into school thinking I was going to become a physician was a closet pre med and that's I think, why he kept the clothing business till he did like business but I'm not the fashion east, as you know, soared in that business in those, those men's clothing stores went the way of corner groceries as they were at that time. And my, my mom saw the transformation, we probably held on a little too long. But that was that was some of our background, some of our heritage. They're extremely supportive people. No, they weren't tough taskmaster CEOs. But they were terrific inspirations on me in terms of values and societal contribution.

Alan Fleischmann 

You're leading, you're leading a wonderful, we'll get to that a little bit, you know, a wonderful generation of leaders who are focused on values, not just value proposition, and I got to this hearing, you're talking about your mom, who was such an activist, and your dad, who was an entrepreneur, honestly, who had to do to withstand the times of change probably was where you got a lot of the values that I know are genuine and authentic, and everything you do. You went to Harvard, which is probably a moment there, I guess you went in with the idea that you might be a doctor, you said, but you got some pretty legendary social scientists, as your mentors, who you worked with, I guess, you know, around behavioral science, I guess, in particular, I'm curious about that, you know, what we just started there. And and how did you get from there, I guess, organizational theory and into the other that you became, you become more known for.

Jeff Sonnenfeld 

Just between ourselves and with all of our listeners, of course, not paying attention. For the moment, I have to tell you that I've had a couple of interviews in my career where people have asked me good questions along the way, you've asked only a handful so far. And I must say, and this is not pandering. This is already different and better, offhand. In any interview that I can remember, nobody has so efficiently and, and thoughtfully captured the origins or maybe cared about them in terms of family inspiration. But as you capsulated my parents and their legacy so well. And then you catapult that into my academic career, instead of waving around institutional labels, you captured something that I've never spoken about before. That, that I'm just amazed that you have this instinct to seize on it. And that is I went into Harvard, not just Harvard, as an institution, Harvard as a global brand, and all this and that. But that it was an amazing time in terms of the Golden Age of social science for who was there, side by side, honest to God, nobody has ever asked about this before. And I think I should probably write about it at some point not to make myself Central, but just to what a great opportunity it was, is there in this strange building called William James Hall, which was a fiasco of architecture, because it was trying to combine all the different social sciences, behavioral sciences together from social anthropology, to behaviorism and experimental psychology to anthropology, social, to Sociology and things. So we had people who were the foundations of their careers. There was, for example, BF Skinner, the great behavioral scientist was there and I got to know him very well. Richard Herrnstein, Roger Brown, these those people got along, okay. But then there were others who were great public opinion experts is Tom Pettigrew and some others that just hated the people that I just said they wouldn't talk to each other. The social anthropologists who were just as renowned. They were psychotic personality psychologists that Say, David McClellan who was renowned for creating the need for achievement that so well known as a major focus in need for power, and a need for affiliation. There's three things that he studied David McClelland one of the most famous motivation theorists in history, the only person most famous as somebody that nobody thought was still alive, which was his mentor was also in that same building. Henry Murray, as a nonagenarian with the septuagenarians and their disciples. It was an incredible point in history. And the same was true. And in sociology, you had these people like George Homans, who, who had wrote the seminal work on the human group, and his frenemy we're talking Parsons, a generation older was also alive and well, and people didn't believe that he was still alive. They were there in the buildings, these were the people who translated the original into English and people studying these Piaget and others for the first time, were all there together. So it was it was an amazing point. And I would run across these different floors in these building that because they wouldn't talk to each other. You know, you'd get into an elevator and William James Hall, and you'd see a $5 bill on the floor and the elevator, you think, I'm not touching that, you know, they're watching you somewhere, trying to figure out what experimenters who's doing what to whom, but Timothy Leary, ended up, you know, Baba Ramdas, these strange creatures of the 60s, their legacy was still there. And it was an incredible time, then you had the influence of Henry Kissinger, who is you know, right across the street, in Daniel, sociology, Nathan Glaser, also in sociology, is how could they all be there in one place, at one time and not talking to each other. So I was a intellectual broker, I would steal the ideas from one take him to the other since they weren't talking to each other. You know, the John Kenneth Galbraith, the great economist who is extremely accessible and very behaviorally oriented. And so I go on and on and on with you. So that was that, for me, Harvard was a great day of a golden age. And it was a great generation that we had in diplomacy, and we had in the corporate world, we can talk about that if you're interested in who they were. But they also are in academia, they're just big builders, it was that it was that pre war and post war crowd in there in the final flicker of the candle. And frankly, we just don't have a generation that quite equals them right now, sadly, hopefully, someday we will. But they were amazing contributors in every field, and incredibly generative to me as a protege of theirs.

Alan Fleischmann 

I mean, they were the states with their the intellectual states, but other time, and-

Jeff Sonnenfeld 

Well aren't you so sorry that you asked me that question. It was so great. Nobody's ever talked about that before. Harvard doesn't have a group quite like that. Yale doesn't right now. Stanford, MIT, I mean, to have so many gathered in one place. And at one time, it not to mention me that it was perfect, because they didn't function as a community. But it was really great for me as a student.

Alan Fleischmann 

Well it sounds like you also mean, I think about your parents, and I can hear you while you're talking. And, you know, unlike the, our listeners, I get to see you talking and your eyes bright, light enough when you were talking not only about your parents, but also about these mentors. And that's the thing, right? They're mentors, they were people who didn't talk to one another, but you found a role for yourself. That's the entrepreneur and you're the intellectual entrepreneur, we realized there was a void, and you could fill it, but you spent a lot of time kind of integrating ideas across, I guess, silos really, they were all giants of their time. And they were giants, actually even now. But you were able to actually pick up on things from each one of them and take it to the next and incorporate what each one was saying to one another or saying to you, as you spoke to one another. That is not only an incredible, unique opportunity in history, but frankly, for your for that period of your life, to have that access to these intellectual mentors and professional mentors must have been profound. I mean, it's obviously you're living that legacy now.

Jeff Sonnenfeld 

Yeah, well, thank you, I, intellectually It was very enriching and in terms of trying to understand who brings what to the party of different kinds of people as, as you know, I've been on a, for decades, a first name personal basis, ideologically with anyone from Donald Trump and Jared Kushner, to to Bill and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, that I, I tried to understand, you know, expanding ideologies, the character of people behind them and who has some original ideas. Before we layer on the judgments that are out there do have to be layered in from time to time and still trying to understand a broad mix of different types and, but intellectually, it was especially enriching but ideologically it also is is how To to understand who's there we look at the broad mix, you know, I, I might be the only guest that you have on your great show that actually spoke at the wedding of Elaine Chao and Mitch McConnell, even though, even though you know, you might think my politics will not be in perfect alignment is I believe only three of us spoke and I was one of those, those three, the, the other two being the ambassador of People's Republic of China and the and the and the Taiwan ambassador, they didn't sit at the same table, by the way, and it was a couple of decades ago, and it was amazing, they're in the same room.

Alan Fleischmann 

That's a bit that is that is amazing. But that also speaks to the fact that you are someone who brings uncommon people together, you create these uncommon tables where you know, where you can find purpose and focus and, and maybe shared some of the things that divide us, as well, when we do it. One of these I find fascinating about you is that you asked to get an MBA, you know, you're not only talking about business, but you actually have that credential as well. You got your doctorate at Harvard, too. And then you join the business school really young. I mean, you were really young. Right? When you started Harvard at Harvard Business School, after getting your MBA was that what did that make you one of the youngest professors at the time?

Jeff Sonnenfeld 

You know, yes. And Jeff Sachs and Larry Summers, who we got our doctorates together at the same time used to put that on their resumes, I never did, that I was just as young as they to the to the day when we joined the faculties that the Harvard and Larry's case said initially at MIT is, but, but it was an early start, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do when I grew up, and I thought I'd get my doctorate and MBA at the same time. They were separate fields of inquiry, but I just wanted to get a lot of training over with because I had learned that I didn't want to medicine after working as a volunteer in Mass General, I was very excited about how the place operated as an institution. As I mentioned, my, my actually chilly both of my parents were quite ill when I was young, periodically would have to step into the clothing business to help run it as my dad had a series of bad heart attacks and other things. And my mom then mentioned her issues with her physical health. So I spent a lot of time in Philadelphia area hospitals and wasn't fond of them. But at Mass General, I couldn't believe the entrepreneurial spirit and the professionalism and got very excited about how an organization the system can function to get the best out of professionals in a truly collaborative spirit with huge amount of professional pride. And that helped drive me towards the MBA, I also on campus was quite involved in student government at a time when student government was on the outs and in schools is working across faculty and administrative and student problem solving initiatives in an era of the fading embers of student activism and president of the campus radio station and other things just had me interested in organizational life. And I really just loved leadership. And it seemed like something that you do for fun. And I took a course in the middle of organic chemistry called human behavior in organizations or something like that, I thought, I can't believe there is a, you can get course credit for a course like this, this is such fun. And then I realized there's a whole field of inquiry here, and it's part of business school, business school learning around the world. And in fact, you can even make an a moderately lucrative life out of all this, I thought forget medicine, this is the way to go. So I got involved in it. And there was a a mentor, tormentor of mine, J Lorish. I still stay in touch with and his mentor was actually my greatest mentor, a guy named Paul Lawrence, from Harvard. And I would go to Paul's home with his wife, Martha Graham, perhaps once a week to bring some wonderful closure to this as both Lawrence and Lorish have their grandchildren choosing to come to Yale and I've been pulling them together as gals, students, these great Harvard legends, the the grandchildren of them, but that's what got me into it and the MBA program I you know, I quite liked it because I thought it's very important to learn the language of business. If you're going to have impact, you have to understand what's in the minds of a general manager, the trading off the different specialties, and many of my colleagues, unfortunately, its business goals have gone down a different path since then, is very few. Very few professors at business schools have an MBA, you would think that could you imagine a law school where 90% of the professors didn't have a JD or a med school where 80 90% of professors didn't have an MD? They do. They have you have physiologists and geneticists med schools and you have political scientists and philosophers and law schools, but they're the exception. Business Schools, very few sadly have an MBA. So they tend to try to repeat their doctoral dissertations. And that's a challenge in higher education is to not have business schools filled with engineers, psychologists, and whatever it is economists that take us back into their core disciplines instead of into the applied mindset of the general manager, because we already have economics departments on campuses and psychology departments on campuses, and engineering departments on campuses. And just because you took a different path in life, or it didn't turn out for you going down that original path, doesn't mean you try to replicate that in a business school. So that's hard and professional school setting, the society supports a professional school to do something a little bit different than the core, applied abstract discipline the core discipline does. So that's, that's kind of been one of my educational missions, is trying to continually pull my colleagues back into understand society's requests for us to focus on a world of practice. There were some schools that were set up for this, in particular from the moral act, of course, that was to set up as land grant universities, that places ranging from Georgia Tech to MIT, were put in business to serve society. And the even they drift away from a little bit, but the rest of us, you know, constantly to be reminded.

Alan Fleischmann 

Well, Arizona State University, for example, those ASU is exactly the recent world. You know, so I'm curious. You know, when I think of you, I think of you and CEOs. I mean, I work with CEOs every day. And I think you Jeff is somebody who intersects and interacts with CEOs all the time, you, you obviously figured out that working with leadership is really where the where the, the opportunity for change and transformation occurs. I think of the CIO Institute as well, that you created, you went from Harvard, to Emory. Right, where you created that, and I'm curious, I'm curious, you know, that was what an amazing opportunity was for Emory. But, you know, what a missed opportunity. In some ways it was for Harvard, but you made the made the choice, I guess, at some point, I could do this. I'm gonna do it there. I'm a little What inspired you to do it to create the institute and why at Emory at the time?

Jeff Sonnenfeld 

Oh, great question. You know, I'm quoted today in a Harvard Business School publication, talking about some of the work I've been doing with CEOs finding their civic voice right now. And and there's a great legend from Harvard, the guy named Jim Heskett, asked the question where he said, Well, you know, I just wonder if, seat, once chief executives are speaking out on social issues, who do they represent? Because who are they without the title that they carry with them of their, of their company? And he said, I as Jim Haskett, I'm he's very humble guy said, I'm aware of the fact that I get invited to give speeches places, because I'm identified as the what whomever Professor of Management at the Harvard Business School, if I didn't have that title, would they care about me? And I thought, well, good for you, Jeff. I appreciate that humility. And leaving Harvard, I was able to test that. You know, it's when Herbert Simon got the Nobel Peace Prize, the Nobel Prize in Economics. at Carnegie Mellon wasn't as fantastic. a superstar institution has been in subsequent decades. And people ask them, wouldn't you went to? If you got the Nobel Prize? Why didn't you go to Harvard or MIT or Stanford or somewhere and Yale? And he said, Well, you know, if I had started my career there and stay there, he said, to this day, people would wonder, did Harvard make Herb Simon greater or did Herb Simon make Harvard great. And he said at Carnegie, that was never an issue. Okay, that was a little perhaps arrogant for some. But you can test yourself independent of being hyphenated with an institutional identity. And Emory was a fresh break to look at it. But what it provided was, I wanted to test out what I was doing someplace different because I frankly, was getting some resistance about the Chief Executive Leadership Institute being created at Harvard, the dean who has a really good friend john MacArthur and inspiration, we would have breakfast. Almost every morning, around 630 in the morning, wasn't my natural hour, but it was his. And I thought to get to meet the boss's boss on a regular basis, that's a good thing to do. So and he and I have each have a few more doughnuts than we should have had. at that hour. He mildly encouraged me to keep doing what I was doing. But there's a lot of faculty blowback about focusing on CEOs. And I said, But look, this is the Harvard Business School the quote unquote, West Point of capitalism. How could we not be focusing on CEOs as a distinctive constituency in need of education to all we do stuff for them? I said no, the Advanced Management program was created after the Second World War. We literally called the retread program. Literally, it was for returning military brass to be retrofitted for civilian life. And it was the second or third Advanced Management Program of Pittsburgh, it was the first. And it was a condensed MBA and an ungraded short period of time. For people that didn't have it at that time. I said, this is different. All these people have advanced degrees, many of them have MBAs, they're very experienced, and that we need to focus on the world to the CEO. We're bringing them back to campus for philanthropic arm twist, or to get a jump on recruiting is not educating the CEO. And if we had two or three CEOs on campus, the same day was considered a scheduling are, I wanted to fill a room full of CEOs. Well, he let me invite a few. And we use the Dean's mansion he has here, john MacArthur, very nice. He didn't actually live in it. But he used that generously as a convening, like private hotel on campus. And we met there and we, you know, kind of you remember your less than perfect events. And that was at our first CEO Summit, I just written a book called the hero's farewell which Alan was my sixth or seventh book. And, but this was the one that didn't require my students and my family members to buy that actually total strangers bought this one. And it and to my amazement, even though Oxford University Press put it in the tiniest possible typeface, it actually still was for a couple of seconds, a best seller and I thought this could be my all time high watermark here. And I said that I thought we should use this as leverage to address the CEOs needs. And so we invited Bill Marriott of Marriott, who is still alive. The Nick Nicholas, who is still alive and for about 11 minutes with the CEO of Time Warner as it had just been merged and, and we had the CEO of ANP, that nobody's heard of anymore, but they can also run the CEO digital equipment that none of my students have heard of anymore, but it was the second largest computer company, the CEO, first interstate bank, the CEO of Florida, Power and Light, these companies have all gone through quite transformation, but they were enormous and at the time of just nine of them, and then one company have the perhaps the warmest person of all, but also the most loquacious as the smallest company, the growth of the CEO of Harman, Kardon stereo, Sidney Harman, who's a very socially progressive, thoughtful guy. But he had the answer to everybody else's problems. And I didn't quite know how to manage the dynamics of a small group of nine of these guys. So every time somebody opened up about an issue, he gave a response prematurely. And Ken Olson said, Hey, I don't need this. And he got up and walked out after a couple hours. And then Bill Marriott decided to leave and I'm starting to have this conference deterioration. And then the dean said, See, I told you this wouldn't work. And I said, No, no, I needed I'm here I am 31 years old, whatever it was, I need a critical mass. I don't have the authority to police these guys the way they can work them against each other. Emery didn't know this wouldn't work. So they let him do it. And in here, The New York Times Magazine put on the cover my book, and fortune had it on the cover of my book. And of course, Oxford was regaling in all this demand by being completely out of stock saying, Oh, we don't have the carrying costs to worry about No, no, you want to be in there's the fortune 500 issue. By the way. It wasn't just any issue. But that's when people were all registered. So it was on coffee tables everywhere, and we're out of stock. But anyhow, so I started to get great offers from other universities. But I wasn't yet tenured at Harvard. That was the next round. And everybody was offering me a tenured associate that who wants that. Emory gave the full deals and tenured full, everything will create an instant around you. I thought, hey, that's great. Although the warden and Virginia and Michigan and Columbia all had really good offers, this was a great offer. And instead of doing a lesser version of what I had, this is going to be less I went down to pre Olympics Atlanta, where which was a different town then, in fact, it felt like going to a different country in a lot of ways the language was familiar, the currency was the same. It was a fresh start. But there's skepticism there because Georgia Power and SunTrust bank and Coca Cola, I think had some caution about this carpetbagger coming in saying you're going to create this global entity. So I brought everybody from around the world. The old original Bank of America from California came out there, and until there's 107, and three quarters, the the former CEO Albert Gordon of kidder Peabody, a legend in finance and former the guy who put David Rockefeller in politics were the most forceful voices in the traditional Republican politics but a great financier Albert Gordon is 107 and three quarters that your show is that we pulled together and Bernie Marcus soon after founding the Home Depot become a major supporter and backer of ours and UPS who I've been working with for many years, decided to relocate. Coincidentally, after I got there, they started to travel there and they moved to Atlanta. And these became my base. And then the people who, who are in my backyard, originally, they came on board in the second wave, and they saw that we were for real. And so that took off immediately is the world's first school for incumbent CEOs. Yeah, there was a World Economic Forum wasn't called that at the time, and it wasn't chock full of CEOs. It was for these aspirants and people who would kind of the wannabes who were meeting with former heads of state like Jerry Ford, or Willy Brandt and Klaus Schwab opportunistically, and entrepreneurially was bringing together University of Geneva. But there wasn't a school for CEOs. In fact, we sent to him, Andy Grove, and Quincy Jones and others, which wound up getting them into the CEO business. And I wound up helping Forbes fortune Businessweek, The New York Times Wall Street Journal and Bill Gates of Microsoft to launch themselves in this space, and I facilitated the early events for them in this phase, you and the entrepreneurial side and you Alan might ask, Well, why would you do that Jeff help fortify these, these nascent competitors and, and I thought they're gonna do it with or without me, and somebody better and leadership in this way, I can come in there and divert them away from what we do, because they had a lot of, especially the newspapers and publications and magazines, had a lot of advertiser make good problems as they were transitioning from failing print to something different. So the event space became a big growth opportunity for them, but very commercial errors, then and now are strictly non commercial, non advocacy, non political forums. And, and nobody buys their time on the stage. And, and I don't allow anybody give any speeches, they walk in the room with three by five cards or prepared notes or script or teleprompter or PowerPoints, I seize them and tear it up. It's just the conversation is a big meeting.

Alan Fleischmann 

And that seems to be like, for the beginning that's consistent even today. I mean, the origin of how you, yeah.

Jeff Sonnenfeld 

So Emory and Atlanta turned out to be a great place to launch it. When the Olympics came there. I worked very closely with the Atlanta committee on the Olympics, and it just wound up there as an infectious spirit as an excitement. And it was considered in many ways between New York Chicago in Atlanta's as a third at that, you know, of course with Los Angeles and San Francisco in the equation, but certainly a third or fourth vertex of the nation's industrial might. And that was a very exciting place to build it when the opportunity came along. It was it was too good to not see as and I am the Lester crown professor of leadership if you're in the leadership space as you are Alan you know, a crown chair sounds very regal Lester crown was an is part of that great generation, he is alive and well in his late 90s. And, and a month from today, we will be giving him our lifetime of Leadership Award. And his is quite lucid. He, you know, he's the he's the guiding force behind general everything from General Dynamics to the Aspen Institute, an amazing person, but that terrific generation that we love to celebrate. He's our ambassador to that that great legacy. So knock on knock on wood, everybody stays healthy between now and then we get to celebrate them. I tried this last year with with John Lewis, and I just waited too long and missed the opportunity. And I'm actually kicked a neighbor here is Lloyd Price a great musical genius that we were going to celebrate, just lost him last weekend as I was, as I was writing to him, I look at this note flashing on the screen. So in Arnie Sorenson thank God we celebrated in time of Marriott, because he is also an amazing legend, legend, but you just never know how much time you have just to celebrate the people you have around with you. And the goal of our legend and leaders of celebrations are really to try to showcase models that are with us today. And not just not just great legacies from the past that we cannot wait.

Alan Fleischmann 

What I love about you is you actually do highlight what works and who works, who's leaving, who's risking. We've had already we already sorted that was a great friend as you know and I love how you did it and your dedication to him. We had him on the show here. And then we did a special rebroadcast of that show with with other additional insights that I wanted to share. After he died he died too tragically young and but his imprint and his values back to that word that we keep thinking about. And the legacy of how we lead through his values will be on for and we something we will need we will learn from for years and years to come.

Jeff Sonnenfeld 

Well, you you pick the best, the best friends and the best associates, you know from Bob Iger, Arnie Sorenson to these people that are our true Authentic leaders before authenticity became such a cliche the way say empowerment did these guys now that they, they have their very smart, deep thinking. And it's it's a rarefied group that you've identified, and I'm so thrilled that we overlap our friendships there.

Alan Fleischmann 

It means to I would say the one thing I'm so grateful for, for the work that you do with the Institute, is you also give a platform for people not only to collaborate with one another, but to, but to have the courage to say no, to things, you know, you know, in life, I think it's a lot harder to say no, that is to say, Yes, in many ways, with your proactive and your thoughtful way of engaging the world, there's a lot to say yes to. But I think one of the most powerful things that comes out of the work that you do, and certainly in the current incarnation of the Institute, the CEO Institute at Yale, it's been you've been helping CEOs have the courage to say no to this, we're not going to participate in that or we're not going to, we're not going to allow that to happen under our watch, and to have the courage to say that it is actually in our purview to speak up and to speak out. And I'm just curious how, you know, how you have seen that change, that transformational change of what challenged the company's CEO, back in the days of Emory and even at Harvard, to where you are today, Yale, you know, what has been that big shift in thinking? I do put a lot of credit to you, thankfully.

Jeff Sonnenfeld 

Well, thank you very much, you know, we, we had that generation that we talked about that cohort of the big picture thinkers that had a transcendent, patriotic spirit, across fields, but in the corporate world. Some of our greatest diplomats, regardless of party, have, you know, Ellsworth bunker and Avril Harriman and these people, they, they admitted them had been in industry to it as well. We're, you know, Bernard booth, these people, they, they really changed the world as big thinkers. And as CEOs, the generation that followed them, many of them got into their positions, the Bobby Soxr generation of the other 50s because there's such a need that some people with great talent and some people with modest talent got thrown into positions of great responsibility. And the great sociologist David Riesman, had written about them as the lonely crowd. They were very conforming generation. As they were came of age in the 50s, and moved in the major corporate roles in the 60s, they were risk averse. So they wound up retreating from important technological and global expansive risk taking, that the predecessors had had pioneered, but they were dutiful bag carriers, they were good number two's when they when they rose the position to become the number one. We saw many of our companies and our industries failing and losing out against global competitors. As the Woodstock are started to step in, some good and not so good the baby boomers have is they started to ask bigger questions and take bigger risks. And some of them were reckless risk takers, and we've seen some of the financial excesses. Of course, that fell apart in both of governance failings in 2000. But in 2007 2008, of some reckless risk taking in the world of finance, is for the most part they were they were bigger thinkers, and now we're seeing that they're their successors as Gen Xers and millennials have been moving in to the the boomer roles are, are showing a lot more courage reminiscent of that great generation, because it was that great generation, not the Bobby's officers. They're a great generation of, of Tom Watson Jr. of IBM, just to give you a name that you know, well, Irving Shapiro of DuPont, and Clifton Garvin of Exxon is across the board, David Rockefeller and Chase Manhattan. These are people who had terrific global visions. They were big thinkers. They understood that what Adam Smith understood even though people create a cliche out of out of Adam Smith, the way they tragically misconstrue Milton Friedman, and try to create cartoonish caricature is are these people is that Milton Friedman and Adam Smith understood that business. There's they we have lived in hybridized economies we don't have these sharp divisions, and they understood the business government relationships were very important to master. And, and their writings showed that even the much quoted 1970 New York Times Magazine Same piece from Milton Friedman saying suggesting the only responsibility of business. The bottom line is not what he said. And he says quite clearly in there that he talked about the social amenities as his term for it looking at community impact and, and the duties of understanding how to be a part of shaping laws to make business and communities attractive for enterprise is that that's Milton Friedman. And so anyway, is that this great generation understood that, to some extent, a portion of them is the business community had a course a great relationship with Herbert Hoover, until he started to dismantle and things and we saw that the Eisenhower had a fabulous relationship with big business. In fact, he had two current CEOs that joined us administration, both with the same name Charles Wilson, one the CEO, General Motors and the other one, the CEO general electric engine, Charlie, as they're called in and electric Charlie is the the Kennedy administration didn't have that good relationship. And it was a two way street, and particularly Arthur Goldberg, who later became of course UN Ambassador before that was a a short but very good Supreme Court Justice before that was Secretary of Labor. As Secretary of Labor he had negotiated a pact with big steel with i think i w Abel was his name but united steel workers to stop a paralyzing steel strike, and to hold wages down if business agreed to hold down some giant surge in steel prices. But then after the pact was signed, steel reneged. And John and LBJ famously said, my dad warned me you guys were a bunch of libs. And it never got better. And as we got into the war, LBJ also had a bad relationship with business. The National Association of Manufacturers at that time was very proud of Vietnam War very hawkish. They didn't think LBJ was hawkish enough. And the US Chamber of Commerce has a very large, diverse organization of smaller and larger businesses. The Business Roundtable broke away of 200 classically progressive and I mean, progressive business leaders, because somehow the media and academia have mislabeled what progressive is progressive, never meant. Democratic socialists and you know, or social democrats, I mean, they're, they have a long fine tradition. And you know, Eugene v. Debs was never a progressive, he was always a democratic socialist. These are people who are much more on the on the left edge, whereas the business community has always been very centrist and they were progressive. And the Progressive Party throughout our history was a mix of democrat and Republicans 1924 presidential convention for the Progressive Party, the last word for the Progressive Party was, was fighting Bob Lafollette of Senator Wisconsin and Burton Wheeler, I think of my democrat senator, Vice President from Montana and their fight they're pushing for infrastructure bridges and dams. And they're working on with Jane Addams, you remember on immigrant resettlement with the whole house and things like that they were looking at Urban beautification and, and restoration and looking at environmental issues, as they were calling and conservation and of course, created our national park system. And that's where the progressives were. And that's where the business community is today. It's somewhere between Joe Biden and john k sec and Mitt Romney and, and clover Jr, Amy Klobuchar, there's that that's sort of where the business community largely is. And they're finding themselves in a kind of gangly stage of adolescence where they can't quite be. They're not the parentage of, of any political party isn't quite right for them. So they're, they're trying to find their way about saying yes and no on an issue by issue basis, as they're navigating beyond just what is in the parochial self interest of their particular enterprise, into what it makes for a congenial successful society. We have to have a functioning democratic society for our our free markets to function and they, they recognize that duty just like that great generation did. They founded the Business Roundtable. And that's it. Irving Shapiro, as the chairman of DuPont helped create the Superfund legislation that that punished chemical industries for abuses because he saw in 1970, that having the toxic waste problems that his competitor, Occidental Petroleum holkar chemical division was contributing into the Love Canal problem was an issue as DuPont took it on. Similarly, at Tom Phillips to found the CEO of Raytheon said, we think you can be an honest, responsible ethical defense company is nothing wrong with self defense, we're not having to be a nuclear biotech. But we also think that the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is critical. We can have our competitors paying bribes. And, and they were leaders on that frontier. And in terms of, of issues that we would call diversity inclusion today, it was affirmative action that is at and T's leadership led that for the Business Roundtable. Back then, in terms of looking at these values abroad, it was IBM and General Motors creating the Sullivan principles or doing business in South Africa, where we had apartheid and tried to figure out how we're going to put blacks and whites together, despite and UPS did a version of that inside the US and moving through the south to violate the Jim Crow laws they inherited. So the business leaders were very progressive, then, and they've regained that courage today.

Alan Fleischmann 

You know, that's amazing. I know, you're listening to Leadership Matters. I'm on Sirius XM, with your host, Alan Fleischmann. That's me. And I'm here with a very good friend, Jeff Sonnenfeld. from Yale University. We're talking about CEOs and leadership and executive transitions. And they and the transition a transformation has gone about in recent years around the leadership and the role of a CEO. And we're also talking about his highly acclaimed CEO Institute at Yale. I'm curious, you mentioned the Business Roundtable. You know, in August of 2019, they came out with their, their declaration about stakeholder capitalism and the role of incorporating all stakeholders when leaders are making decisions. What advice do you have to CEOs, as you mentioned here already this morning, you know, the attempt to balance that commitment to shareholders and other stakeholders. I mean, at the end of the day, that Milton Friedman argument, which I think has been exaggerated by many people don't really understand the full impact of what he actually did write about and think about and talk about. But this this tension about shareholder value versus you know, all the stakeholders, and you got to consider all of all that's been up for grabs, by the way, this whole diversity inclusion discussions that we needed to have in this country around systemic racism, certainly around the health and welfare of our employees during pandemic. And obviously, the way we treat all our stakeholders during this lockdown has always been challenging for every one of these CEOs.

Jeff Sonnenfeld 

Well, thanks for asking, you know, I mentioned my my book, The Hero's Farewell, that had done so well, that catapulted me into this CEO forum front to become the world's first school for incumbent CEOs, the social impact space, which was called at one point business, ethics and then morphed into something much larger into corporate social responsibility. And now we use this term ESG for environmental and social and governance metrics, is I got into that space, believe it or not, over 40 years ago, my first book, which only you can see, his good corporate views of the public interest could not retire off of this one either. But what's really pathetic is it against something only you can see value appreciate. I think I still look like that, which is really a shame as they're very young looking person and I've picked her folks and some handsome devil. Well, a better version anyway, then, is that the Harvard Business School was discouraged me to go down this. Now they have quite a number of faculty all fighting to get into that ESG space. But I, in fact, the, Reginal Jones, the CEO of GE, did the jacket endorsement for me there. He had to coined the term corporate social responsibility. He was Jack Welch's predecessor. Jack Welch told me of one of my classes actually, when he came in that he, when he first went down to the Business Roundtable meeting, as he took over Reginal Jones, his predecessor introduced them to everybody. And he took an order pad to do business. And he started to want to write down and, and they looked at him, he said, like he was Darth Vader with sky wars being the hot film of the time, saying, you know, what are you doing? We're here to deal with global trade issues and diversity is and he said, that's the trouble with you people. You don't understand a bunch of do gooders and you're the reason we've lost our way and jack was part of that babies auto generation that really was not interested in these larger issues. And it was, it was a quite a different take on things. But it's, it's hard to navigate your path there. You have to figure out what issues you will get involved in is We just saw a couple of days ago, Michael Dell when he was on a CNBC interview, was talking about his basically his 10th transformation of Dell. And I do a lot of work with IBM has been a long standing sponsor of ours. I once worked there, a lot of work with hp, the different iterations along the way and Xerox. And yet, you've got to say that Michael Dell has really has the most and of course, for Microsoft and, and Google and everybody else and AWS, but he is the most integrated business across all these different technologies and devices and things is he he's wanted to talk about what they're doing in terms of their latest transformation. Of course, CNBC wanted to talk to him about how he and the CEO of American Airlines and others got involved in voting rights. Well, he's not a politician, and these CEOs don't want to be politicians. But every now and then he said, you know, you do have to speak out, you can't speak out on the importance of equal access for voting, then when can you ever speak out, and then he moved on to go back talk about business issues, they don't want to be defined by these issues. But they each do have their point, their edge were finally pushed so far, they really have to have to engage. And that's what we that's what we found with truly great leaders is they recognize that, that it's not in the interest of business, not in the interest of any of these constituencies you said, to have a divided nation, when you look at a stakeholder responsibilities, as you mentioned it as the Business Roundtable, celebrated almost two years ago now is that there are these different constituents out there but their constituents have inconsistent interest. That's part of the equation is not there is environmentalist, and governance activists don't always agree with each other. So CEOs can get buffeted around by whose issues are priority at a time. So it's hard to make those calls, but it's hard to make all the calls as a business leader. So that's where that's why there's we have judgment, and pick leaders of great characters, as opposed to having an AI computer program run our corporations, we need somebody with human judgment there that's great at making those calls. And fundamentally, what we want is somebody who recognizes that we want a society which is in alignment we want can we are not at flame with each other pointing fingers at each other with hostile workforces. And, and, and, and angry regulators and consumer boycotts and, and distrustful investors, that's not in anybody's interest. So finding that that kind of social harmony is a win-win. And that's the alignment a CEO has to try to pilot out navigate. And they're the most trusted pillars you know, in society Alan right now, of it comes and goes but right now journalists and academics and public officials and even the clergy have been knocked down a bag business leaders are right now the most trusted of force in society. Think I just lost your sound?

Alan Fleischmann 

I'm on mute. Sorry about that. There's nothing more important than CO statesmanship, something that I've been writing about for a long time and thinking about it and discussing, I don't think there's ever been a time where statesmanship has ever been needed for the private sector, as you're pointing out, you know, it's 88, you've been known, you know, through the hero's farewell about the transitions of leaders leaving their jobs. But I would argue in the last few years are equally now known for helping mentor it goes back to how your mentors played a role in your life, both in family and in the early days at Harvard. But you know, how, you know, you've been you've been quite a mentor, not only a convener, but a mentor when it comes to new leadership as they're coming into their roles into these changing times. So the relevancy of your imprint with this new Institute has never been more profound. I mean, tell me a little bit about when you're looking at the leaders that are that are needed. Now. The leaders that are ascending now, what qualities do they need to have? What qualities would you argue it's the you know, that our listeners need to home, if they are up and coming CEOs or future CEOs as well, that that are really going to be relevant for the times ahead and move it we're living in a time where, you know, culture matters, cybersecurity challenges have never been more present. You've got climate change challenges. You've got, you know, so many of the challenges that I see that keeps us awake at night, that frankly, were not the same considerations with same concerns even just a few years ago.

Jeff Sonnenfeld 

Well, I, our research has five qualities. But as you refer to your listeners, as they've come to know you that there's a sixth quality that's not in our research. That should be there, and that's the one that you possess. And I'll say that in a moment of is the first one. And by the way, what we did is we studied 500, prominent leaders, largely CEOs, who are identified as really terrific superstars. He did this with a colleague of mine, Brad Agle, who was a doctoral dissertation student of mine, who's now at Brigham Young University and runs an institute there is we uncovered five key qualities of highly successful leaders, but not based on what he or she says makes me so great because of a self report. But because of what the management team says that all has to suffer working with that person. And we we triangulate is we had multiple readings, if we have, you know, a seven to 10 management committee, we throw it out, if we didn't have at least four different readings to nail down that one person because we wanted to make sure it was accurate. It wasn't just somebody who was getting revenge trying to settle scores, or, or trying to boss. And in some kind of a sycophantic way to flatter the boss, we wanted to have at least four of them to to have have it pinpointed. And, and, and with these five qualities, were able to predict as much as 20% of their accounting returns, and their market returns. So their financial reporting, and also how Wall Street saw them. Now, the downside, by the way, I have to tell you right up front is that only lasted for about 10 years. Afterwards, the power of that was diminished. But for the first 10 years of this lit their leadership, we could explain a huge amount of their discretionary impact by these five variables. And you say, oh, only 20%? Well, of course, you know, an airline workout. That's a lot because right when you have all these industrial sector issues, and technological shifts, and so many other things that explain what's going on, in terms of business performance, if you can explain like 20% of it, and this is what we were. So the first one is personal dynamism. That's the ability to excite a group. It's that means using vivid imagery, in terms of your language, but also your personal accessibility. These people travel so much they're so available, or they're this past year, they've been ubiquitous on on on a different zoom and WebEx and Google meets and Microsoft Teams, platforms they've been available, weird how Skype and, and FaceTime didn't keep up quite but anyhow. And so that personal accessibility is one dimension. A second one is a caring dimension, it is recognition and concern, that we have a number of elements that produce this factor. But it doesn't take a lot of money just to show an appreciation for who the people are knowing their names, knowing their backgrounds, having some some concern for their well being. In our friend Arnie Sorenson, for example, is a dramatic example. This was he was going through massive downsizing. And yet, it was not only in done in an apologetic way, as they were going into the early days before they started to bring people back into the COVID crisis, as the early parts of their pandemic. Pivot. Arnie starts in America did it in such a humanitarian way, with a lot of assistance to find new opportunities that you know, with Walgreens and CVS setting up partnerships to get frontline talent from his team to their team that was needed amazing stuff that he was doing, getting in tossing his salary out the window. It was his top leadership I it just was remarkable. That isn't a model that everybody else followed. But things that David Solomon and Goldman were doing, realizing, you know, instead of us being up here preaching to you, they kind of reversed focus in their town hall meetings and the CEOs of Deloitte and McKinsey Joe Calzaghe, Lou and Kevin Snyder and McKinsey, Joker's delight and Kevin senior McKinsey, we're having 24, seven responses on different time zones for their global professional networks to be in touch with each other. It's really important stuff a recognition and concern and dealing with the isolation, loneliness issues, as we saw through this pandemic. The second one, a third part has to do with the authenticity, the believability, sort of the moral example. There's a CEO of an insurance company, three generations back, but I still shouldn't name it since its was based not too far from where I am in New Haven, but another city in the state. The CEO there brought me in on the management of trade and Alan, you're too You're too quick on your feet. You would have seen this coming. I became an unwitting co conspirator in something that was not the ideal educational device. It was 40 of his top ad on the retreat. I didn't care if it's the top 40 or the bottom 40 of the top 80 of their pay. Well, it was we're having a good time. We're getting some Done. And but they care. They didn't know if this is remedial, if they're the bottom 40, or it's an anointment. It's a top 40. And anyhow, he gave the most god awful speech, because he was going through PowerPoints that they had created for him. It was there it was, it was the they're warmed over Investor Relations, speech and date are all written and never. So they knew it better than he did. So then he wasn't working. So we took a break. And he said, once you pass in questions, and collect them on three by five cards, and then during the break with me there with him, he would toss into the trash, the hard ones he didn't want to answer. They saw that. I mean, you're talking about negative or this is a private retreat his own people, he won't even answer. So anyway. That was, that was that's authenticity when it doesn't work. And I think it was, was it. Groucho, I think, who said that authenticity is the essence of great performing great acting, that once you can fake that you've really got it made. And then the fourth, the fourth quality was the stretch quality, to stretch somebody so that they can grow, not like chainsaw owl Dunlop of Sunbeam, Scott paper infamy, that was considered abusive, but somebody that is stretch and stretch enough to just snap into you, you can grow, and some kind of inspirational reach there. And I think that you know, Jamie Diamond, of course, has been a great example of this. A golden these obviously, pushes people stretches them hard, but pushes himself far too, and has often been his own his own worst critic. I think probably, Ken Frazier, of Merck is in a league of his own, as the best of this in terms of a standard setting is and things in a last quality is has to do with boldness is, this is where we saw that our generation kind of got a little risk averse. And we're seeing that corrected now is because of that. The 50s generation, the bad Bobby Sanchez, getting, you know, making if ultimately at the end of their career getting reckless, we had to pay the price for that is that is that some cautious risk taking is a prudent or other prudent risk taking. So that we are making bets that need to be made. So those are the five critical qualities, and you put them together, that's where you can produce such high returns for the first 10 years now that the extra dimension that I mentioned, that you model so well, and that your listeners clearly know, and I'm reminded of every time we have a conversation is I don't know a better listener than you. And that's what's really critical with these CEOs, which is not on our list, but which you use suspend your preconceptions you get in the world, the other person, you suspend your judgment, and you just try to understand, as well used to call active listening. And the old rosarian world of therapy with Carl Rogers is how do you coach somebody along to tell you what's in their mind, or that's what an anthropologist does to is to get into the mind of that community, that person, and you're the best at it. And we should have had that on our list, we don't, but you model it all the time. Because what you get from that is you get an ability to hear something that you didn't already think you knew, so that these leaders tend to atrophy in high office, because they've been so successful. But the listening skills that you model and your listeners appreciate Alan is really so important, even if they don't agree with all your guests, is because you learn and they learn with you what that person thinks matters. And that's how we don't shoot the carriers of bad tidings or, you know, sometimes people who are very accomplished, don't get don't get challenging feedback anymore. Because they think Who are you have dust and ashes to challenge them or the almighty or you think that yourself who might have challenged them. And we've seen that where you would prop people up on a perch, and they would, they would rail away. That's what we try to break down of our summit's. They don't just have a single pharmaceutical CEO. We're gonna all have Albert Borla and out of Pfizer and Alex Gorsky of Johnson & Johnson, Ken Frazier of Merck and Len Shaffer all it's for really different a purchase and debate and then we realize they don't all agree with each other identically then legitimates the rest of us to ask what we want to thought were dumb questions. So anyhow the listeners please should be on there but that you've already captured on your own.

Alan Fleischmann 

You're very, you're very kind I would say that you know the art in life is to be is to have the right questions and certainly listening is a great quality and I'm  very, very grateful for you to sit there was very kind but I would say what made-

Jeff Sonnenfeld 

Well, you do it generally it's in a way, the way the great, the great Larry King would do it is he was on the edge of his seat. And he would be quick to respond to the last sentence. And that was it was helpful. It was good. What you do that's so much better than the late Larry King as you've done your homework in advance, but it's not. It's not obvious. So it doesn't feel forced in your life. It doesn't feel like you're going down routinized set of questions. So it is organic. But it's very obvious to the person being interviewed, that you've done your homework and Larry King was infamous for never doing that. So sometimes it was it was a little bit grating, because the person would get frustrated, like where do I begin to explain stuff that I'm not quite sure how to position whereas you give the interviewee and I think it's important for all your listeners to understand to learn from us, as I appreciate it and listening to you is that because of the homework you've done, you package things in a way where we don't have to worry about how to explain it, because you've encapsulated it in a way where we're not going to look vain or arrogant or o confusing.

Alan Fleischmann 

You're very, very high, I would say the one thing that I find so extraordinary about you and the work of the Institute and the colleagues that you've pulled together, as well as the CEOs that you assemble is that you understand the role of leadership has much to do with the heart and the soul. As much as it has to do with the mind. You capture the researches incredible amount of research, and then and then ask the provocative questions. But it's based on that research, that you're able to get into conversations around the heart and the soul. As well, the wisdom comes from that. And that is why the institute that you've created is more relevant today than ever. Because we are we are realizing to your point earlier based on the research you've done. That is the role of the CEO right now that is probably more seen as respected and then certainly seen by the greater public is needed in big policy and big public policy and big public debates. So I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for you, you've been listening to leadership matters on Sirius XM was truly a great thing to do, where you take the great intellectual ideas of our time, and you put them into action. That's Jeff Sonnenfeld, from Yale, and from the CEO Institute, who has had a great journey to date in identifying great leaders of our time from the private sector, but also from public and civil society, or leaders in general, and who has a great road runway ahead of you, Jeff. And I am just so thankful that you've been on the show, and that and then I can be on this runway with you, this journey that you have been on is never been more essential. And the journey that you are going to leave in the future has never been more relevant or needed. So I am with you. This, this, this, the audience is going to want you back. And I'm looking forward to staying closely hit hitched with you. As you embark on all forms of discussions and assembling convening on leadership today and into the-

Jeff Sonnenfeld 

Oh, I'd be most honored. There's so many fun things to talk about in terms of resilience and corporate governance and all kinds of issues that we could in a future discussion be on call corporate cultures, all kinds of things to talk about.

Alan Fleischmann 

And make that a regular thing. I would love to have you back and let's pick these one of these themes in each one of these themes and, and dive in culture matters, transitions, governance, technology, and how you keep the human the human side of leadership as we embark and embrace technology as well, all those topics we should get into together because you've got lots of lots of relevant ideas and frankly, necessary topics that we should be talking about. So thank you, my friend.