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280]
So, Warren, you're recalling the first time we met was at a leadership conference in San Diego. So I think
we first met, I gave a presentation and the Q&A there was a woman who was a little bit angry at me, a
little bit.

[00:00:18.710]
She said, yeah, so. And oh, and I tried to handle it with as much emotional intelligence as I could. Yeah.
Then what happened then, you know, do you remember what you did? No. OK, you said something in the
very beginning of your remarks that was putting the context of social emotional intelligence. And you were
telling about an experience you had about somebody. It was in Boston and it was you were on a
Summerton on getting in and it was bumper to bumper and somebody had thrown out a dollar bill or a five
dollar bill or some cash to this poor guy who is clearly a beggar.

[00:00:56.640]
Oh, it couldn't walk. I mean, he was on his knees in this thing. And and you you saw someone get out of
their car and they put the dollar bill in the cab of the beggar. And you start off that way. You told a story.
Then you went into your new material about what your book was dealt with. Ruki on emotional
intelligence. And she was furious because she felt you left out the class factor. He left out anything that
would deal with why is this man?

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It was so unrelated. And I went over to her afterward. Oh, no, no. You know what you did? She was
screaming out for you and you said, look, I don't fully follow you, but why don't you come people talk
about it. And she said, no, it and sat down. She so when you talk, I mean, the people were identifying with
you to begin with, just to begin with the audience.

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So I went over to her afterwards because I was sitting I could see her. She was and I said, did you do
anything he said after you thought he wasn't taking Marx into account? Oh. And she she looked kind of
bewildered at my question because I think she knew I was part of the conference. So she said, well, it
was to me, the job I did was tell me one thing he said after that you didn't. And it taught me that if you just
that she was so quick to judge that you actually didn't get anything out of that talk you gave.

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This is a woman who is going to be stuck the rest of her life because she she she hears something which
is a preemptive threat and she turns down. There's another way to think about tell me. And that is that,
you know, that kind of incident where someone really has what I would call an emotional hijack is you you
talk to this is part of organizational life. Toxicity is part of organizational life. And, you know, John Bowlby,
of course, the British psychoanalyst, talks about the need to have a secure base in life.
[00:02:59.420]
And there's a school of thinking that leader, one of the functions of a leader is to be a secure base for the
people who are that is someone who will at least listen, even if you can't make things better. You listen in
a way that shows support and metabolise some of that toxicity so people can drop it and go on. Yeah.
Does that make sense to me? So thanks a lot. How does that resonate with what you've been writing
about?

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Well, I think it's very close to I mean, I think you've put on that incident and what you just said about the
safety factor, I think people and large organizations and small ones to small organizations of the specials,
they're not any different, I don't think. I mean, although the structure size, all that stuff is different, but
down deep, there are times the toxicity is in the air. And no matter how supreme, no matter if it's one of
Fortune's most admired companies or even one of Fortune's comes, you'd most like to work for a
frequency of of incivilities, just that act of eye contact, of being able to listen.

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I don't know in these videotapes whether I know I can be edited out, whatever. I mean, he's a name here
because, again, it's it's stubbornness again, because these are people who want. Oh, well, I won't talk
about a man whose respect for intelligence is is boundless. That's Larry Summers. And I feel for Larry
Summers, you know, because he was a man of brilliance, genius. He really I mean, when he starts giving
a lecture, it's as if all of his anger, all the angularity of the guy sort of get smoothed over his mind just
sweeps me away.

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And he and yet he is in some way handicapped by not understanding that others might respond to the
president of Harvard or the secretary of treasury who just ask the argumentative question that they're
going to be intimidated by. He doesn't get it. He doesn't pick up the contextual cues he's going to notice.
Right. Well, appropriate to context. Exactly. But how do you help someone? How do you help a leader
who is gifted in so many ways become aware of the blind spots?

[00:05:28.130]
You must have faced this so many times. And I wish I had a better answer because I don't I'm not sure I
know. I remember some mutual friend of ours, David Gergen, set up a meeting with me and Larry so I
could get there a little bit. And Larry was off, broke the appointment. Interesting. I thought that was one
here itself. Yes. So I think I would do is try to as much as I could.

[00:05:52.640]
And I would love the challenge of of working with Larry because I think he might be able to get I don't you
know, I'm torn because what you're saying about the neural system makes me wonder if it's and it's OK to
get back. What do guess what is appropriate, the context. I think I'd have to make a lot of inferences
based on the thing called the neural or the neurological system, which I'm not a brain scanner. I mean, I'm
not and I'm not one of the I wish I were an fMRI, but I think to a certain extent I am.

[00:06:25.700]
See, I do think about conceit or the. I think I sense. Not knowing what's going on inside the brain, what
that person can take, and I think I would try with with this person, I think I want to help become a better
listener and noticer. I think I would have to be that myself and keep using any experience that we were
having not to go out and talk about concepts or anything like that, because we're always answers to
those.

[00:07:01.590]
You know, the runway was a dream. Renoir, the painter son, great movie director, once said the problem
with the world is that everyone has their reasons are always reasons that you can deflect so that you can't
make a rational argument to someone with blindspots. But you can set an example as the only way you
can teach them in the moment are learnable lendable money. I'll give you an example, and it's my
teacher, Steve Sampler. He is a classic example of a guy who brought up the Midwest, humble origins, all
of us to learn not to speak out.

[00:07:38.520]
He and I are different. But at first he we had lunch recently, not basically shortly in September of last year.
He was an urgency. To have lunch with me. He brought this book with him and he slammed on a table
and he said, this isn't about leadership. It's about love, what you want. And I feel that working together
with Steve Sample, I say this through into the winds we consider Marzia because Steve Steve told me
this.

[00:08:11.940]
He said, you know, for years, I wonder what the hell you were doing in Iraq when we told his class
together about the way we were both on our evaluations, both really high events for both of us, it was
never good cop bad. They use different words to talk about how they felt toward us all about us. But but
Steve said for the first, I don't know, six or seven. I don't know what the hell, because I was you talk and
students seem to be totally in all of you.

[00:08:42.780]
And I wonder, what the hell is this guy doing? He's talking. He's narcissistic. Yeah. He talks about his
feelings. You no kidding. And he explained his conversations with his wife Catherine in this way, said, you
know, I just go home and talk to couples and they are like a lot, but it's hard for like 45 minutes. And they
do things like he'll have the student little hands, it'll kill them up, he says.

[00:09:06.210]
But then he starts calling randomly, you know, from and he gets all screwed up. And he he's very he's so
goddamn discursive. He's like going behind his back discretionary. He's Mr. Discretionary. And so, Steve,
a long time to get there. I was connecting on another level and he was, which is what he meant by love.
Yeah. So you were connecting heart to heart with your soul. We really are. And isn't that would have
entered us in some ways if they can trust themselves enough to be known.