Purpose-Driven Leadership Amid Growing Polarization

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0:40Now there's been such a backlash to that. Is there an ideal spot between where we were and where the backlash wants us to be in terms of thinking about stakeholders broadly, employee interests, customer interests? Have your views changed on that in the past couple of years? Well, one thing that has become clear to me in the past couple of years is that leaders must be courageous in defending their positions and defending what they feel they must do in order to be effective as leaders. And so there's no doubt that the past five years have felt like a whipsaw. I mean, we have gone from talking about in many spheres of business, being comfortable talking about Black Lives Matter to now being afraid to talk about race.

1:38That's a pretty remarkable arc in just five years in our country. And I think that it is fair to say that some of the activities we saw in the wake of the murder of George Floyd generated responses that were not fully rational, in my view, and in some ways, for some, became ideological. And I think now we're in the same situation where the response is not fully rational and is very ideological. And so for those of us who see the world not in black and white, but in gray, and the gray space is actually where problems get solved and where people can come together, I think we have to speak to that part of the playing field where we can come together.

2:41We're not going to come together in the extremes.