In this BSC podcast, Salimah Samji interviews Harvard Kennedy School Lecturer in Public Policy and Leadership, Robert Wilkinson about his 4P Framework for Leadership and the third P: People.
Listen to our podcast with Rob Wilkinson on the first P: Perception: https://harvardbsc.simplecast.com/episodes/episode-7-4p-leadership-framework-perception.
Listen to our podcast with Rob Wilkinson on the second P: Process: https://harvardbsc.simplecast.com/episodes/episode-8-4p-leadership-framework-process.
Read Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate by Roger Fisher and Daniel Shapiro: https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Reason-Using-Emotions-Negotiate/dp/0143037781.
Read Thirteen Days in September by Lawrence Wright: https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Days-September-Dramatic-Struggle/dp/0804170029.
Listen to Dr. Marc Brackett and Brené Brown's "Permission to Feel" podcast: https://brenebrown.com/podcast/dr-marc-brackett-and-brene-on-permission-to-feel/.
Learn more about Prof. Robert Wilkinson: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/robert-wilkinson
Katya Gonzalez-Willette [00:00:04] Hello and welcome to Building State Capability at Harvard University's podcast series.
Katya Gonzalez-Willette [00:00:11] In this BSC podcast, Salimah Samji interviews Harvard Kennedy School Lecturer in Public Policy and Leadership Robert Wilkinson about his 4P Framework for Leadership. And the third P: People.
Salimah Samji [00:00:25] Welcome, Rob, again to the BSC series on the 4P Model of Strategic Leadership. We've already done the first one on Perception. The second one on Process. And today we're going to talk about the third P, which is People. Welcome, Rob.
Rob Wilkinson [00:00:42] Thanks for having me again. It's great to be back.
Salimah Samji [00:00:44] Great. I want to start off with what literature is this third P: People based on?
Rob Wilkinson [00:00:48] The third P here People is all about the idea of the human and emotional impact that we have on other people as leaders, as well as recognizing the emotional impact that's happening to us as we're engaging with a variety of leadership activities. And it's interesting that it wasn't really that big of a focus for a long time with leadership studies. There was one very important paper, early research by Mayor and Salivy. In 1990, they came out with a paper at Yale basically coining this term, which now everybody knows about, it's called emotional intelligence. And then famously, Daniel Goleman wrote a book about five years later called Emotional Intelligence. And this became this huge bestseller and just changed the way people thought about the importance of thinking about emotions as we develop as professionals. Because this 4P Model is all about enhancing your personal effectiveness as a leader. And what they found, those three researchers, was that pretty much across the board people thought of excellence and are you the right person for the job and how we should assess how good you are through the classic form of intelligence IQ and not really what they refer to as EQ. So your emotional quotient should be just as important, if not more important than your IQ. So this was really a big shift. I mean, it was funny if you read Daniel Goldman's book, he has a funny passage in the beginning where he talks about how his metric for himself of like having an impact on this question was he said, if I overheard two strangers talking about emotional intelligence, both understanding it correctly, then I'll think to myself, "OK, I've succeeded in having an impact on society." But little did he know. I mean, this became it's such a cultural phenomenon. Now, there's like Dilbert cartoons to talk about it, there was a Time magazine cover story on emotional intelligence. There's toys that promote boosting your child's emotional intelligence. It's in like dating apps like, you know, other people put their profiles, "I'm emotionally intelligent." I mean, it really has become a big thing. But still, nevertheless, despite all of that, there is a certain kind of sentiment. I still think in the professional world that really, though, when it comes down to it, we need to focus more on that sort of the sheer intellectual goods that you bring to the table and not your sort of emotional sensitivity to the situation. I think that's still an ongoing debate, although it's really firmly into the heart of literature frameworks and research right now.
Salimah Samji [00:03:07] So can you share with our listeners? Why do people matter in leadership?
Rob Wilkinson [00:03:13] It's such an interesting thing. Yeah, because sometimes I think I mentioned in the very beginning when we had our first podcast about how some of the researchers were asking leaders about why emotion matters. And they're like, "What are you talking about? Emotion? Well you know you leave your emotions at the door." Well, it sounds nice, but the trouble is we physically, as human beings can't just leave our emotions at the door. It actually affects all of our interactions all the time. It's an action-oriented word. I think people don't think of emotions that way. But it really is. I mean, it means emotion is movement and E is a wavefront. So it's trying to give you a sense of like, oh, I should move closer or further away from this thing because it may be a threat or maybe a good thing for me. You know, I mean, even if you think about our decisions, we think of ourselves as very rational, logical decision makers, which at times we are. At the same time, though, emotions really drives what we do. And think about your own experience. You come home at night or let's say you listen to this podcast, you turn it off. What you gonna do? You hungry? Go to the kitchen, maybe have some food. Tired. Go to the bedroom and have a nap. Maybe you want to engage with your family. I know we're locked down in COVID-19 crisis right now, but, you know, maybe go to the living room. Hopefully someone will be there and you can engage with them. You want some solitude. You go outside for a walk that's driven by what you feel. The house hasn't changed. Right. It's just sitting there. Where you go and what you do is driven by your emotional state and how you feel, much more than we realize, I think. It actually gets a bit of a bad rap. You know, we think of emotions. So when someone says, "Oh, he's emotional, she's emotional." It's not a compliment, really, is it?
Salimah Samji [00:04:40] No, it's negative.
Rob Wilkinson [00:04:43] But the truth is, like we're all emotional all the time and this drives our decision making. So I think skipping over the importance of emotion is our sort of first peril. I'll give you one example about this. I had a friend and a colleague who worked on a project with a small business that was getting bought by some bigger businesses and the owner of the small business his job is to go back and forth to negotiate with the small business owner and the other companies. And the small business owner kept rejecting the offers that he kept bringing him. And, you know, was like, "No, it's not enough and it's not good enough." And so my colleague went back to the bigger groups and he said that he's not accepting these things and they kept sweetening the deal. And finally they said, "OK. This is the last offer." My friend brings it to the small business owner. Business owner looks at it and says, "Nope, I'm rejecting it." So my colleague says, "All right, listen, we've done everything we can. We understand where you're coming from we appreciate the time. We wish you the best of luck." And he was leaving the guy's office and he said that, you know, his hand was on the handle, the door handle he's opening the door as he was leaving. And it just something in him just made him think to stop and turn back and said, "You know what? I imagine this is really hard on you. This whole thing must be really tough for you." And the guy said, "Yeah, you're kidding me. Of course it's tough. This has been terrible. You know, this has been my baby. I created this company. You guys are coming in here. You try to take it from me." And so my friend was smart enough to just sit down for a minute and listen. And this small business owner just went off about, you know, nobody's thanked me for anything. I'm being treated like a little child here and he just let it all out. And finally, my friends said, "You know what? I hear you. I didn't even think about that side of it. I apologize if we made you feel that way. You know, that was not our intention. Now that you say it, it's completely clear, really. I really wish you the best of luck. It was nice to work with you. I wish you best of luck." And you started to leave again. And the guy says, "Come on, sit down, I'll sign this." And that was the block. It was not the technical terms of the contract. It was the fact that he wasn't being treated with some basic dignity and respect according to his perception of it. Right. So notice how these things are coming together by the way, the first P, he perceived the very same thing quite differently. The second P their process was a technocratic pushing information at him process. And now we're into the third category here, which is what that can do is skip over the emotional component, the emotional impact on people, which is the bigger stumbling block in some cases. So that always stuck with me as an example of why it can matter hugely in getting things done as a leader.
Salimah Samji [00:07:03] That is a really great example that you've shared. I was wondering if you have any other personal stories that you can also share about why people are so important?
Rob Wilkinson [00:07:14] I mean, there's just so many I comes up in all sorts of aspects of my life. I mean, I'll share one example, which is my wife and I, we worked overseas in aid work for many years, about 15 years overseas in lots of different countries and contexts in Africa and Asia and Latin America. So now we back in the U.S., we sort of felt like we missed connection with that world. And we thought, is there something we can do to be helpful in that environment? And while we're based here, we thought, well, one thing we could do is work to support foster kids. And there's a program called these URM programs, underage refugee minors. So children who are here in the U.S. who fled some kind of terrible situation or conflict, they are separated from their parents or don't have their parents. And so we do all sorts of support for different projects there. And one of the things that's been really interesting is I noticed that I fell into the very same trap when I've met some foster kids. You know, we're working so hard to connect with them and sort of say, "Well, what kind of things do you like to do? And in Boston here, we have all these different activities and do you feel like sports that you want to do outdoors or this kind of restaurant?" And I realized, like, I was firing facts at them instead of saying, "How are you doing? You know, what's going on with you? What are you thinking?" And it was a real breakthrough with one particular child where I finally realized he was just not connecting with me. And I was like, "I'm sorry. You know, I'm asking all these questions, but where are you? Talk to me." And he looked up at me, I'll never forget. And he said, "I don't have a family. That's what I'm thinking about." He was like, "I don't care where we eat or what activities we do or where we go. I mean, like, I just need a family to connect to and support me." And it was such a powerful moment for us. And I was realizing, I think, a lot about these things. And I try hard to live them. And I still blow it all the time. And that was an example where if I hadn't maybe caught myself and realized I need to change this up and think about the human impact as opposed to giving him a list of activities, then we would have missed that relationship. We're still very close with him now. He's now enrolled in community college. It comes up again and again. And one of the things that I also would add to this about the foster approach is that we also get a lot of training on how to think about dealing with people who've been through trauma. And sometimes this question comes up in that environment and in general with this 4P Framework and as leaders, which is "OK, I'm supposed to think about people and where they are emotionally and concern myself with the human impact on them. What if they won't tell me, you know, I'm not going to go into a meeting and say, what's your emotional state right now?" They're not going to tell you, of course. Right?
Salimah Samji [00:09:28] That's right. Yeah.
Rob Wilkinson [00:09:29] So then the foster kid world is even more extreme. You know, when the foster kids in the program was from El Salvador and she showed us some pictures, she was giving a little presentation about her story and she showed a picture of her standing on a street corner in San Salvador, the capital. And behind her was a wall with all the spray painted graffiti. And one thing that was spray painted in Spanish was "Ver. Oir. Callar." which means "See, Hear. Shut up. Don't speak." And then another one was "Muerte a los soplones." Which means, "Death to the snitches." And she's standing there waiting for the bus to go to school. And she was showing this picture. And that was what was written behind her school bus stop, which means that there's gangs in that area. And you do not talk. You can see things, but you don't open your mouth and say a word or you're in trouble. And that's how she grew up. So she was saying to the foster parents, "Yeah, we're not going to talk to you. You know, we're not going to just, like, open up and share everything." So then what do you do? Well, the counselors and therapists, psychologists, they would say, "Well, what you have to do is show signals of care." That's the term they use, showing signals of care. You can't expect them to just answer your questions, but you can demonstrate in all sorts of forms that you're there and ready to listen to them when they're ready. And I really think that that's the same in a work environment or a tough negotiation or a colleague that you have a hard time with. You might think, well, this jerk I have to deal with all the time. I'm not to send him or her signals of care. However, actually, that's what it means when you are trying to think of this P of the human impact and emotional impact on people. You have to kind of just keep showing up and being ready to demonstrate that you're open minded enough to listen to the person that you really disagree with or don't like. Because when they are ready to talk. Guess who they're gonna go to and guess how sincere they're going to be if you've been consistently demonstrating that willingness and openness to hear what they have to say, not even if, but especially when you totally disagree with what they're saying there is deep power in that actually.
Salimah Samji [00:11:24] So as a leader who is trying to do this. What are some concrete things that they can do to either build the listening skills or the openness to deal with emotions and people?
Rob Wilkinson [00:11:37] Absolutely. Great question. I mean, the first step, I would almost say, is it sounds so simple, but just paying attention. Just the simple fact that you're looking for signals of emotion in other people is something that a lot of people just don't spend the time doing. Body language, facial expression, tone of voice. And this is even more important now when we're dealing with the world in a way that's so much at a distance to virtual channels on the screen or even just we only have the audio. I think we're working very hard to understand what we're saying and how it's landing with people. And you can get signs of that on the video conference and of course, I just finished teaching yesterday, you know, there's 40 something students and they're on screens. And you can see people sort of reacting in a certain way versus another way. And it gives you the chance to follow up and say what's going on there? And it may be nothing, you know, somebody's nodding their head. And I said, "Oh, so I noticed you're agreeing so and so what would you say about this?" And they said, "Oh, no, I was just adjusting my headset." So it's a little embarrassing. But, you know, what is that? I'd rather make that mistake and not skip over someone who's having a hard time with what we're doing than the other way around. Even on a voice conference, you just have lots of people in the meeting, in different places, just listening to the tone of what they're saying can give you a whole different understanding of what they mean. The tone conveys tons of meaning. And so if we're just paying attention to that, we actually already are gathering information, useful data that we can work with to try and figure out where that person is emotionally. So that's step number one. Step number two is I talked about Dan Shapiro and Roger Fisher. What a wonderful book called Beyond Reason. And it looks at the emotional elements of trying to negotiate and work with people and lead. And there's five components to it. I'll just share a couple of them now. The first one is what they refer to as just simple appreciation. If you don't appreciate people, they don't want to really follow you and work with you. And three steps they give you very basic is to genuinely, actively listen. Like I just mentioned, paying all of attention to the cues. Second component is to this is I find really interesting. They say seek merit in what they are saying. In other words, look for some, even if you disagree with 99 percent of it, just some aspect of what they're saying that you can actually say, "You know what, that's reasonable, that's legitimate. I can totally understand why you would say that part of it. That makes sense to me." And here's the third part that sounds so basic. But we forget convey that back to them that you saw the merit in what they were saying, even if it was a small part, because without doing that, you don't close the loop. And it's such a basic process that you see skipped over all the time. So here's one example, as a leader in a big company, this vice president, she was getting some advice from our colleagues about another vice president who she really didn't like or respect. He was always late to things. He wasn't prepared. And somehow she felt he didn't get criticized for it. And he got a pass, which she thought was unfair and there are gender issues involved in all this. And so she got coaching from our colleague and our colleague was talking about this appreciation point. And so she said, "You know, I'm going to try it out." And so she was listening and she went and talked to him and asked him questions. She learned he had two disabled children and he was a single father. And he worked out with a company, a schedule so he could take care of their needs being at work. He worked around the clock at home, all the stuff she didn't know. She said she actually not only totally changed her perspective about it, but began to admire him, actually. And so the coach said, "Well, what did he say when you told him all that?" And you know what her response was? "I never told him, yeah, I never told him." It's like, wait a minute. How do you think your relationship in any way is going to improve? Like, you know, this understanding and appreciate the emotional impact on people. It doesn't end with you just thinking about it, recognizing it and listening, which is great. You've got to close the loop and then connect back and say. And so she did. She did tell him and they totally changed their relationship. And the amazing end of the story is that the CEO at one point was looking at reducing the VP team and firing some people and her name was on the chopping block. This other man found out about it and he went to her privately and said, "Just so you know, this is being discussed right now." He never would have done that before. And so she managed to work with the CEO and actually keep her job. In the end, she actually got promoted to senior V.P. job. So this is why it can matter so much as a leader that if you just skip over the emotional part, you're missing a huge conversation, huge information datasets that you can give you leverage just trying to get where you want to go as a leader.
Salimah Samji [00:15:58] That's an incredible story.
Rob Wilkinson [00:16:00] Yeah, I'd like to share the second one, actually. Was going to talk about with the Dan Shapiro, Roger Fisher work. The first ones appreciation. The second one is what they call it, autonomy. Autonomy is the freedom to choose what you want to do, not be constrained by somebody. That's a huge emotional trigger for us. You ever had a micromanager?
Salimah Samji [00:16:17] Oh, yeah.
Rob Wilkinson [00:16:18] Yeah. We all know what that feels like, right?
Salimah Samji [00:16:20] We all do.
Rob Wilkinson [00:16:21] It's a huge emotional trigger. We can't stand it. But on a psychological level, they're infringing on our autonomy. Our colleague here at the Kennedy School, Jennifer Lerner, is really a renowned psychologist. I think she's the first tenured psychologist at the public policy school. And it's, again, a great example of why it matters so much for leaders going to make important decisions about public policy. And one of her areas of research she was talking about at a talk I thought was wonderful was this question of basically autonomy. And she showed older articles in the 50s and 60s and 70s about the stress of a senior leader these days because there's so much pressure on them. And they actually studied stress in junior managers versus senior managers and they used like saliva and measured cortisol and all these sort of adrenaline and try to figure out where the stress rose and stuff like that. And it turned out that those articles weren't really based on research and science. It's not true that the more senior you are, you definitely are just more stressed. You were less stressed. It turned out and the central argument was that you have this freedom, this autonomy to control the affairs that affect you to a bigger extent than people that are just responding to upper management. So autonomy, respecting autonomy is a huge part of emotional intelligence and thoughtfulness. So the appreciation of those three steps of listening, seeking merit, feeding it back autonomy is another one that I think is really interesting. What Dan Shapiro and Roger Fisher talk about is something called ICN, Inform, Consult or Negotiate. And this came about because Roger Fisher, the sort of leading scholar and founder of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard, he told a story about driving along with his wife to go to a wedding. And they saw a flower shop and they pulled over to buy some flowers. So his wife stayed in the car. Roger went into the shop, bought these two kind of expensive bouquets of flowers. And as he was ringing them up, the person said, oh, you know, today we have a special. You get half a bouquet of roses for every purchase over a twenty five dollar. So he thought, "OK. OK. Half free bouquet of roses." And then being a professor who thinks about like leadership and management. He thought, "Let me think cleverly about this now." He said, "Hey, if I ring these up as two separate purchases that are both over twenty five dollars, do I then get the full bouquet of flowers?" And they said, "Well, yes, sure, that works. You know, that's fine." So he's very proud of himself. He brought the things out to the car and then he went back to arrange payment and everything. Gets back out to the car. And his wife is chatting with a friend who just happened to be passing by. And his wife says, "Hey, you know what? We just got this free bouquet of roses. So why don't you just have them there? It's a gift to you." And their friend was really happy and said thank you. And they all know they go to the wedding. And as Roger's driving along, he's realizing it's bothering him more and more. It's irritating him like, why is this triggering me so much? He was kind of confused because he said, "I like my friend and I'm glad she has the roses, but it still irritates me." He finally realized it was because his wife didn't check with him first and just talk to him. He would have said, yes, you know, but he negotiated these flowers and it was his gift to her initially. And so that's what bothered him. And so they had this long talk for the rest of the car ride about how do we avoid this then? And they came up with this little idea of ICN. So he said "There's certain decisions where if I'm just gonna make the decision and I'm just gonna let you know. And that's it, I inform you there's other decisions where I will think about it and I will consult you and you get your input before I make the decision. And then there's certain things where we should just jointly agree we have to negotiate a joint agreement." And that just changed the way that they thought about things for the better. And now in management, it turns out that one of the biggest problems people have is they're just not clear about what they're doing when they engage with you. They might just be telling you this is how it is, which some people really don't like. But sometimes you have to do that. They might be saying we're consulting you. But if we're not clear, what does that mean? Does that mean we're gonna get back to you and let you know our decision, or does it mean we're going to take a vote or does it mean that you're part of the team? What does it mean consulting me? And then thirdly, you know, we have to figure this out together. You decide, I decide, jointly. Neither of us has the right to simply unilaterally do what we want. And that amazingly avoids emotional reactions that can be very negative for people when they feel like they're being unfairly imposed on. So we can do that at home. We can do that in our teams. We can do it as a department manager. We can do it as a leader of a country. To be really clear about what it is you're saying and why you're saying it, what's gonna happen next to reduce that emotional frustration that people have. So that's just a few examples from the literature that I find really, really helpful that I use all the time.
Salimah Samji [00:20:45] Can you share what the third, fourth and fifth are, because these sound like incredible strategies?
Rob Wilkinson [00:20:51] Absolutely, yes. So we talked about appreciation and autonomy. The next one they refer to as affiliation, which is are you in or out? You know, people really care about whether they're inside a group or whether they're on the outside of the group and they're actually strong biological drivers for why that's so important to us. So we get emotionally triggered if we feel like we're going on the outside of the group. You can imagine historically, as human beings evolved, you know, as you get pushed out to the side of the social grouping. It's terrifying to people because you're feeling like I'm gonna be left behind and I'm not going to survive here. So that's kind of how deeply it triggers us. But on small things like even emails, you get an email and there's some issue people are dealing with and you start going down below and you think, wait, all these people have been copied in and I'm only learning about this now. It triggers us and nobody wants more emails right in their lives. There's a meeting down the hall. Everybody's been invited. But you you're the only one triggers you even though nobody wants more meetings. So thinking carefully about how we affiliate with people, connect with them, as well as the fact that we also ourselves can expect that we're going to be triggered if we go into a certain situation, we can do our own little sort of audit of ourselves and then consider what impact we might have on other people for not affiliating them. So that's the first three. The fourth one is what we refer to as status. So you have these imperceptible, like signals about how someone's treating you appropriately or not is too high or too low. It triggers us hugely. So, you know, someone sort of disrespectfully just walks in your office and sits down and you don't know them. You know, you might be triggered from a status point of view, but it also works the other way. If they're too humble and obsequious and like saying, oh, the greatest respect, sir, you're sort of like, okay, come on, you know, I'm not going to be fooled by that either, you know? We're very, without realizing it, aware of the appropriate level of status that we're conferring on people. And here's an example of one where I mess this up all the time. This is probably where the hardest ones for me, because I tend to be pretty informal with people and I don't really particularly focus on job titles and things like that. And I certainly travel around a lot. And I go to places where I'm like, oh, hey, you know, and I realize, whoops, I should be much more formal with this person and I inadvertently insult them by my informality. So that's a status question, really. And then the last one is what they call role. You want a role that satisfying in your job. And if you feel like you have a role that mismatches what you want to do or feel like you should be doing, then that is a strong trigger for people. So, for example, if you're really good at your job and you like it, but you don't think that it's valued by the organization, you don't feel like you have a satisfying role. But maybe it's valued and maybe you're good at it, but you don't enjoy it or, you know, all three of those things together are the combination that really lead up to a very satisfying role. And these five things, so affiliation, appreciation, autonomy, status and role come up again and again. They're just ever present in human interactions. And that also gives you a bit of a rubric now for getting back to concrete things we can do to think about, OK, before this next meeting, before this job interview, before this difficult conversation with my child about the bad report card, you name it. You can think in advance. Well, what kinds of things are likely to be triggering for me? Like this is the internal component of the people, the P that's about internal. I can think in advance I might be triggered by some of these things, you know, because it's not just the topic that's on the line, it's how am I feeling about myself and my good manager, my good person. I can't believe I made them feel so bad. This is actually going to run through your mind, even though we're very practiced at presenting very formally, you know. And then for them, what might this trick if I say, look, just do it. I'm going to step on their autonomy. If I say, well, I've been doing this for X number of years now, I've just lowered their status. Right. If I say, well, you may not understand how it works in the company, but for all these years, we do it this way. Now, I've just made them I've hit their affiliation. I can actually think in advance about the kinds of things that may trigger me and the kinds of things that might trigger them.
Salimah Samji [00:24:32] Great. Thank you. In your for P model of strategic leadership, you have an external and an internal component. Could you share a little bit the internal component of the people?
Rob Wilkinson [00:24:45] Yeah. I'm thinking about building on what I was just referring to before about the fact that, you know, I have a certain internal emotional sense of well-being and triggers myself. So that kind of auditing beforehand is the way I would think about how to prep myself for difficult situations or even when they just come up in the moment. Turns out that when I'm considering the emotional impact that something's had on me, one way I can reduce the temperature that I'm triggered is to think it through and analyze it. So I say, all right. The fact that I'm so angry that they've just decided to do this is that I thought they were consulting me. But in fact, they were just informing me or I understood that I was jointly running this project. But now I find out that this person has the lead. So now that's like a status hit for me by thinking it through that way, you know, what you're actually doing and your brain is you're engaging the logic center in your brain as opposed to the emotional center. That helps to be a very grounding force. In fact, the energy in your brain, it's like an efficient machine and it tends to gravitate towards the part that's working more. And so we actually lose several points of our IQ our prefrontal cortex and logic center functions less well when we're emotionally triggered. So by going through that internal audit to try and understand better these emotional triggers that are happening and why they're happening, you're actually engaging the logic center and you actually reduce the impact and intensity of the emotional triggering that you're having. So that's on an internal side. I mean, one of the most powerful examples I was thinking about recently, we were talking about international negotiation issues and there's a famous case of the peace discussions with Israel and Egypt over the Sinai Peninsula that Jimmy Carter presided over. And there was the Menachem Begin on Israel's side and Anwar Sadat on the Egypt side. It's a wonderful book written about this called Thirteen Days in September by Lawrence Wright. That goes into a lot of detail about it. It's a fascinating story. And they won Nobel Prizes afterwards. And all this was a major, major, kind of tough leadership challenge. And one of the most powerful moments was breaking down in the end. And Menachem Begin felt like, you know, totally disrespected. And Anwar Sadat was saying, "You know, this is this isn't right for my people." So and Begin was particularly, according to the history about it, you know, very technical and very detailed. And he would pulverize every line to pieces and analyze and put it back together and know. So going through the text was like a really tough, detailed process, apparently. And Jimmy Carter at the end, when they basically said, we're not going to sign this and they were leaving, Jimmy Carter decided, well, we're looking at the technocratic side. But you know what? We just talked about this whole podcast about people that's missing him. So he actually took photographs and he signed them by name for each of the grandchildren of Menachem Begin. And he walked over to his cabin. This is all at Camp David. And he said, you know, I realize you're leaving. I wanted to give you this as a personal token, because this is what we're working for as the next generations. And just in the spirit of that thinking, I'm going to share this with you. And apparently, Begin just took the stack and started looking through them one by one. And then tears started rolling down his eyes. And he signed the accord later that afternoon. You can't say it was definitely only because of that incident. But it you certainly can imagine that it had some kind of an impact. So it's too important. We just cannot afford to overlook the human and emotional component of leadership, despite the fact that so much of our training and focus is on everything but that it seems sometimes.
Salimah Samji [00:28:02] Great. Thank you so much, Rob. I find with every podcast that I do with you, I learn concrete strategies about what I can do and how I can be better at my job. And I really appreciate that. The next podcast will be your fourth P, which is?
Rob Wilkinson [00:28:18] Projection.
Salimah Samji [00:28:20] Fantastic. Until next time. Thank you very much, Rob.
Rob Wilkinson [00:28:23] It's wonderful to be with you again. Thank you so much.
Katya Gonzalez-Willette [00:28:27] To learn more about the Building State Capability program's, Public Leadership Through Crisis blog series visit: www.bsc.cid.harvard.edu/public-leaderhip-through-crisis. Thank you for listening.