Leadership in a Polarized World

- Good day everyone. I'm Karen Bonadio, Director of Alumni Relations, and I'm delighted to welcome you to today's Alumni Top Policy Webinar, Leadership in a Polarized World. The Alumni Top Policy Webinar Series features HKS alumni and panel discussions about pressing public issues. This webinar is being recorded, and closed captioning is available. I'm happy to introduce the moderator, Laura Berlin MPP 2002 Executive Director of the Adaptive Leadership Network who will kick off today's important and timely discussion. Laura.

- Thank you, Karen, and thank you to all of you for joining us today and giving us an hour of your time for this conversation. And we have a really, really exciting group of panelists. 60 minutes is absolutely nowhere near the amount of time that we need to unpack these issues, but I wanna jump right in and get going with a round of introductions. So here's the question, introduce yourself. Tell us what you've been doing since you were at the Kennedy School, and tell us what landed you on a panel about leadership in a polarized world for the Kennedy School. So Mathieu, let's start with you.

- Hi everyone. Hi Laura, and hi everyone. It's really great to be in this conversation. I feel like I'm back at the Kennedy School for this hour, at least virtually. So I'm an MPA, two year MPA program, Class of 2003. So it's gonna be almost 20 years, which feels surreal. It feels like I was there yesterday. And I went pretty much straight from having been at the Kennedy School on 9/11. I remember very clearly, maybe some of you on this call were there too. I remember very clearly learning the news of the attack on the World Trade Center in the Kennedy School. I went pretty much straight from there to work in Afghanistan for the UN. And then I did a bunch of other things, but the reason why I'm here is that in 2017, I co-founded organization called More in Common, which basically tries to understand why people feel so divided and what can bring them together. And so we do a ton of polling and research in the United States and in France. In the U.S. some of you may have read a study we published a few years ago called "Hidden Tribes," about American polarization and understanding polarization in the U.S. through the lens of core values. Some of you might be familiar with the work of John Haidt and others in that space. So we co-founded that organization called More in Common. It's about 40 people now. We work in the U.S. where we have a fantastic team. We also work in France, in Germany, in the UK, in Poland and in Spain. So I think that's the reason why I'm here and I'm really looking forward to the conversation.

- Yeah, you and I actually shared that year, 'cause I was in the class of 2002 in the two year program. Interesting that I went on to found a bipartisan think tank very much in the same space, right? But speaking of "Hidden Tribes," Christy let's go to you next. Tell us about what you've been doing and what you're currently working on that makes you such a fabulous panel of list for this discussion.

- Thank you, Laura, and so just humbled and excited to be a part of this panel and learn actually from my fellow panelists as much as share. But I am Christy Vines. I am part of the mid-career MPA program, Class of 2010. And also feel like it was just yesterday that I was sitting there in the forum. Since then, actually right after graduating, I joined the Rand Corporation here in Southern California. So in Santa Monica where I was working kind of on issues of their international programs and national security issues, and since then have worked primary in kinda the global conflict space, the intersection of religion, a kinda profound part of that. But four years ago kind of like Mathieu, I founded an organization called Ideos Institute. We're based here in Southern California. And we focus on this burgeoning and interesting space called empathic intelligence. And while we thought when Ideos was founded that we were gonna still be focused a lot on this global conflict space, it was very clear that a more domestic context was sitting right before us. And so we've really focused largely on political polarization and the role that empathic intelligence or the lack thereof plays in promoting polarization, as well as in kind of bringing and healing those divides. Last year, so this is kind of teeing off from what Mathieu was talking about, we used More in Commons, "Hidden Tribes," kind of framework of the 11 profiles of political types in America to inform and actually cast a documentary film that we produced called "Dialogue Lab America," which was an experiment on political polarization, where we brought 12 Americans across the political, ideological, racial, gender, and generational divide to see if the work of dialogue in particular empathic dialogue, might actually be able to overcome the political polarization that we are all experiencing. So I'm excited to share more about that as we talk today.

- And the Kennedy School is gonna be popping links to these resources and these organizations into the chat, and then include them in a follow up email. So know those will be coming your way. Christy happened to be in DC where I live now, just it was a month ago, and we just happened to be able to make it work to get together. And her work is just so interesting. I think we sat and talked for two and a half hours for the very first time we met. It was a ton of fun, so this is gonna be great. OK, Linda, let's go to you and talk about the long career that you have had working very closely to these issues. Tell us about where you've been since you were the Kennedy School.

- Well, it doesn't feel like just yesterday for me. I was in the mid-career Class of 1990. I don't like to say that too often, but so it was a while ago. I was a journalist when I came into the program, and I'm still on some level a journalist. I left the program, I was the editor of "All Things Considered" on National Public Radio. I wrote a book on the Republican Revolution of 1994. I've been writing doing opinion pieces and reported pieces for pretty much everyone. From "The Wall Street Journal" to "Politico," to "USA Today," "The Washington Post." For 10 years, I ran the Boston University Washington Center program, and I left to write my second book called "The Swing Vote: The Untapped Power of Independence," and it dealt very much with these problems. Polarization, dysfunction in our political system, electoral reform. Did a lot of public speaking, did a lot of media connected with that book, and felt that I wasn't getting traction, and these issues weren't really getting traction. I then moved a bit into the political activism sphere. I'm on the board of a group called Unite America, which you will see the link of, and the Unite America Institute, and they're involved, they've evolved. They were supporting independent candidates, and then moderate Republicans and Democrats, and are now focusing, I think a bit more on political reform, open primaries, rank choice voting, making it easier to vote, all these kind of issues. I am also getting a PhD in Early American History. I decided that I wanted to go back and look at the founding era and sort of what went right and what went wrong in the framing of the Constitution and the creation of our political system. And I would say that my dissertation is on Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Payne, and the roots of American democracy, and looking at the more democratic voices that were present at the founding. And I would say that the framers were aware of the problems that came along with democracy. They feared factionalism, the passion of the mob, and the potential for despotism. And this is all in "The Federalist." So these problems and issues sort of have been with us from the very beginning.

- Yeah, yeah, thank you for that. So I wanna dig in a little bit deeper here. At the Adaptive Leadership Network and then many of Kennedy School classrooms where we studied about leadership, we talk about leadership being an activity, right? It's not a role, it's not a title. It's an activity that you can practice from anywhere in your organization or in your culture, in your society. And leadership on polarization, and really, really difficult issues like polarization is just an incredibly important ingredient to making progress. So Mathieu, talk a little bit more about what's in your research. Are we becoming more polarized? Are we not? What do the data tell us?

- Yeah, thanks very much. And I'd love to learn from all of you also about that intersection between leadership and polarization, 'cause I really do think that polarization is one of the issues of our time. And I think a place like the Kennedy School can really make a contribution to understanding it better, dealing with it better, because I think at the root of it, polarization or a lack of sort of feeling of cohesion, feeling of common purpose, in its simplest form, and this is so obvious, it prevents us from tackling shared challenges. It's very hard to tackle climate change, the war in Ukraine, coronavirus, you name it, and there are many coming our way, when people feel divided and angry with one another. So I think dealing with polarization and learning to live with polarization, it's a little bit like learning to live with COVID. We're gonna have to do it, and I think like a place like the Kennedy School could really, really make a contribution. Obviously there's a ton of literature on polarization, and some countries are different from other others. I think the way that we look at it in More in Common is that when you go beyond the surface of people's opinion, do they agree or disagree on any issue? And you go into sort of the bottom of the iceberg of how people view the world, how people perceive threats, how people relate to in groups and out groups. When you go down to the bottom of that iceberg, which we did with our research "Hidden Tribes," in the United States, but also very detailed segmentation mappings in other countries. What emerges is that when you go beyond a sort of 50/50 world, do you agree or disagree on one issue? When you look at with a little bit more nuance, it's a much more complicated picture that emerges, which is why in the United States, we talk about these seven tribes, and we have a very detailed profile of these seven groups of people. One of the things you realize is that actually the people who are screaming yes, and the people who are screaming no, which is what the world looked like if you open Twitter, is really very unrepresentative, for example, of the United States. So for example, we found that the sort of most progressive group, who we called the progressive activists, represent about 8% of the American population. So they have sort of open Universalist values. They're quite familiar to all of us, but they're really fewer than one in 10 Americans. At the other end of the political spectrum, we talk about a tribe called the voted conservative, very closed, very, you know, there too, you can sort of guess their orientation, but it's described in great detail in "Hidden Tribes." They're are only 6% of the population, but if you look at the news, if you look at Twitter, you feel like this is the world, but it's really only 6% talking to 8% of people. So actually when you ask people a little bit beyond the sound bite, and when you listen to people, and we have this fun, fantastic tool called Americans in Conversation, it's called. And it's 250 Americans representative of our groups talking all the time. And it's just such a hopeful project listening to them, because actually when you go beyond the soundbite, they agree on so much. So the short answer is we are not as polarized as you might think we are. However, there are certain accelerating factors, like some political leaders, and Donald Trump is certainly one of those, who tend to sort of exacerbate passion and activate what's called effective polarization, where you essentially you gather around the leader and then you travel around from issue to issue with that leader, that is quite dangerous because it sort of accelerates the trend of polarization. There are other things that are quite new. Social media, I'm sure we're gonna talk about social media in the context of this panel. Some of you may have read Jonathan Haidt's new piece in "The Atlantic" about the past decade, where he really points the finger at social media as an accelerating factor. So there are things that one really has to be watchful of, but I think over overall, the message I'd like to convey is that when you go beyond that soundbite, when you go beyond that picture we're sold of a 50/50 world, actually people agree on way more than you might think. In "Hidden Tribes," we described a huge group of Americans that we called the exhausted majority. And one of the things they share very deeply is that they are exhausted about the nature of political discourse and the public discourse, and the nature of the public conversation. And it's also true in France.

- [Linda] Laura-

- Go ahead, Linda.

- Can I follow up on that? Because I couldn't agree more with everything Mathieu said, but I wanted to explain that that exhausted majority is not represented in our current political system.

- [Mathieu] Yes, absolutely.

- And it's cause the two parties have done that on purpose. They have shut out the people who are not either the big donors or the activists on the left and the right, and the United America Institute, which I think you are gonna be sending the link, has done some studies on this and found that in 2020, only 10% of voters effectively elected 85% of Congress because of closed primaries and heavily gerrymandered districts where the winner of the primary is the defacto winner of the election. And their research showed that in March in the Texas primaries, a tiny 6% of voters determined the outcome in 95% of the congressional districts. So politicians are incentivized to play only to these donors and their activist space. And this is seriously impacting their ability to legislate, because if they dare to cross the aisle and try to compromise, and legislate, they are vilified by their base, Look at Mitt Romney and his reputation within the Republican party. So I have some solutions to this, but I don't know if this is the stage at which you want me to mention them.

- Let's hang on for just a second before we get to solutions, 'cause I wanna unpack, I think it's interesting that More in Common's work is not just based in the U.S., right? It is around the world speaking more to the human condition of what happens to our brains when we are in polarized spaces. And what I hear with my leadership lens that you all are pointing to is that leadership right now in a polarized world, requires an appetite for nuance and detail and complicating the narrative is something I learned from John Haidt. Complicating the narrative, and Christy, I think your work really helps put a face on some of these ideas. Could you tell us about an example or tell us a little bit more about the work that you did with this group of people, and help us get a human face on some of these ideas and some of these data.

- Sure, and actually, if you allow me a moment, I wanna piggyback on something you just brought up about this idea of leadership and what it takes to be a true kind of leader in this moment we're all in, and Jonathan Haidt's article points to a lot of this. But I think one thing we have to recognize is that in times like this leading in polarized time requires a lot of courage and risk, which is something we're seeing a lot of leaders, both in the political sphere, but also in the marketplace unwilling to do for a number of reasons. And I think what spaces like this, as well as even why we did a documentary film, is because it becomes a safe space to explore some of these tools and skill sets that right now are not largely in demand, because we have found and Linda points to this really well that the extremes right now are winning. They have the loudest voice, the loudest platforms, and we can talk about the reasons do social media, traditional media, and many others why that's happening. But the reason why we did the documentary is specifically because we recognized that people were challenged, including leaders. We were hearing this a lot from leaders from all sectors that they just did not know how to engage in these topics without polarizing or alienating a significant part of their own audience, whether it was in their workplace, in their congregations, in their communities, what have you. And so that was really the motivating factor, but what was really fascinating when we brought these 12 together, and I will say that the reason we did the documentary is because of some work we had done right after January 6th, the elections, the Black Lives Matter movement and protest on the streets and all of that was this group of 13 select leaders from across the country came together and said we need help figuring this out, and we're willing to kind of put our time in your hands. And that 13 included leaders from the private sector, philanthropy, academia, as well as political appointees who were stepping down from the Trump Administration or who had worked in the Obama Administration. We even had an individual who had been on the steps of the Capitol on January 6th, but that was completely off the record. We couldn't publicize it, we couldn't share names, and so we decided let's do a film and see if we can show the world the power of dialogue, especially the empathic dialogue work that we're grounded in. But you ask about kind of a face for this. It was every face. I mean, we had somebody who was part of, you know, an Afghani American who was working with the military in this long recently ended war in Afghanistan who was an advisor to our military, all the way to young Millennials and Gen Zers who had experienced mass shootings on their campuses or who were engaging with faith and politics and culture in really interesting ways. But I think what was really transformative and relevant to this conversation about leadership is that the whole point of most people's engagement on these issues is to debate and defend a position, not to deeply understand the stories and experiences behind the people that they disagree with. And that is really why this work is so important and powerful for leaders, because it helps to answer that question, how do I navigate these differences that I'm now responsible for bringing together so that we can continue our work, or we can lead a country or we can lead a school? That is really the power of this, and we saw that transformation even between somebody who was very much on the right, evangelical Christian, White male, who had felt completely attacked throughout these past several years and found that the only voice and I think platform he felt was speaking to his perspective was President Trump, as well as to a young African American therapist who was working with traumatized young people of color who had been raised in a largely white community and who had been marginalized and singled out even in primary education, and having those two individuals deeply understand each other's experiences, because they had never touched either's, and that I think is the power of this work.

- Laura, can I jump in for one sec? Did you wanna follow up?

- No, no, go ahead jump in. And I'm gonna have a question for Linda about journalism and our diet that helps shape what we understand of other people's views, but go ahead.

- Just to react to what you were saying, Christy, First of all, I'm very excited to see this documentary. Thank you for sending the link. I think what you said is so important. There's a group of people across the sort of 10 countries that we've worked on, who have a very specific psychological orientation. We called them the Invisibles, which sometimes some people don't react well to that title, but they're defined more by a sort of orientation to the world than by sort of political views, really. They're certainly very vulnerable to a us versus them rhetoric. They're certainly prime territory for authoritarian candidates or extreme candidates, but the one thing that defines them, and this is very much to Christy's point in this new arsenal of skills that she was talking about for leaders, is no one ever takes the time to listen to me. When we talk to people in focus groups, or I'm sure it was a case for you Christy in the documentary, the one thing that people say, Democrat, Republican, young, old, vax, anti-vax, whatever, from Eastern Germany, Western Germany, they all say it's really nice to talk to people. It's the one thing that they say. I don't know if there's already a course in deep listening at the Kennedy School, but it's certainly one I feel that I would've loved to take. I feel like 20 years ago when I was at the Kennedy School, we were taught to be sort of like, I don't know what the, like tech, you know, the smartest kid in the class kind of leader, I'm gonna explain things to you. Where it turns out, knowing facts and understanding structures, et cetera, is very important. But really having that ability to listen to people is certainly a skill I would've liked to learn. And I hope that it is being learned, 'cause I think it's essential to the leader of tomorrow in these turbulent and polarized times, 'cause it's not going away. It is certainly not going away. We see the experience in the United States is mirrored by other experiences around the world in Spain, in Poland, for example. It doesn't matter who wins or loses an election just because the chief polarizer is voted out, the society he or she was active in will remain polarized. So this is gonna stay with us, and I think developing that listening capacity is so, so important.

- Can I just add one quick thing to just double click on that, because I've often said that when I was at the Kennedy School we had the Art of Communication. In fact, one of my classmates still goes back and teaches that course. But we don't learn to listen. And when you think about the idea of shared narratives and stories, one of the things that is really powerful in communicating is you can communicate your story and your perspective and your experience really effectively. And if you're good at it, you can kind of make that the primary narrative, but in a diverse country, like the ones we're all talking about, especially the United States, deep listening is how that translation of stories and narratives goes from one community to another. And we actually score really low on kind of the empathy and empathic kind of scale as a country. But one of the the skills of a really empathic community or country or group is the ability not just to share stories, but to listen deeply and then allow that to impact and influence how then you navigate the world. So I couldn't support that statement more.

- Let me follow up on that, and then I'll speak to the media, which I think you wanted me to do Laura. In terms of the listening. I think one very interesting thing to point out is that politicians aren't listening anymore either, and that is very frustrating for people. Politicians, members of Congress used to have town meetings across the state, across their district regularly every year. They have eliminated these. You can count on your two hands, the number of senators who now have the guts to face their constituents and to hear what they have to say. Ron Widen of Oregon is one who does it. He does it in every county in the state, but they have decided they don't wanna hear other perspectives, and they don't have to hear other perspectives because they have gamed the system to such an extent that they don't have to appeal to people other than their base. Now, in terms of the shared stories, I think that's a very important point in terms of the media and the fracturing of the media. Americans used to watch an evening news broadcast. They would sit around the TV and it would be a shared experience. Walter Cronkite was the father of America, universally beloved and respected. You can't find a figure, I can't think of one, certainly not a news figure who is respected by more than a fraction of people. And they also used to subscribe to their local paper, where the most important stories of the day were curated on the front page, but we no longer have news sources that are universally trusted. Social media, which I remember when social media started, and I thought this is gonna be really bad for traditional media. And everybody said, well, let a thousand flowers bloom, and citizen journalism and all this stuff. Well, that's fine until you have tons of falsities, and tons of crap that is just washing over people, and it's not curated anymore, and people are in their silos and they're only sort of reading what they want to read, or seeing what they want to see. And they're no longer exposed either to universal truths or to other points of view. They choose their own news sources, which reinforce their prejudices and political views, and now we have politicians using outrage and fear and social media to motivate their supporters. So that's sort of where we're at at this point.

- Anyone wanna respond to that? Whether you think journalism, media is doing to influence polarization, and I'd be interested how you see that around the world too, not just in a U.S. perspective.

- And I would add that traditional media, you and I, Laura, when we had a preliminary conversation in preparing for this panel, there are many, many, many criticisms that can be leveled at traditional media I think now, and I think journalism is failing the American public in many ways, but I think the broader picture is that it's so financially under siege because of social media, that that is the overriding thing. You saw these layoffs at CNN. That was an online venture that failed. The number of journalism jobs has shrunk dramatically over the past decade. And they're sort of under siege, and trying to protect our democracy at the same time.

- I mentioned that study that a journalist friend sent to me that saw a relationship between the lack of local journalism and the decreasing trust that the public have in their public officials. And this particular study talked about a decrease in municipal bond ratings that reflected a lack of trust in the folks that were making decisions about their local government, which I thought was just fascinating. Christy, you were gonna say something?

- Yeah, I just think that there's, again, we're kind of talking about leadership, and I think what Linda was just sharing underscores the need for a new generation of leaders who are willing to kind of buck the trend. Those of us who came to the Kennedy School came in large part because we sought out some form of influence or learning about how to lead in whatever context we were coming from around the world. And I think in some ways, leadership has largely failed us, and I don't blame leaders because they have a job to do in large part. But I think what this has done is it's created a space for a new generation of leaders who are willing to go back to what are the values of the industry that I'm called to lead? What is the purpose of my role here? And it goes back to this idea of courage and risk. I think if we had more CEOs, more religious leaders, more political leaders who are willing to say standing on principle and values for what it is this industry or this role is supposed to contribute to the good is in fact, more important in this moment than, again, shareholder value, and in some parts, even survival of the organization itself, because if we don't have leaders like that, and I think those of us who worked in the global conflict space, and who recognize even the moments in our recent history where we as a country and even as a Western society have moved up the conflict ladder. I think many of us are, are fiercely afraid, and I think "The Atlantic" article points it to this. Many of us are very fearful that we're heading in a direction of no return, both in terms of democracy, which require trust and institutions, which you just spoke about and a leader who's willing to see a future a as representative of more important than the now. And I'm not sure we have enough of those, certainly those who have allowed enough bullhorn to really push this country in a direction that's going against largely the tidal wave and the onslaught that we are I think all experiencing the results of.

- Laura, can I talk about some specific solutions that people can think about in terms of the political system?

- Yeah, we've got about five minutes before we're gonna open it up to audience questions. So just know that that's the time boundary we're working with, but yeah, what are some of the solutions that you see from where you sit?

- Okay, I talk about some of these in the swing vote, and I'm assuming we have people from all over the country. So I wanna talk about what's going on around the country, in cities and states. One thing we really badly need is reform for drawing legislative districts, because this has been an area of terrible corruption, and it's been terribly corrosive to the system. And California has led the way in creating a system where they have a tripartisan citizen commission, Republicans, Democrats, and independents, and they draw the legislative districts. And to the extent that they can, in terms of where people live and the sort of siloing that's going on in terms of where people choose to live, they have much more competitive districts. We need to boost turnout by creating better vote at home systems. Replace party primaries with open nonpartisan primaries in which all candidates and voters can participate, restore the Voting Rights Act and rank choice voting, which United America has recently adopted support for this. Alaska is a state where it's been approved, and this makes it easier for someone like Senator Lisa Markowski a Republican, not to be beholden only to party leaders and extremists, but to cross the aisle, because she knows she can get votes from others. It's also been approved in 23 cities and in Utah and Maine, and there are currently efforts underway to pass rank choice voting this year in Nevada, Missouri, Hawaii, Washington, DC, San Diego, Portland, Oregon, and several other cities around the country. And then there are future efforts going on in Minnesota and Wisconsin, Georgia, Vermont, Colorado, Arizona, Oregon, Ohio are considering this for future years. There's an open primary effort going on in Pennsylvania. Virginia is a good story, bad story. It leads the nation in new proposed restrictive voting legislation. This is also going on where state legislatures are trying to pass legislation to restrict voting, to insert partisan people into vote counting and vote assessment. This is very scary and citizens need to be aware of this. The ballot initiative and referendum processes were created during the progressive era as part of the effort to create political reform. And that's exactly what they are, is a venue to push political reform.

- Yeah, thank you for some of those concrete examples of what's at least happening here in the U.S. Mathieu I wanna give you one last chance to maybe speak a little bit more to a kind of a global. Are any of the countries that you're working in doing any better or doing things that we ought to take note of in the U.S.?

- Sure, yeah. I mean, I will say that certainly of the sort of six countries that we know very well, because we have national teams and phenomenal national leaders studying the polarization in their countries, I think the U.S. is in the worst shape by quite a distance. It's just very hard to... In other countries we have published things on the culture wars with parties from across the political aisle. We've even gone into partnerships with various actors across the political aisle, funders across the political aisle. In the United States, it's just much harder to do. So I do think that it's just worth pointing out that the United States is not in the greatest shape. However, as Linda was pointing out there, there are lots of things that that can be done. I think some of the assets that are under attack in other countries are things like public broadcasters. I mean the value of having a universally trusted public broadcaster, like the BBC, for example, as a uniting force is just huge. And so whatever can be done, local news can still be saved in the United States, as you were saying. I published in the chat, a project we did called the Perception Gap, and what the Perception Gap does is basically ask Democrats in the United States what do you think a Republican's view is on a whole bunch of issues, police, police violence, race, admission to college, a whole bunch of stuff. What the Perception Gap study shows is that really people on one side misperceive what the other side thinks. They think the other side holds much more extreme versions or opinions by about 30%. So there's a misperception. And one of the things that accelerates the perception gap is readership of sort of national newspapers, unfortunately, with the exception of "USA Today," which is just better, what reduces the perception gap is local news. People who read local newspapers have a better understanding of what's happening across the political aisle. So there are sort of green shoots in the United States, but every effort must be made to sort of bolster them. Yeah, so that's sort of a quick comparison of some things. I will say that I think perhaps in the democracy space in the United States, a lot of effort is being made at the technical level. The institutional changes, which are really important. They are really important, but they will be even more effective if they're accompanied by sort of more of the narrative work that we were talking about earlier, the empathy work, the sort of story of how talk to one another in the United States. If both of those things happen at the same time, and from where I'm sitting, I'm seeing a lot more money go into the technical stuff and less into the narrative stuff, which is harder to do in a way, but I don't think one can go without the other.

- Yeah, so in the frames of adaptive leadership, we would say, we should treat this issue as adaptive work. One that's extremely complicated. We don't necessarily entirely understand it, and we certainly don't know what the answers are, and there are gonna be some technical solutions and some adaptive work and progress that can be made. Yeah, okay so many places to go here, but I wanna give our participants a chance to ask you guys questions too. So if you are out in our audience today, if you'll use the raise hand function, and then you'll get a message from one of the Kennedy School folks, and then you'll be able to turn on your mic and turn on your video and ask a question of any of our panelists. So that option is out there, and we'll keep going. Christy, you look like you wanted to respond to what he was saying. I'll let you go ahead.

- Yeah, actually it was kind of a tangent, I think a little bit, because I think the unspoken kinda elephant in the room that we've all touched on, but not spoken directly to is the impact of social media. And I think Jonathan Haidt did an incredible job speaking to this moment. But one thing I always try to challenge people to remember is that technology is driven by people. The algorithms are written by people, and tech companies are run by people. And I think one of the things that , excuse me, one of the opportunities that I think we have right now is to think about how we even think about social media and algorithms that we are writing, that influences how people are thinking and consuming information, and is there an opportunity, is there an adaptive leadership opportunity here to think about the future of those engineers and those tech experts and the social psychologists coming together and thinking deeply about how do we actually think about artificial intelligence in the future of technology, and how things like empathic intelligence, how things like the work that so many organizations are doing about division consuming media and stories, how that can actually be influenced in a positive way? So often I think we just throw up our hands because social media is this behemoth, and think, oh gosh, the trains already left the station. There's no stopping it. But I do think there are incredible opportunities and learnings that have come from it that we can now use to actually change it for the better.

- Yeah, we've got a question in the chat from Riley Cole. What are the non U.S. countries where polarization is actively studied that are better off than the U.S.?

- The literature on polarization is enormous, and there's tons of cross country studies, and there's also different measurements of polarization, et cetera. So it probably varies from rank one ranking to the next, but I would say sadly most certainly Western democracies are better off than the United States on polarization. Perhaps, I would've said before the war in Ukraine, I would've said Poland is a close contender, because Poland was extremely polarized, but the war in Ukraine and a common enemy has united Poles temporarily, at least like nowhere else. I mean, certainly the UK is much better off than most places. You wouldn't really know that having followed the Brexit vote, but actually the Brits are remarkably united and able to work across boundaries. But as-

- If I can just interject, they have a parliamentary system, a multi-party parliamentary system, which is not insignificant in what you just said.

- Yes, that is very true. Yes. Yes, that is very true. But I also to-

- Same with Germany, same with Germany. When you have to form a coalition government, you have to work together, and the systemic things are not insignificant.

- Mm hm, I agree. No, I totally agree. But to Akanji's point in the chat, we only really work in a very small number of Western democracy. So he was saying that Nigeria is much more polarized, and I absolutely believe it from the little I know about it, so this is a global phenomenon. Certainly in Brazil, in Indonesia, and India, they have their own versions of polarization, and they're probably quite bad just by reading the news and not knowing Brazil well enough or Nigeria, you'd think of it, but certainly among Western democracies, I would say the U.S. isn't currently doing very well on any scale.

- Can I add to that really quickly? I think you can look also just at the global conflict environment, especially internal civil conflict, and kinda extrapolate from that also where countries did really well on things like COVID. So I use it as an example, two very different countries. So New Zealand and Rwanda, and for different reasons they did well, and I think actually have, New Zealand because they have really profound narratives, and moments where those narratives are spread throughout the country, throughout the year, where there's much more social capital, social cohesion, even, and again, not that these are perfect societies by any stretch, but I think this idea of a shared narrative that kind of overlays all of the differences and the diversity that make up the country. Rwanda, I think for a different reason. I think because there is a government and a leader in place that has post genocide said as a country we will figure out how to move together, and has created days, for example, where people just volunteer together to create a better Rwanda, again, a shared narrative, but I think that goes then with shared action. And I think both countries do a really good job of highlighting a shared narrative, and then kind of mobilizing and creating opportunities for people to have shared action together. And I think that's really the whole point, and what we in the West often miss, and I think this goes to the lack of local, is because you can't have in a country as big as the United States, it would be very hard to have a shared action that everybody can get behind because we are so diverse even within states. But I think if more local leaders created shared narratives and brought together communities around those shared narratives, and then gave them opportunities to do shared action, it often starts to chip away at the polarization that exists when people are just consumed by federal large narratives that they don't easily fit into, that they can't get behind.

- Leadership right now in this moment has to take the long view. Complicating the narrative is not progress that happens overnight by any stretch of the imagination. We have a question from Saul, who I'm gonna invite you to turn on your camera and make sure your mic is open and tell us your name, your degree, and your year, and then ask your question with kindly encouraging to make sure it ends with a question mark.

- Hi there I am showing my age. So I'm a 1975, 2 year MBA and MPA. So I started mine when Littauer was the home of the Kennedy School. And my question relates to the impact of the current composition of the Supreme Court. And as a recent migrant to Florida, I'll end it with recent impacts of a voter initiative that was overturned by the Florida legislature and Governor DeSantis. So over the last few years with Citizens United being the first salvo, the expiration of the Voting Rights Act, and the Supreme Court's unwillingness to intervene with various states voting reform actions to restrict and impede voter registration, voter access. It really concerns me that the Supreme Court has devolved over the last many decades the progress that has been made to allow citizens and particularly people of colors access to the ballot. Now in Florida, through a voter initiative, a overwhelming number of Floridians voted to reinstate the vote to recently released prisoners, felons.

- Hey Saul?

- [Saul] Yes.

- Can you tell us more directly maybe what the question is in there? And it sounds like it might be going to Linda.

- So the question is, given the current role of the Supreme Court and its tendency to throw back to the states who are now aggressively moving to restrict access, how optimistic is the panel that even voter initiatives will have a beneficial effect. Thank you.

- This is a very good question, and it's a little scary. I mean, I'm gonna be completely honest with you, it's a little scary. For example, in Arizona, the voters of Arizona passed a anti gerrymandering legislation to set up a citizen commission to do the legislative districts. The Republican state legislature fought it, fought what the voters had passed. Went all the way up to the Supreme Court. That was when we had Anthony Kennedy in the Supreme Court as a swing vote. We had a slightly different composition. They upheld what the voters in Arizona had done, but now we have a different Supreme Court, and all over the country, Arizona's a good example of this Georgia, Florida. We have citizens trying to pass legislation, political reform legislation, and legislatures, and let's face it, political courts, state Supreme Courts fighting what the voters are trying to pass. So this is a little scary. I'm not sure I have an answer for it. So I don't know, but I would say, look at what's going on in your local communities, seek out people that are trying to work on political reform at the local level, at the state level. There are lots of efforts going on all over the country in this area. And lend your voice to these efforts is sort of the best thing that I can say in terms of trying to, I mean, obviously there are elections, but this stuff comes before elections so that elections stand. So that's all I can say on it.

- Yeah, big question, no easy answer for sure on that one. We are coming into our final minutes. And as I said at the beginning, 60 minutes is just nowhere near enough time to speak with you about these really complicated issue. But I wanna end kind of where I started. If we say that that leadership is an activity that anybody can practice, it's the act of mobilizing people to make progress on really difficult problems. And I'd say depolarization work is both a problem in and of itself and a complicating factor to solve all these other issues that we wanna work on. I want each of you to give a a minute or two on what you think leadership needs to look like to make progress on depolarization. What does that look like from where you sit and the work that you're doing? I'll go in the reverse order that we started and start with you, Linda.

- Oh, great.

- But only a couple minutes, only a minute or two.

- Not an easy question. I don't know. My honest answer is I'm not sure. I agree with Mathieu that this is a very, very difficult time. And I think people that minimize the threats to our democracy are just not looking. There are very serious threats to our democracy right now, and to structures that have been in place for 200 plus years. And I think sunlight is the best disinfectant. I think paying attention, not tuning out, not getting discouraged, not getting overwhelmed, trying to talk to people that don't, this would sort of follow what Mathieu and Christy have been talking about for the hour. Trying to talk to people that don't necessarily agree with you on some things, but trying to have an open discussion and trying to get involved to the extent that you can to try to promote some electoral reform and to promote organizations that you think are trying to push positive change.

- Yes, yes ma'am. Mathieu, what do you say?

- I think that is totally right. So I would say just that listening piece again, really, really important, just work on that skill. I include myself in that list of people who need to work on that skill way more. The second thing is to perhaps for a Kennedy School crowd to take one step back and look at the world again from two new prisms. The one prism is to look at the look at the world through the prism of people and not issues. It turns out very few people care, very passionately about issues. People at the Kennedy School are an outlier group. They care very passionately about whatever it is, climate, immigration, voter systems reform, et cetera. Most people in the United States don't view the world that way. And if we try to force, if we try to like bring people to our issue, say oh, how can I persuade this group of persuadables to come to my issue? I think we should be doing the reverse. Like we should be taking our issues and be like, how does this work in this person's day, in this person's environment? So un-Kennedy School ourselves a little bit, and related to that point is accept the fact that not only do people not really look at the world through the prism of issues and certainly not one issue. Very few people look at the world through a prism of one issue. You know some people might say there's a division in the world between people who agree or disagree on any one issue. Actually, I think the main division in the world is people who are quite political, and the vast majority of people who are not political. And that group is increasing because they're tuning out of a conversation that they perceive as totally toxic and not good for their mental health. So most people are not political. That's just not the way they look at the world. And if you try to persuade them or engage with them on those terms, on political terms, you're just not at the right frequency, I think. So that's something that we could learn and do.

- I think un-Kennedy School ourself, you're gonna get us fired as panelists, I think on this, but I hear what you're saying. My last word will be really to make a plug for the Adaptive Leadership Network. If you like this conversation, we do this every day at the network. And I would encourage you, give me a call. I'd love to talk to you about what we do and get you engaged if that's interesting or helpful to your practice. But Christy, I'm gonna give you the last word. What does leadership look like in a depolarized world?

- I think it's in the depolarizing world. It's two things. And I'm gonna channel a little bit of Brene Brown. One, you know Mathieu talked about seeing through a different prism. I'm actually gonna challenge those who are listening to see through the prism of others, because that is one of the most powerful leadership tools we have have in our arsenal is to be open to understanding different perspectives and actually consuming and being curious about those different perspectives, because it makes us more intelligent and especially empathically intelligent leaders. And that has been shown to actually help us be more effective in life. So that's one, and I'm gonna give something super easy. And I say this all the time in the work that we do. We under utilize one of the most powerful and simplest questions in our arsenal. And that is the question of why. We rarely ask people why they hold the position they hold, the perspectives they hold, the beliefs that they hold, why they do the things they do. And rather than often coming with an answer or a debate or a defense of an alternate idea or perspective, to simply ask people, why do you believe or do or think what you do? Because it really does build your own, it adds more information to the data that you already hold. And again, makes you a much more effective leader, especially in polarized times.

- Period. Thank you so much to all of you for coming for this conversation today. I'm deeply moved by the work that you're doing and it gives me hope, so, thank you. Karen.

- Thank you.

- I just wanna say thank you to all the panelists for our dynamic discussion, and for all the alumni who joined us today, we hope you enjoyed it. And we look forward to keeping you engaged in the future months. For the most up to date school news and events, please visit the HKS Alumni website. Stay healthy and safe everyone. Thank you so much.