Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate.
Scott Allen 0:01
Hello, everybody! Today I have Dr. Joanne Ciulla. She is a pioneer in this whole topic of ethics and leadership. And she does extensive research on that topic and business ethics. She served before she was at Rutgers where she is now she served as a chair in leadership and ethics at Jepson. She was the founder of the founding Faculty of that school. She's held academic appointments at Harvard, Wharton, Lasalle, numerous visiting opportunities abroad, she teaches all over the world. She serves on editorial boards, Leadership, Quarterly, Leadership, and the Business Ethics Quarterly. That's not it, everybody, she's won awards. She's won a lot of awards. And she is it's really pretty. It's pretty awesome. Joanne, it's, you know, Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Scholarship in Business Ethics from the Society for Business Ethics, Legacy Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Leadership Association, the Eminent Scholar Award. Right, Eminent! That's the galactic level at this point, right, if you're eminent, and that was from the Network of Leadership Scholars in The Academy of Management, there's more, we will put it in the show notes. Dr. Ciulla, thank you so much for being with us today. We really, really appreciate it.
Joanne Ciulla 1:24
Well, it's my pleasure.
Scott Allen 1:25
What gaps do we need to fill-in? What else do we need to say about you? What are your hobbies? What do you enjoy doing when you're not writing, very important pieces of work? What do you love to do?
Joanne Ciulla 1:38
You mean, there are things to do that aren't writing?
Scott Allen 1:41
When you're not winning awards and editing scholarly papers or writing them or teaching?
Joanne Ciulla 1:47
Well, when you win all those awards, they're just telling you you're getting old? So? Um, well, let's see, I spend a well I did spend a huge amount of time traveling I've, I've been to six of the seven continents, but my husband refuses to take me to Antarctica because he thinks it's environmentally irresponsible, so we won't be going there. But that's our main hobby. We'd like to snorkels. So we've snorkeled all over the world. And so needless to say, I miss both of those tremendously right now. Aside from that, yeah, those are the two main things. I also cook, when I was in graduate school, I cooked in restaurants, and I'm Italian. So there's a lot of Italian food coming out of my kitchen. And so I like to cook and feed people when I'm not writing.
Scott Allen 2:40
Oh, I love it. I love it. Why? No, you're an East Coast or Maryland, Delaware, Virginia. And so I'm sure you've been to Acadia, we were just there about a week and a half ago, Acadia National Park just incredibly beautiful. Right? That's not it's not a place to snorkel. But it's a place to enjoy the beauty.
Joanne Ciulla 2:59
Yeah, lovely.
Scott Allen 3:01
Well, so what I'm excited to chat with you about today is this whole topic of leadership and ethics. Obviously, a hot topic in recent years. But what I would love to know is what you're thinking about now. I mean, you have written extensively on this topic, a wonderful book, The Heart of Leadership, and so many academic articles on the topic. What are some of your contemporary thoughts, just questions even you have going on through your head, as you continue to think about and write about this topic?
Joanne Ciulla 3:38
Well, I guess the main thing, what I'm thinking about now, actually, what I'm writing about now, is the role of emotion in leadership. I had written a paper was published last year on resentment and the power of resentment in leadership. And what I've been fascinated with given the political developments not only in this country, but other parts of the world is really understanding there are things about leadership that circumvent reason. And I want to try to understand what those are. And my first exploration into resentment was very telling and actually somewhat predictive of what might have happened and let me just give you a simple example. The reason, why I was overwhelmed with this thought, is that resentment is a kind of emotion philosophers have written about it. Quite a bit Nietzsche, for example, but it's a kind of emotion that gets people to behave in ways that are against their own self-interest. Hmm. It can get P and the leader-follower leaders can get people not because they convince them, but because of the kind of relationship and emotions, they have about the leader. They will do things that are seriously against their own self-interest. Wow, fascinates me. I mean, I really want to understand that phenomenon, because it's kind of against everything we think about how we behave like human beings.
Scott Allen 5:10
Yeah. Yeah. We'll say more about that. So the role of emotion, what are some things you're finding? What are you learning as you explore that topic?
Joanne Ciulla 5:20
Well, you know, in Leadership Studies, there's a huge amount of literature even, you know, looked at how many use Google to find out how many articles were written about emotional intelligence. Everybody loves emotional intelligence, it means everything and nothing. I've had some really interesting discussions about this. Because, you know, it started out as a particular kind of empirical construct that, you know, people did experiments on, and there were four factors to it, yada, yada, you know, how we like academics are, but then, of course, the whole idea seemed so intuitively right? "Oh, yeah. Some people really understand other people's emotions. And, boy, this must be really useful for leadership, especially if they reflect on their own emotions." Well yeah, that's good. And it's common sense. No problem with that. Huge debates. If you look at the literature, John Antonakis and some of the other leading scholars have huge debates over the quality of the research and the quality of the construct. Some people say it's the same as social intelligence, which came before it, etc, etc. So that's why leadership scholars, that's where most of the literature is in Leadership Studies. So but what I'm thinking about is not emotional intelligence
Scott Allen 6:35
Yeah, No.
Joanne Ciulla
but are emotions, intelligence. And so want to look at it through the eyes of a former best friend and colleague of mine, Robert Solomon, who, for 30 years, we sort of thought together and talk together a lot about this. And he's a fairly well-known philosopher, and he wrote extensively on emotions, as a matter of fact, psychologists use his work. And he's kind of one of the base pieces of literature and, and he talks about this issue and he says some really interesting things about emotions and intelligence he says for example, "what is the meaning of life."
Scott Allen
You've got Monty Python's version and then you've got...
Joanne Ciulla 7:27
I love Monty Python. But it's a crazy question. And philosophers have written about "what's wrong with the question" and everything else. But what Solomon says is really interesting in terms of the intelligence of emotions, he says that emotions are how we experience meaning, that you can't have meaning without emotions. Oh, wow. It's fundamental. And furthermore, if you look at a lot of the philosophical literature, and certainly a lot of the literature, in leadership, even on emotional intelligence, what you find is, there's a historical battle that is portrayed is going on in every human being between emotions and reason. And, you know, for a philosopher like Kant, and ethics, reason always has to win, right? We look at emotional intelligence and a lot of ethical theories. It's like beating down on those emotions. And then people talk about emotion. Have you ever thought about how we talk about emotions as if we're passive bystanders? So fall in love? We're overcome with passion. We're like helpless people that emotions keep jumping on us making us do stuff. I find that whole view that we have of emotions, and of course, Solomon's comment, absolutely fascinating. Because instead of pitting emotion against reason, or talking about intelligence, about emotions, we really need to understand the intelligence of emotions. And so going back to resentment, we'll hear you say, well, that's a dumb emotion if it makes you do things against your own self-interest, right? There's an intelligence to that emotion that we need to understand, given the input that people get that creates it, which is a sense of grievance, a sense of being wronged, a sense of humiliation. And if you believe that about what's going on around you, then it's an intelligent response. Battle response because it's like this is this is we've locked in this battle this grievance, it's so powerful, we're willing to risk our lives for it just as people are willing to list their lives for other things. So these are some of the things that I'm having I've been exploring and thinking about in relation to emotions and leadership.
Scott Allen 10:05
My head is in seven or eight different places right now. I love it. I love it. Because Yeah, you can how has the work of Ekman informed anything that you've done? Has it? Paul Ekman?
Joanne Ciulla 10:18
No, I mean, I know of his work, but really, okay. So who am I looking at? Well, I'll tell you in regard to resentment. There's a philosopher named Max Scheler who was writing at who's writing in the 20s, 1920s. Yeah. And it's spooky, really big.
Scott Allen 10:37
How so?
Joanne Ciulla 10:39
He describes Donald Trump. He describes what he calls the 'arriviste.' And he's really describing Hitler. But, and not to say those two are the same. They're completely different. But he describes the social phenomena that allow for leaders like that to emerge and use resentment as a way of gaining power. And it's exactly like the social phenomena that we see here. So I'm not at all saying those two were equivalent in any way. But I am saying there are social conditions. And of course, we know in leadership studies are leaders born or made well, you know, sometimes they're just made by the conditions around them in the context that they're in. Yeah. So he's had a huge influence on me. Damasio has had a lot of influence on me his work. Um, who else have I been reading lately? Um, Ashkanasy? Okay.
Scott Allen 11:38
Neil had...wasn't there a letter went there. Was it the letters between Neil and Antonkis "does leadership need emotional intelligence?" Was that the series of articles?
Joanne Ciulla 11:50
Oh, I love that. That is the best dialogue. And it's very funny in so many ways, but it's, and it's delightful to read, isn't it? It's a terrific one. But yeah, so he's one of them. So there's that whole group of people in Leadership Studies. So I've been reading their stuff. The focus of what I want to write about is more how the philosophical literature might shed more light on it than the parameters of sticking within the way that discussion goes forth in the leadership literature.
Scott Allen 12:19
Well, you know, I have not had a chance to ask a philosopher this question. So you are the only one in front of me. Let's see how this branch of the conversation goes. I've had a lot of people. I even have a podcast episode with a gentleman named Steve Kempster. You mean, you may know Steve? Yeah. Yeah. And his, his thing right now is "leadership for what?" you know, but leadership for what Scott?
Joanne Ciulla 12:47
Steve Kempster writes on emotions too...
Scott Allen 12:49
Oh, yeah. Yeah. How do you think about that question? How do you think about that question, leadership? For what?
Joanne Ciulla 12:57
Yeah. Well, I think of it in a couple of ways. First, in the broader context of the fact that leadership as a part of the human condition, is something that that is sort of necessary for how we organize ourselves in society. And so that's what it's for. It's for helping organize ourselves in society when it's impossible for everybody to come to an agreement on it. And here, I'll tell you a very strange story.
Scott Allen 13:28
Okay. You're gonna, you're gonna counter my strange shift in conversation with a strange story
Joanne Ciulla 13:36
I love I'll tell you a very strange. I was back, I guess it was around in 2000. And I, I had a UNESCO Chair in Leadership Studies for the United Nations Leadership Academy. And so they sent me down, I traveled through several African nations to talk to people about our programs and stuff like that. So when I was in South Africa, I was put in touch with the Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation, and which I ended up being on their board for six years. And then I just happened to be there at this amazing moment when they were having this reunion at the ANC on Robben Island. Do you want to come and of course I did? And the jailers were there and all the key characters from the ANC that were imprisoned there, whether it was an amazing thing. So I'm sitting there and talking to people and they asked him what I do. And I said, "Well, I study leadership." And they said to me, "oh, you have to talk to Lee Berger. I don't know how many people told me I had to talk to Lee Berger. Well, who the heck is Lee Berger? Well, you're going to love this. Lee Berger is a paleontologist.
Scott Allen 14:56
Really?
Joanne Ciulla 14:57
Yes. A very famous one. He's one of the people who discovered not Lucy, but what's called the Footsteps of Eve, which are these really ancient footsteps. So this intrigued me so much. I was in Cape Town. I flew to Johannesburg. He's at Wits University, and I made an appointment to see Lee Berger so I get there and I tell him this and I said, everybody, comes and told me I needed to talk to you about leadership. Well, turns out this paleontologist, who...he's a leg man. By the way, paleontologists, either leg men, and a "leg" person is someone who studies things like footsteps and leg bones.
Scott Allen 15:43
So this is something I maybe could have not known!
Joanne Ciulla 15:52
So obviously it's harder to find skulls, and it is to find legs.
Scott Allen 15:57
Oh, wow. So so there are people who specialize just in legs?
Joanne Ciulla 16:01
Well, they don't just fish, but they do a lot of work with those artifacts. Right. Okay. So, anyway, So then I said, "Okay, so what does this have to do with leadership. And then, you know, that old song, the "leg bone is connected to the thigh bone". Well kind of did one of those and got all the way up to the head.
Scott Allen 16:24
Okay.
Joanne Ciulla 16:25
And was explaining to me that, that leadership had there were certain conditions, starting from studying the legs and the footprints and all of those kinds of things. There would be certain physiological conditions that would be necessary conditions before you could actually have the emergence of leadership as we know it. But that certain things I find in terms of the situation of the bones and other things would sort of giving you indications of the social structure was such that there actually were...that there actually was a kind of leadership that created the kind of organization that would allow for certain artifacts that would allow for, for all of these other things to happen. My head just about exploded when I heard I was sitting there going, "Well, this was worth traveling a significant distance, defying death." And so anyway, but apparently, he had been going around giving talks about how all of this structural stuff was related to the emergence of leadership. So I became really, really fascinated. So leadership for what we can say going way, way back.
Scott Allen
You took us old school there! So biological, physiological reasons why leadership...
Joanne Ciulla 17:50
I don't think I've ever told Steve that I last saw him in Lancaster...
Joanne Ciulla
You need to tell him that the next time you see that, I've heard you've been gallivanting around the world, wondering what "leadership was for, you know, for what?" Oh, that's great. Okay, so that's one level!
Joanne Ciulla 18:18
Let me bring it down to earth or something vaguely credible? Well, I think on the other level, though, the 'leadership for what' stems from it, because it's the question of, you know, what is the level of organization that actually requires a leader? And more importantly, there's an ethical side to it. If you think of what leaders do, they're people who take responsibility for something, leaders of an organization, you take responsibility. So the question becomes, when is it necessary for that? So in ethics, there are huge problems with collective responsibility. So all of these wonderful models of shared leadership and group leadership and fluid leadership and you name it kind of leadership. The problem with that is ultimate, some people or groups of people have to take responsibility. It's fundamental for moral accountability. So when we look at what leadership's for one is moral accountability. The other is just all of the practical elements of organizing people to achieve some kind of common goal. So I don't know that's what Steve's looking for if he wants to throw it out or not, but, you know...I'll have to talk to him about it.
Scott Allen 19:48
One one other way of looking at it that I've at least been thinking about recently would be the UN sustainability goals, right? There are our efforts working to advance the world, at least in part in some way, in these different dimensions. And I think that could be somewhat of where he's heading, you know, as a just simply for shareholder value? Or is it - "Are we looking at it from a different lens as well? "So that we're at, you know, sometimes that's called the Triple Bottom Line, sometimes that's it has different names as well. But it's interesting, I love how you kind of frame your answer to that question, from paleontologists - to just how we organize. And any other way you think about that?
Joanne Ciulla 20:46
Well, I mean, I, here's what I'd like to emphasize about it is the fact that you know, as much as everybody doesn't, like, you know, the single view of leadership, I mean, that's out of favor the heroic view of leadership, when it comes to moral issues, or ethical issues, like the environment, or labor, policies and things like that. History tells us, and again, I'm not a scientist, so I use his history as my data set? When you're studying leadership, it's a really good one, because the stuff happened. And you can look for patterns in history. And that's generally, a lot of my research is looking for patterns in history. But what we see is when there is a moral issue, it tends, and nobody's gonna like me for this to require leadership. And it can be the leadership of a group. But what history shows us and again, it has to do with attribution, you know, do we attribute everything Gandhi did to Gandhi? Well, no, there are other people. Mandela...we can go through that list. But for some reason, and I, this notion of moral leadership is fascinating. For some reason, you kind of need a point person, sort of like statues for religions. You know, you need to have that. So one of my theories is why leadership as much as people don't like it, is it's incredibly helpful at focusing people on something like the environment or whatever. And what you also see in history is the flip side of that question. The flip side is that when you don't have a point person for it, it often doesn't work out as well. So moral causes and moral action often require one person and we don't have to call him or her a leader, we could say one person, to take an initiative to stand for the values and to be able to communicate.
Scott Allen 22:48
Well, and so that would mean my mind immediately, at least in the States goes to Martin Luther King Jr. where he was never elected "leader" of movement. Yet he became a focal point for that work. Of course, there was Abernathy, people like Fred Shuttlesworth, you have all kinds of folks who are in but he becomes that focal point. Does that resonate?
Joanne Ciulla 23:12
Yeah. And one of the other studies I did, because for three years, I was at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa. I was a visiting person, I go in and work there for a few months. But one of the things I did is I did archival research on Nelson Mandela. So the ANC archives is there. And I wrote a paper on it called Searching for Mandela. The Saint is a Sinner Who Keeps on Trying, which is my favorite sayings. And one of the things you study you find with Mandela, especially when you look at his unpublished personal papers, as I did, is that he was constantly saying, you know, "it's not just me, it's a lot of other people." But what the ANC said through that period that he got put in jail, because keep in mind, he could have gotten out of jail six times.
Scott Allen 24:05
Oh, I didn't realize that
Joanne Ciulla 24:06
He did not have to stay there. No, he kept turning them down. Because they said he'd have to give up politics. And he said, as long as my people aren't free, I'm not getting I'm not coming out. And but what you learn from studying someone like Mandela is the ANC leadership, understood, even though it was controversial, that it was really important to have a point man. And that was really important to have the face in the embodiment because it was easier for people around the world to understand this guy in jail. Who had done really interesting things? He was a youth leader, the ANC I mean story Mandela's fascinating, but they needed to have their kind of celebrity. And in every one of the quotes, it's interesting when he became president because he was quite old and he'd been in jail all those years. Apparently, Thabo Mbeki and several other people really handled the day-to-day stuff. He said, "I'm, I'm more of an ornament than a president." And he makes a lot of interesting comments like that. And I'm one of them is a kind of modesty. But I don't know if it's a slightly false modesty because he was aware of the importance of being humble. But it was a lot of it was a kind of reflectiveness. And then in his very, very last, the last thing that he wrote before he had become, he had dementia, so he was unable to write, he wrote this interesting thing where he said, "I don't feel like anybody really knows me. They know the image of me. They know the other person." And that's where the saying that's why I titled The paper. That's where it came back because he had written in letters to people. And he said, "they don't see me. They see me as a saint. But I'm only a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying." And so I think the same could be said of someone like Gandhi or Martin Luther King, is they become iconic leaders, they embody a cause. And to some extent, they're no longer themselves anymore, because Mandela said he didn't think people really knew him. And I think there were times, you know, when he was president, that even got kind of annoyed because people would criticize him for liking to hang out with celebrities or whatever. But you know, you got to say, the guy's poor guy's been in jail all these years. Why not? You gotta have some fun?
Scott Allen 26:38
Well, it's interesting, I'd never really thought of this. But in this could get a little bit to some of the resentment work that you're doing. Tell me if it's if I'm totally off base here. But there's that transition, probably for these individuals, whether it's Adolf Hitler, or Donald Trump, who becomes it starts to embody that movement. Or if it's Mandela, Martin Luther King, or Gandhi, that that shift occurs somewhere. And that shift is an interesting space. When someone moves to a level that is almost larger than...Does that make sense? How...fill in the blank of what I was supposed to say there...larger than life larger than...
Joanne Ciulla 27:28
Do they become? I mean, so if we look at, you know, Mandela, Martin Luther King, or Gandhi, we see that embodying that movement, made it easier for people that understand. And, you know, it's sort of interesting that you know, two out of three were martyrs. But, but it made it easier for them to understand it. In the case of Trump, he became the other side of that as a kind of cult of personality. Such a powerful personality, that he is the republican party or he is this set of ideas. And people come to admire and look to him as not so much the set of ideas but him as an embodiment of a set of feelings they have, so he's the embodiment. And, you know, I'm not saying they're wrong, because I think a lot of the grievances that people had are legitimate, that they felt passed by, they felt looked down on, all of those things. I mean, it's not like, you know, the left was a bunch of saints and the right where a bunch of demons, it's their fault on both sides there. But I think what happened is he embodied it in a somewhat negative way. Because what's interesting is it's a lot more about him than his ideas. You'll notice that whereas Mandela and Martin Luther King, yes, he embodies, they embody them, but it really is about their ideas and their values. And for Trump, it's less about the ideas than it is about him.
Scott Allen 29:10
Well, it's interesting because we started the conversation at resentment. Well, it's interesting if you just look at the context right now, because whether it's kind of late-night hosts, joking, and I think probably fueling some resentment among Republicans as if they're a joke, and they're, they're dumb, and there, or if it's any number of different things happening in our context that are amplified by whether it's Fox or whether it's the liberal media or whether it's the comedians or what the amplification of all of this causes those individuals to dig in. And to probably further resist whatever it is the other side is promoting or communicating, right?
Joanne Ciulla 30:09
Well, there are some interesting things about resentment. So one of the things I wanted to see was what would happen when Trump stopped being president. And probably the most important change was getting them off Twitter and Facebook. Because one of the things I've found in the study resentment, and I also looked at the psychological literature on it, is resemblance like a hungry beast, it needs to be fed all the time. What we saw was a constant feeding of it. So I was curious to see what would happen when those two major avenues? I mean, you still have Fox News, or stop feeding on Fox News feeds it quite well. Yeah, there's always somebody they're angry with, or they're you. They're snide about, or they think is insulting someone, that they're doing a pretty good job. But he doesn't have direct access anymore. So I wanted to know, what would happen, but you're absolutely right. So now you don't have the conservative media feeding it. You have the liberal media, feeding it away. And I was hoping it would start to fade away. But we've seen getting back to this self-destructive behavior, that things like masks and not getting vaccinated. I mean, these are issues that are quite harmful to the individual but are very tied up in ideologies. And there, they show that "I'm so angry at you that I'm gonna punch myself in the face." You know, it's that kind of feeling. So it's, it's, it's fascinating to watch. And, again, we could start to heal it. But there's another aspect to resentment that people love - that is resentment's delicious.
Scott Allen 32:06
like chocolate
Joanne Ciulla 32:07
It's not schadenfreude, which is you know, the pleasure Have you taken someone's misery but resentments delicious feeling of grievance, that insulting of these smart alec condescending liberals, it's delicious. People love it. So that's the other thing is it's similar to schadenfreude, very, very similar emotion. And that's one of the things that makes it hard to crack because people will look for it. They want to taste the one. Keep it going.
Scott Allen 32:43
So how do you make sense of us getting somewhere new? What type of leadership works above some of the current contexts and helps us live in a different space?
Joanne Ciulla 32:59
Well, I think I think it's not so much the leader. I mean, Joe Biden is a fairly bland guy. So I mean, it's hard to get the resentment going about him, you have to say things. I mean, you have to work at him. So you'll notice that the bigger target is, is going to be in the media. And that's, that's the bigger problem because as long as see because it's delicious, people want to watch it. They want to watch it, it's going to keep going. So unless the media starts to change, I mean, there are some interesting lawsuits going on now. Particularly about the voting machines and things like that. There could be ways that the media starts to change a little bit. But I don't think there's a whole lot leader can do about it right now. Some of them may have to change, some of them may get so outrageous that they'll decide this is not constructive. Maybe I'm being overly hopeful. But no, there's no magic bullet leader that could come in and do this. And I think that's a fantasy. I think we've got the best we can get in one that doesn't really feed it. I mean, they have to call him a socialist or Nancy Pelosi that they'd like to attack because they're like attacking women. They have to do something like that. But I mean, Joe Biden is just not he's a religious guy, he's got a whole bunch of the values...but again, so he doesn't create a lot of emotion. That's the best we can do right now is have a leader that doesn't do that. But, there's a lot of noise going on elsewhere that I think is going to be hard to crack.
Scott Allen 34:45
Well, yeah, I mean, I think again late-night TV is fueled by picking on and making fun of the the the right, and conservative talk is fueled by, you know, sniping at the left. And it's billions of dollars. These are billion billion-dollar industries that are fueling the fire. And, and at times very unproductive, especially the talk news.
Joanne Ciulla 35:23
I mean, the one thing that could help and I think this, the one thing that could help is if people lives start to improve. That's, that's the big thing. If they start to improve, they might want to get away from this because there are other things to do. It's awful right now because we're still at the end of the pandemic. And it's...but I mean, there were really substantive things, getting those checks, protecting health care, there's a bunch of things that might start to work against the self-destructive behavior because if you look at the states that aren't vaccinated, they're the poorest states in the country, most of them are the poorest states in the country, these people are going to really suffer for views that are not good for them. And that, that is is sad, but hopefully, you know, we've got huge income inequality, which is part of the grievance. We have a huge transformation of the demographics of our country. That's part of the grievance. So there's a whole lot of things going on. But if people look and see that their daily lives are somehow improving, maybe we've got a shot at sort of a better way of moving forward, because and what you want is, you want both sides of the debate to be putting forth strong proposals for making people's lives better. And you want the public to want people to make their lives better? Once you get to that point, you can start getting rid of the self-destructiveness of the grievance?
Scott Allen 37:05
I think you're right. I mean, people being shut in for 12-14 months, some of the shifts that are occurring contextually, whether that's digitization, globalization. And, again, the demographics of our country shifting. It's, it's a lot. And that's only going to increase in pace, whether it's the if it's the digitization conversation, I mean, it's, you know, one of the most the top five jobs in the country are truck driver, sales associate, call center worker, food prep. And there's a fifth that I'm not,
Joanne Ciulla 37:39
Home health care? Something related to healthcare work.
Scott Allen 37:44
But all of those are, you know, actively being disrupted, because it's big business. So, and they're also not paid as well as they could be.
Joanne Ciulla 37:56
Well, I mean, same for teachers, too. They don't get paid particularly well. So these disruptions, so you've got huge labor disruptions, you've got people who, again, we're still going back, you know, years ago, I wrote a book called The Working Life: The Promise of Betrayal of Modern Work. And that that was published in 2000. And you started to see these huge shifts of people who are making you know, $25 an hour who are stuck going and making minimum wage somewhere because the factories closed. And so if there could be a re-industrialization, or where do we find those jobs? Where the unions and all of this? Yeah, we can have, you know, now we have the Amazon. I mean, it's the same sort of thing. Can those jobs be improved? How do we begin to think about those? So, you know, people are not crazy to have these grievances? They are, you know, again, it's an emotion that has intelligence to it. And so rather than pitting it against reason, we have to say, what's the intelligence in the grievance? And, you know, that creates a situation where they go against their own self-interest.
Scott Allen 39:09
Well, I've told this story on the podcast a couple of times, but my grandfather worked at Hormel in Fort Dodge Iowa, and had a high school education, but died with hundreds of 1000s of dollars in the bank because he'd been conservative saved and could have a good wage, right that that that opportunity was afforded to him. He was an electrician. And you know, today in Fort Dodge, the largest employers the prison or the Walmart, and so, yes, I mean, I think I think those shifts, especially in our rural communities are real, and you could look at it through Maslow even just a very simplistic way of thinking about it. Do people feel safe like they belong, like they are in a relationship and many are far from that. And then that makes self-actualizing even further. It becomes a very, very long stretch. And that's happening in our urban communities as well. Right. So I think I love what you said there, because how do we lift the whole so that more people have access to the life they want to live? A life of meaning and a life of purpose and a life of hope? And the more people that have that in our country, I think probably the better off we are.
Unknown Speaker 40:36
And of course, layered on top of all of that we can't forget the questions of race in this country. Yeah. And the fact that there are serious social justice issues, which some parts of the country who feel this grievance that gets layered on top of it, and I'm not even sure how they process it, because it's a different grievance than some people. But it's, it's obviously just as important, if not more so in terms of how people lead a good life or can lead a good life here.
Scott Allen 41:12
Well, Joanne, as we wind down our conversation, maybe share with listeners some things that have caught your eye lately, some things you've read, or streamed or listened to that that you've enjoyed, and it could have to do a leadership but it doesn't have to just anything. Okay, maybe a new recipe, let's take us to a happier place. An Italian recipe or your favorite scuba diving spot.
Joanne Ciulla
I can tell you that, but I only snorkel.
Scott Allen
Snorkel, I'm sorry.
Joanne Ciulla 41:49
Well, you know, it's really wonderful to snorkel in the Red Sea. Oh, really? It is incredible. And not many people snorkel there. And yeah, it's and I have snorkeled in Alaska to really, but that's not as interesting. You see a lot of help.
Scott Allen 42:08
Okay. feels cold That's great.
Joanne Ciulla 42:15
I think I think that's it. And I've just planted my mint and basil on my windows Hill. And I'm here, I'm drawing a blank. So I'm sure there's, there are lots of things I've been looking at lately. But I don't know where to begin. I am going to be writing a paper on Aesop's Fables.
Scott Allen 42:36
Really. So tell us really quick. Let's end with that. I love that idea. By the way.
Joanne Ciulla 42:43
Yeah. Well, actually, the reason why I got into it's going back to the beginning to resentment, because the best way to understand resentment, and again, showing that throughout history, human emotions have remained pretty much the same is Aesop's fable, The Fox and the Grapes. There's a fox on a hot summer day. And he's going along, and he's very thirsty. And he sees these gorgeous juicy grapes hanging. And he looks up and says, "Oh, I really want those grapes." So he jumps in, he jumps in, he jumps in, he can't get the grapes. And so he gives up and he says, oh, they're probably sour anyway. And he walks away. And there's where we get 'sour grapes.'
Scott Allen 43:29
Oh, wow. Okay,
Joanne Ciulla 43:31
So the idea of resentment is this idea. That's why it's it can be self-destructive. That one of the grievances is that you can't have something. And if you can't have it, then it's bad. And so good old Aesop. He tells us that and of course in one of my books on work. I talked a lot about all the Aesop, images of work the grasshopper, and the ant...on and on. So I thought I'd really dig more into Aesop and see what he had to say about leadership.
Scott Allen 44:06
A lot of wisdom there a lot of wisdom there, right? Okay. Well, thank you for the good work that you do. How can people learn more about you and your work at Rutgers?
Joanne Ciulla
Well, let's see. I mean, Wikipedia...
Scott Allen 44:22
And that's how we know you've arrived. If you have a Wikipedia page, is it correct? Is your Wikipedia page correct? Or does it say that there was some scandal in 1973? That wasn't true?
Joanne Ciulla
I have not looked at it lately! Now I'm terrified to look at it. The only thing I don't like about it, It lets people know how old you are. Yes, sir. Wikipedia. They can just look in the Faculty of Rutgers Business School. My CV is there. And there's more description. My work Um, I'm the Director of the Institute for Ethical Leadership at Rutgers. So they can go to that website, see what we're up to. Not much lately, but actually we're doing some really interesting initiatives, we've been doing a huge initiative on race, even before Black Lives Matter, and leadership programs for black professionals, and people of color in the nonprofit, industry, leadership programs with the capacity building programs in that area. And that's kind of what we do. We have a really good team of faculty who do work more on ethics-related things, but at my Institute, we do both ethics and leadership.
Scott Allen 45:45
Well, I will put the information to all of that that you just shared in the show notes so that people have access. I'll also give them some Aesop fables. That's a great idea. Yeah. Okay. Well, I really, really appreciate your time today. Thank you so much for the work that you do. Thank you for your mind and your good thinking, helping us better understand what it is that swirling around us. We appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Joanne Ciulla 46:14
You're welcome.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai