Dana H. Born: So welcome to another how conversation on moral leadership. We’re so excited to have with us a known partner and friend to the HOW Institute for society, the Honorable Anthony Renard Foxx, who is just an absolute moral leader and someone that we’re looking forward to having in this conversation, honorable Foxx, I just want to say welcome to you and let our listeners hear your voice so they know you’re here and ready to jump into this conversation.

Anthony Foxx: It’s great to be with you, Dana and please Anthony, at all times it’s all it’s all good.

Dana H. Born: Well, you know, my military background means that that’s hard for me to do. I will try my best for this conversation to keep it just personal for our listeners, but also great wisdom. Anthony Foxx, the Honorable Anthony Renard Foxx is currently a professor of practice of public leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and so a great friend and colleague there, and is also the former chief policy officer and Senior Advisor for Lyft and part of their executive leadership team from 2018 to 2021 he also was the 17th secretary of transportation for the Obama administration during 2013 to 2017 and before that, former mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, his native hometown, and was the youngest mayor from 2009 to 2013 so good to get into this conversation with you. We’re going to jump right in, if that’s okay with you.

Anthony Foxx: Sounds great. Thank you.

Dana H. Born: Alright, so let’s get to your name. What’s in a name? I always love the question of you know, tell us about the history of your name, yours. In particular, I learned the cleverness of your grandmother in naming you Anthony Renard Foxx, as Renard is Foxx in French. So it’s a nice segue into telling us a bit about your upbringing, experience that shaped you your early years, family and other people that have influenced you, and you know the questions, ideas, principles, aspirations, that these beloved people that you are thinking about right now. What? What did they instill within you and and share that with us? It kind of helps us get to know you a little bit better.

Anthony Foxx: Yeah, I’m originally from North Carolina, as you mentioned, and grew up mostly living in my grandparents home as a kid, they were like surrogate parents to me, my my grandparents were educators. They were they were public school teachers, and they had taught by the time I came into the world. They had been teaching for 30 or 40 years by that point, and most of their careers were spent in the old segregated school system. So and my grandfather had been a principal. So they had, they had deep experience with segregation in America. And you know, you would think that when I came along, they would maybe harbor resentments or think about the world in very polemical terms. But they were, they were very much the type of people who who believe deeply in America and believe deeply in education as a as a pathway to opportunity. So, you know, growing up in the house, there were books all around all the time, because they they bring home material from the school year. And I was always reading. And you know, like many kids, I needed to hear and heard often that that there was something special about me and and I started to believe that. And you know, as I went along in the world, I found that there were no there. There were no two people who infused in me the the idea of community, the idea of service, the idea of faith and values more than my grandparents did

Dana H. Born: and you honor them in remembering them now and how that has shaped how you have led and actually learned throughout your career and lifetime. Let’s go in from public service to being an advisor for a big company like Lyft. There were some thorny decisions that you had to work on while you were there, and I know there were many, but one of them was a big public debate whether the drivers for Lyft should be considered employees or independent contractors. I’m wondering if you would walk us through how you led those discussions and how you shaped people to navigate the gray area, the nuances and ultimately come to a decision for. That organization,

Anthony Foxx: yeah, it’s, it was a very difficult, difficult set of issues. One of the more complex problems I’ve ever had to deal with. What happened was, in California, the state Supreme Court issued a ruling, and it was the case was actually about independent truck drivers, but in the in the opinion, they decided that a certain category of independent drivers were not independent contractors under California law, but were actually employees of companies that were utilizing their work. So at that point, the company really had to look at all of its alternatives, including, you know, complying with the with the then current law. What’s interesting is that when we went out and pulled drivers for lots of reasons, the majority of drivers in in at least in our business, were telling us they didn’t want to be employees now. Did they want to get paid better for the work they were doing? Yes. Did they want to have some structure in place to provide things like health care and retirement in place? Absolutely. And so what we began to do, working with some other app based companies, was to imagine a system where they could maintain the flexibility of being an independent contractor while also having some of the benefits that typically come when someone is employed. And what became of that was was prop 22 which was a measure that we put on the ballot that provided that type of hybrid kind of role, maybe like a third way. Let’s say California voters passed it overwhelmingly during 2020

Dana H. Born: and I want to quote for our listeners something you’ve shared where you said a lot of people in the technology space. Love the idea of solving a problem. Part of being innovative is sometimes not trying to plot out the last chapter of the book, but to open and see what comes back into the future. What did you mean by that? How do you inspire and enlist people to get behind innovation, particularly in organizations where workflows are pretty steeply entrenched.

Anthony Foxx: Yeah, so I’ll use an older school example to make the point, because I do think history doesn’t necessarily repeat itself, but it definitely rhymes. And you know, when I think about the interstate highway system that was built in the 1950s and 60s and beyond, there was a very strong push to get the end result, which was an end to end national highway system. And as a result, what happened is, I think records will show a really difficult, painful type of progress that happened in building that system that in many ways, dispossessed people of property without fair compensation and without, you know, effectively, due process. But my point is, is that sometimes we get so focused on on a certain outcome that we we don’t leave room for the incremental or the adjustments that need to be made along the way. And we, we can, we can end up being very destructive, and I worry about that today. When we think about AI and we think about some of the new technologies that are coming online, there’s such a race to the finish line that we’re not we’re not plotting out our steps very well.

Dana H. Born: So humility seems to play a big role in your leadership style, and I think it’s sort of oozes from you. And I want to share another quote that you said, I care less about the methods and means by which we get it done. The way I think about it is that if you are someone who works with me, you’re also a leader. I expect you to be a leader, and I understand that you have to use your natural abilities differently than I use mine. Part of my job is to help build other leaders. What is the role humility plays when it comes to making a wave of moral leadership in each person and maybe an example or a quick story you can share about what you’ve learned in practicing humility in your own leadership and learning journey.

Anthony Foxx: Yeah, well, I can speak from a lot of a lot of missteps along the way, mostly, which I think is one way that people do learn. I remember being a young lawyer in a law firm and feeling somewhat self directed and self, you know, self reliant. It wasn’t until I got on to the Charlotte City Council actually. Where I was one of 11 members, and to get any one thing done, I had to find six people who would agree with me. It wasn’t until I got to that point where I started to realize, in a real way, the power of figuring out what other people need, what other people want, and helping them get there as part of your own journey to getting those things that you need or that you you want. And what I’ve started to figure out about at least my own leadership style is that I’m less I’m less command and control as a leader. I you know, maybe you could think of a of a symphonic conductor as command and control, because that person, you know, measures time and stands in front of the group, but in reality, that person really isn’t, isn’t going to be effective if they don’t recognize what each individual musician is bringing to the piece and and to try to figure out how to bring it out of them, and that’s how I think of myself as a leader. So when I’m when I’m with a new team, the first thing I’m trying to figure out is, what, what am I noticing about the strengths and weaknesses of the people around me? And what I find is that when people feel like they’re doing their thing is, you know, at the highest level they possibly can, and they’re being supported in doing that, and it’s also contributing to the overall success of an organization that is the best, that’s the best feeling you can have is to see other people in the zone, getting the successes that they see for themselves and being part of helping them do that.

Dana H. Born: You’ve been in the government, you’ve been in local state government as a mayor. You’ve been in the business world. What have you learned across these different sectors in terms of leadership?

Anthony Foxx: I think there are certain things that I think you can pick up across different different sectors. Vision is very important. People need to know where they’re going. And really good leaders are able to not only articulate a vision, but they’re also drawing from others as they as they communicate that vision. And there’s, you know, I think any leader worth his or her salt is going to care what the people who actually have to implement their decisions are feeling and seeing and reflecting in the work they do. I reached out to a lot of leaders, both as mayor as well as transportation secretary, and one of them was which the coach of of Duke basketball, Mike who spent, he was generous with his time. He spent more than an hour with me just talking about various fine points of leadership, but he told me a story about a couple of players. One was a senior, one was an incoming freshman, and the incoming freshman was going to be better for the team in a certain position that the senior had occupied the year before. So he needed to figure out how they could coexist. And instead of just deciding from on high. He talked to them, he sat down and had breakfast with him and explained what his thinking was, and asked them both for their permission to do this adjustment so he’s respecting what they’re bringing to the table. And I think that’s probably the last thing that I that I would talk about, is just as a leader, and just having ultimate respect for the people who are under your charge and and showing them that will get you a lot further than expecting it. You

Dana H. Born: know, how can we develop moral leaders to create accountability when there’s poor behavior or there’s challenging circumstances where personal loyalty feels like it’s a real variable in trying to accomplish the mission, sometimes it doesn’t work out as we hope so. How do you approach that? To develop moral leaders within your ranks, and to get that accountability that you hope as a moral leader, and for them as moral leaders,

Anthony Foxx: I just think it’s important to be honest with people, and you know when they’re when they’re falling below expectation. I think it’s important to call it out right then and there, and to point out what corrections need to be put in place, so that you’re having an ongoing conversation, not just one that comes around during the annual review period or whatever the system is in place, a leader has to think in three dimensions. There’s what is, what does the leader want to. Accomplish. What does the team want to accomplish, and what do the individuals on the team want to accomplish? Now the other the other side of that is there’s a positive way to do this too, which is when you see behaviors that exceed expectations or or even match what the standard is. You can call that out to the team and make it clear that you know this person has really shown us what what we’re after, and that then becomes perhaps a virtuous cycle of helping people start to gravitate towards what the actual goal is and not focus on the negative. So it works both ways, and I think in most cases, I found, if you do generous amounts of the positive side of that people can tolerate the negative side when, when their perception is that the person was treated fairly. If, if there’s a negative situation that arises,

Dana H. Born: there’s great examples. I hear themes of clear communications, consistency, you know, being clear about expectations, and so much more. So if you had to simplify advice for developing moral leaders, maybe people just starting out on their what they would consider a moral leadership journey. And maybe for some of our listeners who are very seasoned developing moral leaders, what would be your one piece of advice for all of us,

Anthony Foxx: I think, for someone who’s developing their career path, and you know, sort of earlier in their career journey, I think it’s important to know what your line is, and I, you know, I’ve, from time to time in my working life, I’ve been asked to do things that crossed my line and and when that happened, I I had to, I had to tell as uncomfortable as it was, I had to tell someone who was my manager, or whatever I had to say no and at risk, at risk of disappointing this person, at risk of perhaps losing my job. You know, I’ve been in that situation before, and what I would say is that that is where your moral leadership is most tested when no one’s looking, and you are being called and you feel that, that sense within yourself, that you’re you know your your standards are being tested. You know, on there are some certain questions that only you can answer in real time. And I think that’s where the courage is is built. And then down the road in time, you learn from experiences like that. And hopefully none of the people who are listening to this have the have the experience I had, but, but you learn in time that as a leader again, it comes back to this question of trust. You know, people who you are entrusted to lead have have a basic amount of trust in you that you’re not going to point them in the wrong direction and and so it actually has made me appreciate that even more over time, because of experiences I’ve had.

Dana H. Born: I mean, at the how Institute, we believe moral leaders are purveyors of hope, and sometimes what’s happening in the world can be daunting. And as a history major in college, you’ve spoken about the importance of remembering and not having amnesia about our past. I love the Winston Churchill quote of the further back we look, the further ahead we might see. And your own quote another one, Future has infinite capacity to be better than the past or present. So as a final question for our how? Conversation, and moral leadership, listeners, what in this moment of time is giving you a sense of hope.

Anthony Foxx: When I was a when I was a child, my grandparents took me to my grandmother’s hometown, Carthage, North Carolina, the county seat of Moore county in the sand hills of North Carolina, right smack in the center of the state. And we walked to the courthouse in the center of town, which sits in the middle of a traffic circle. And she walked over to this stoop, and she said, you know my grandmother, my grandmother’s talking now, my grandmother was sold on this block. And as a kid, you know, I was, you know, probably eight or nine years old, we were laughing, you know, like, oh, that must have been your relative, not mine, you know, like we were always trying to distance ourselves from it. You. But as I think about that telling of history and the fact that I knew someone in my life who knew my intergenerational slavery connection, you know that closely I just it’s hard not to be optimistic when, when I think about the road My family has traveled from then to now, it’s hard not to be optimistic when I see young people you know, at The Kennedy School or or in in in my college or, you know, places that I that I see, even my children and their friends, the optimism and the energy that they have to correct the world’s problems, that energy is sorely needed in the world, and it’s, it’s something that you, you know, you hope that Our generations don’t, don’t snuff out of them, because it’s that energy that starts to change things for the better. So, you know, I think the world is, is, you know, we will repeat our problems as as humanity, until those problems are interrupted either by the Earth itself or by people who decide that is now time to change things.

Dana H. Born: Secretary Foxx, you are a wonderful partner in this common cause, also in wave making moral leadership. And we are so grateful to you and have such great respect for you. Thank you so much. On behalf of the how Institute for society, for this how conversation on moral leadership, and we salute you and wish you well in your continuing work to create this wave.

Anthony Foxx: Thank you so much. It’s great to join you.