Next, from the National Press club in washington d. C. , michael lindsay, president of Jordan College in massachusetts present the results of his tenure power in america. Mr. Lindsey says a few thousand people in the u. S. Make decisions than packed everyone else. He conducted indepth interviews with 550 government and business leaders. To find out how they operate. This event is hosted by the attorney for the nonprofit organish basting washed to d. C. [inaudible conversations] good evening, everyone. Good evening and welcome to the Trinity Forums evening conversation with michael and me, on view from the top, an inside look at how people in power see it shaped the world. We are thrilled by the turnout tonight. If you are still standing, dairy spread over here. One or two right there as well so feel free to make your way to a stop where you can actually fit comfortably for the rest of the evening. I am president of the Trinity Forum and we are really excited to partner with gordon. Id like to thank gordon scored and staff for their willingness to partner with s. And i am delighted we are joined tonight including suzy young as well as Trinity ForumBoard Members and holiday of kramer, peter nehr donald and hardy and caroline gertner. Im also delighted so many Trinity ForumAcademy Alumni and garden alumni are here tonight. We are delighted you are here. Finally, we are excited each and everyone of you are here this evening. We think youre going to find this session very compelling. Since theres not enough time to answer all the audience questions, we want to let you know we will be live blogging this event see them a lot social media either on her face but page or on twitter, using hash tag Trinity Forum for hash tag view from the top. In addition to being broadcast live tonight on cspan2, tonights presentation is also going to run throughout the weekend on cspans booktv. For those of you who are familiar with the Trinity Forum, we provide a space henrys versus for theaters to a geisha lifes greatest question in the context of faith. We believe ideas have consequences in part of the christian mandate of loving god with all of your mind requires awful docile contemplation of the great ideas and questions of our time. And so it is our mission and our joy to provide publications and programs such as the one tonight to help leaders engage this question and ultimately to come to better know the author of the answers. It has been said the Great Questions of why essentially boil down to just three. What is a good person . What is the good life . And what is a just society . Our conception of and hopes for all three of those questions are necessarily in a southeastern part of the individual and to touche and it shaped our lives. So grappling with those Great Questions ushers in another line of inquiry. What is the nature of good leadership. Is it possible to both live and lead wisely and well . It is a question of enormous importance and perhaps particularly in our time, when public trust in leaders in business governments in virtually every institution has plummeted new lows in the wake of leadership failures. As the supply of trustworthy leaders seems ever more elusive, the need to understand how to cultivate and develop such leadership is more urgent. You can address that need with the expertise or the inside as our speaker this evening, dr. Michael lindsay. Michael is a prominent sociologist, authored president of her college located outside of boston, massachusetts pretty cynical lot of alar theology degrees from print in an oxford as well as a phd in sociology from princeton michael has devoted much of his academic career to this buddy of leadership. As a professor at rice university, he directed the program for the study of leadership or as well as published his Pulitzer Prize nominated book, faith in the halls of power, which is listed as the best book of 2007 by Publishers Weekly and widely profiled in the New York Times and wall street journal, usa today, cnn and countless other outlets. Since assuming the presidency of gordon, michaels leadership expertise has come increasingly practical as well as academic. His relatively short tenure there has been accompanied not only by a dramatic increase in applications enrollments and donations or which im sure youre travesties thank you, but though a new web essays on developing and inspired a new generation of leaders. Towards that end coming is developed and introduced two new programs included the Court President ial fellows program, which is modeled after the white house programs and to elevate program, what he calls a weeklong leadership lab. He has also just come pleaded the largest ever interview this buddy of leaders, the results of which he details in his newest book, view from the top, which weve invited him to the guys here today. At the conclusion of michaels remarks, he will be joined on stage by his coauthor, mary grace hager, who i am proud to say is alumnus of the Trinity Forum academy. We are very proud to claim here. Together they will take audience questions. Michael, welcome. [applause] well, thank you very much. I wish my folks are here. My dad be so proud of my mom would actually believe what she said. Tonight i want to share with you what i spent the last 10 years of my life focus on. Trying to understand what makes great leaders. What are the motivations that drive them to assume positions of responsibility. How did they manage the challenges and opportunities they encounter with their position to respond ability and how did they seek to create a legacy that extends far beyond their term in office. A lot of people ask me how the world did you get a chance to interview 550 amazing individuals . It was a wonderful project started out as my dissertation some living proof you can write a dissertation your wife will describe is actually interest in. So much of getting the interviews as a matter of being the right place at the right time. I had a couple hours to kill so i went to the bookstore at stanford university. I looked over in the corner of my eye and saw a woman who ive been trying to track down for years. A woman who looked exactly like karen hughes. They served as counselor for george w. Bush. Ive been trying to get an interview for about four years and here she was, or so i thought in the flash. I wasnt positive whose care in hughes unless i decided i needed to wait until she spoke. Is there to ease sat beside this woman and in a couple minute she said something and i instantly recognized the raspy text and voice and thought this is maybe rake. I realize ive never asked anyone for review facetoface here it is what is like asking someone out on a date facetoface. What if they say no . That embarrassing. So i needed to get that arafat. I decided i was circled around karen hughes, which i did. I got to the end of the first urkel and decided im not need to do this allows circle a second time. I circle the third time in the fourth time. I circled five times at the stanford bookstore. At the end of the fifth cycle i decided this was too nerveracking. Im out of here and i left the store. There is a large plant that cited the bookstore at stanford. I seen out there and it thinking what was that about . Why was i so intimidated and so concerned what she would think of me . So what if she says no . Shall forget in five minutes all remember the rest of my life. So i decided to go back into the bookstore. I go back and looking for karen hughes and i cant find her. I thought this is defined punishment. I did not encourage early on. Eventually i notice shes on the second floor of the coffee bar. And they can have a dresser . Tricolored matting counselor, counselors use, mrs. Hughes, what am i supposed to say . I was sorting that out as they reached her. So i tapped her on the shoulder. She turned around and i have this habit when i get nervous at having read splotches appear on my neck and i knew i had about 60 seconds before my face would be be bad. So i said. The sociologist acting a study of leaders. Wonder if he might give me an interview. She said inoculate gynecologist at my son, so this is not a good time. I give you my phone number and you can call me a couple months. Id be happy to sit down with you. I took her number and a couple months past i said i dont know if you know but my name is michael lindsay. [laughter] i said yes that need. She ended up giving me an interview. It was an amazing interview. Here is a one in who really wasnt surprised as anyone that she was in the inner circle of political power. She had not spent her life trying to get there. She happened to be good as the man man who ran for president. He ended up winning and he invited her to come work with him. Once she was in the office, she began to wonder, is this how i want to lead my life . She was working crazy hours i had a teenage son. If you know her story, she ended up resigning her position at the white house, moving to austin. It was at that time i conducted the interview with her. She was grappling with questions about location and calling, responsibility and influence. She ended up deciding to go back to washington, with the state department for a couple of years. She represents what i found across the 550 people to meet extraordinary individuals. Each of them had their own stories. Interesting things to offer as we understand how this readership work in our culture today. I wrote view from the top with hope it would inspire the next generation of leaders. If youre in a position of responsibility, i think youll find it resonates with the periods. People had sent the email sender not all he emails, so i take that as a good sign. What we tried to do in the story is to represent peoples experiences truthfully and honestly as we could and at the same time apply the critical analysis skills of a social scientist. We tell stories of numbers, big numbers of folks who are represented in this story, but also individual experiences and journeys. Theres four things i thought might be helpful to share that ill walk away from the study after tenures thinking is really important. One is the significance of what we call institutional leadership. George hile meyer is an extraordinary man, an engineer who grew up not too far away and the university of pennsylvania. His parents were immigrants to this country. He didnt have a lot of money. His dad was a janitor. But he went to college, studied engineering and got a job working for rca. While he was an engineer there, he actually discover the type knowledge sheet that would allow liquid crystal displays, something we use today. The problem however is george discovered this in 1964 and the leadership that ours ea wasnt convinced it was all that interest me. And so while he tried to persuade his colleagues, in the end he wasnt accessible. The u. S. Lost its competitive advantage. It was the japanese super hot liquid crystal displays to the marketplace in the 1970s and 80s. You see, george is an extraordinary individual. But without his additional backing, he wasnt able to make a longterm difference i changed human history. Hes focused the credit for coming up with the invention, that most people dont even know his name. Institutions matter far more than i expect in starting the study. I thought interviewing ipod or 50 people id be studying extraordinary personalities, people who have a certain persona. What i found this most of the power in our culture is housed within institutions. So if you dont have that word is inside connection and a leadership position with institution, you have little chance of making a lot term impact on culture. One extraordinary man that is named marty evidence. She was a first female rear admiral in the u. S. Navy. She went on to nervous ahead of the american red cross, the commission ladies professional golf ossetian, then on a number of corporate boards. Do you remember the tailhook incident that happened in the u. S. Navy in the night a 90s. It was an embarrassing situation where there is clear gender bias occurred within the military. Marty was the person who was tasked with leading the task orders that would help the u. S. Navy figure out how could you create more space for women to serve in combat or leadership positions in the u. S. Navy . Because she was an insider at that institution, she was able to bring about his can change to the u. S. Military. One of the key lessons i tell my students that gordon is if you want to have a lasting impact, youve got to be in that room where decisions are made. That is why you do to show leadership matters. The second key elements of leadership we encounter over the course of the study is the value of early leadership. Heres the interesting thing. We found that it really doesnt matter much about what you do before age 20. There is no statistically significant relationship between virtually any variable you can imagine and the likelihood of becoming a strategic leader later in life. It doesnt matter if your parents were rich or poor. It doesnt matter if youre a varsity athlete or a student body president. It doesnt matter if youre popular or ignorant. None of those things matter. What does matter however sometime in the early adult stage, 18, and 10, 20, 21, 22, in the College Years in particular you need to find a mentor. Somebody who will help raise the opportunity for you, who will introduce you to different networks. Its a wonder for a social scientist who wrote a book in the 1970s a getting a job. The key finding from this research is it doesnt really matter if your family and friends help you make connections when youre applying for jobs because they dont have a longterm impact. Instead he discovered what he calls the strength of weak ties. We get jobs because of acquaintance networks, friends of friends who help make introduction and give us opportunities. In fact, that is what i found over the course of my study. Many folks who got a leg up in the world achieve that because they were a friend of a friend who made an introduction. One of the key findings of this study is young people have to learn how to max immense opportunities they are given. Not everybody has the same repertoire of skills or talents, that you use what you are getting to the maximum potential. A wonderful story, kevin plank at the university of maryland. Kevin wasnt the best dudes in school. He also wasnt the best athlete. A number of friends were drafted for the nfl and he didnt have his sights on that because he did think it was a possibility. Kevin had always been good at sales. He ran in college Mayflower Service for guys to buy roses their girlfriends on alan penn state, ran it out of his dorm room in it a lot money. He knew he could tell things. One day at the end of the practice is committed to a day practices he was having in late august, it think it his senior year he realized he took his shoulder pads off in his tshirt was just weighted down with sweat. He thought, theres got to be a way in which you could invent a fabric that could somehow with the way the moisture so you would not have this five, 10 pounds you are carrying when trying to perform as an athlete. He literally invented the industry of performance apparel. He took his last 600 while he was sleeping on the couch at his grandmothers house, invested in six different fibers, trying to see if this would be the key and it ended up working in back of the and gentlemen, was the start of under armour. You never know how you take opportunity in background and experience is youve got to maximize the muggers feels that a lasting impact. Early leadership we found next to huge difference. You have to experience of a cali leadership catalyst. When i was a faculty member at rice, we were trying to figure out how could rice enter into the top 10 stations nationally ranked. Price is a wonderful school. 16, 17, 18. One of the areas they might invest in with a rigorous Leadership Development program that would help elevate the contributions of the young people who they were serving. So i was tested the opportunity to go and look about the Leadership Development programs being run in universities in the dirt, public or in seeing what was working effectively. I looked at 25 had a lot of promise included there was one that was very significant. Its called the white house fellowship. It was started in 19 before by president johnson. Its a programmer folks in their 20s who are promising emerging leaders resign whatever job they have at the time, moved to washington and come work for you as cabinet secretary for one year. And the role they are given a chance to see up close how does leadership really work and then they take the tears back with them to their respective jobs. The idea according to president johnson is this would raise leadership quotient of those folks who go on to occupy Senior Leadership roles and commerce, technology, entertainment and government not just over 10 years, the 50 years. Its been amazingly significant. As it turned out, i was able to be in the Selection Process for one year and this is when i became convinced this was extraordinary. I see a guy who holds Johns Hopkins medical school read a textbook used in 40 of medical schools around the country and is a regular contributor to cnn. He got reject it for the white house fellowship. I decided that its up that is that the rejects look like. Ive got to study this program. Its wonderful because the nurses as many as 2000 or three people to apply for the fellowship and then narrow it down to 30 national finalists. Ive got to tell you, when you take a pool of 3000 narrow it down to 30, its really hard to tell who should be select it and who should. Because i was on inside track, its how you theres a lot of things that were idiosyncratic that a particular candidate kelley joe of the judges like . Did they make a connection with somebody else . You cant tell the folks at heart in meaningful ways at that point. If you follow their career trajectories, something emerges. We found, for example, among the folks who were finalists, but not actually selected to be a fellow, 12 go on to be a very senior leader, to be a ceo of a fortune 1000 company or hold a similar position in their own field, whether madison, law, entertainment or education. Thats not bad. But if you compare that with those folks who are not just finalists for the program, but actual white house fellows come easy over the course of their career, 32 of them go on to hold th