Episode 52: America’s Friction, Progress, and Leadership Lessons Behind the Noise

**Charlie Harari** (0:00)
This is Crossing the Chasm, your front row seat to how leaders think in real time. My name is Charlie Harari, RXR's Chief People and Organizational Strategy Officer, and I'm joined with RXR's CEO and leader, Scott Rechler. Join us as we break down what's happening in the world, and we pull out the leadership lessons behind the headlines. Scott, thanks for taking the time.

**Scott Rechler** (0:17)
It's great to be here.

**Charlie Harari** (0:18)
So this past weekend for me was, and for many I was just, I don't know, just felt different. The 250, the birthday America, the overwhelming feeling that you're part of something and that God put you in a country that has so many pieces that you're proud of. How is it for you?

**Scott Rechler** (0:34)
I, again, I felt the same way. I also reflected back to the 1976 Bicentennial, which I remember clearly as a kid, living through that experience. And also the same time, hearing my parents and others talk about the challenges the country had. And I think it helps put things in perspective that every generation of an American thinks this time is different, right? Every generation thinks that there's something wrong with it, the new challenges, the divisiveness, the way that things are broken. And yet we always find a way to fix it. And as I talk to my in-laws who lived in the 60s, and all the trauma and the political challenges, they thought that this was different. And what you find is, when you think about historically, and this was always the case, it's history is humbling, right? It puts in perspective that America is built to adapt to these challenges. It's built to be pliable. It's built to not be perfect. And that through not being perfect, we find ways to create progress, right? And I think we've all learned to be able to, as a country, have this comfort in the uncomfortableness of going through those frictions. Because if you're a country that's driven by striving for change, striving to get better, that creates friction as you're going through that process. And we've been living through that. And I think it's, as we look today, I think it's gotten with technology, with social media, it's amplified the extremes. So you're feeling that more. But when you think about the public at large, Americans love to be Americans. Their Americans are patriotic. Americans love to be part of the community. Americans like to do what they can do to make their communities better. Americans love to take risks and be the best they can be. They like the challenges, right? That is where the mainstream American is. But the extreme noise on either side of that is amplifying and drowning out that reality to a lot of people.

**Charlie Harari** (2:32)
So what I'm hearing you say, which I think I've never fully understood before, which is really the friction is a natural outgrowth of being an American, right? Had we all had the mentality of sitting back and resting on our laurels, or feeling like we can't make change, then that sort of hopelessness would really reduce the friction. So in many ways, the friction, the change, the confusion is part of the process. And that's okay. It's just that the noise may be just getting in the way.

**Scott Rechler** (3:00)
And go back to Abraham Lincoln when he actually, you know, it really got our country to celebrate Independence Day and the Declaration of Independence was right while we were in the middle of the Civil War, right?
So there's social unrest around progress. And yet today, when you really look at the substance of this country, we have our murder rates at the lowest level. They've been, yes, we have income inequality, but we have the lowest poverty levels that we've had historically. More people are educated, right? We have a 4% unemployment rate as a country today. And we're leading the world in every commercial and innovative sense and scientific sense that there is out there, right? And that is the American dynamism that we have. And it's something that's in our DNA that we attract the people from around the world and the people here who want to do great things, who are willing to take risks, who are willing to create that next innovation that transforms what the world is all about.

**Charlie Harari** (4:02)
I wonder if it's, and tell me if you would agree with this, I wonder if part of what makes America, America is its focus on the person's focus on the community. It's enabling people to be people and allowing people to come as they are. One of the things that we do here at RXR, very clearly you say you come as you are, you don't have to be somebody else, we just want you to be you. And I wonder if that's what makes America so special is this feeling of you get to be you and when you bring you to the table, we'll get all that stuff, we'll get all that dynamism, we'll get all that risk, we'll get all that wanting to make your community better, wanting to make your neighborhood better, wanting to be part of something more, helping. I just wonder if part of the American feeling is to be you and bring the best of you every single day.