Ira Chaleff - The Power of Political Followers to Make Good Leaders and Brake Bad Ones

Ira Chaleff is an author, speaker, and executive coach in the greater Washington, DC, area. His extensive experience with the US federal government includes directing and chairing the nonpartisan Congressional Management Foundation, where he is now Chair Emeritus. 

Ira co-authored the original handbook for newly elected Members of Congress, now in its fifteenth edition, and has facilitated over a hundred retreats for congressional offices. He has led and participated in Democracy strengthening programs in Asia and West Africa and consulted for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Eastern Europe.

He has been an adjunct faculty member at the Federal Executive Institute and a visiting leadership scholar at Churchill College, Cambridge University in England. Ira served two terms on the Board of Directors of the International Leadership Association and is the founder of its Followership Community.

His previous award-winning books include The Courageous Follower: Standing Up To and For Our Leaders and Intelligent Disobedience: Doing Right When What You’re Told To Do Is Wrong which has been published in translation in Beijing and Moscow. Ira speaks on courageous followership and intelligent disobedience at a wide variety of institutions, including the US Department of State, the US Naval Academy, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the European Commission of the EU, and many others.

A Quote From Ira Chaleff

• "If you were a supporter of Kamala Harris, and are feeling frightened by the election results. That is how Trump supporters would be feeling if Harris had won. Each side feared tyranny if the other side won, and neither can imagine how the other side could feel that. The work now is to reduce the chasm between these lived world views and for both sides to be vigilant and protect the rights we cherish.”

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Book: To Stop a Tyrant by Chaleff
• Book: Intelligent Disobedience by Chaleff
• Book: The Courageous Follower by Chaleff

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

• The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals interested in studying, practicing, and teaching leadership. Plan for Prague - October 15-18, 2025!

My Approach to Hosting

• The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your reflection, research, and exploration of the topic.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Insights on Political Leading and Following
• 21:48 Understanding Dictators and Tyrants
• 28:09 Courageous Followership in Political Settings

Transcript

Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate, and conversations-to-text do not always translate perfectly. I include it to provide you with the spirit of the conversation.

Scott Allen  0:00 

Okay, everybody, welcome to the podcast, Practical Wisdom for Leaders. Thank you so much for checking in wherever you are in the world. I have a long-time friend, Ira Chaleff, today. And he is an author, speaker, executive coach in the Greater Washington, DC area. His extensive experience with the US Federal Government includes having directed and chaired the non-partisan Congressional Management Foundation where he is now chair emeritus. Ira co-authored the original handbook for newly elected members of Congress, now in its 15th edition, and has facilitated over 100 retreats for congressional offices. He has led and participated in democracy-strengthening programs in Asia and West Africa, and consulted for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Eastern Europe. He has been adjunct faculty at the Federal Executive Institute, and was a visiting leadership scholar at Churchill College, Cambridge University in England. Ira served two terms on the board of directors of the International Leadership Association and is the founder of its followership community. His previous award-winning books include ‘The Courageous Follower: Standing Up to and for Our Leaders, and ‘Intelligent Disobedience: Doing Right When What You're Told to Do Is Wrong,’ which has been published in translation in Beijing and in Moscow. Ira speaks on courageous followership and intelligent disobedience at a wide variety of institutions, including the US Department of State, the US Naval Academy, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the European Commission of the EU, and many others. His newest book published this month is ‘To Stop a Tyrant: The Power of Political Followers to Make or Brake a Toxic Leader,’ which has already been called a book that has met its time. Sir, thank you so much for being with me today. I very, very much appreciate, as always, your time. What else do listeners need to know about you, Ira, that maybe isn't in the bio? What’s something you can share?

Ira Chaleff  2:04 

The foundational impetus for writing all my books, and in particular this book, is my family history. I was raised in a multi-generational family. My maternal grandmother lost her entire family in the Holocaust. At a very early age, the question became central for me, how does that happen? Why do people follow such destructive leaders? And can we do anything about it? In many ways, this book, which is dedicated to my grandmother, is the capstone of this investigation for me.

Scott Allen  2:47 

Wow, that's incredibly powerful, Ira. And so, this topic cuts to the core of who you are.

Ira Chaleff  2:55

Yes. 

Scott Allen  2:56

So, your books are just incredible, and they've always pushed us forward. And this, again, is another one that is going to push us forward. I have it next to me right now. It is dog-eared. It is marked up. But I want to start the conversation with what were some insights you had throughout this process. You're a prolific researcher, you're doing the work. I know that you were working on this book for a period of time, but were there moments where you thought, “Oh, wow, huh.” That really just light bulbs or insights that just came to you in the process of writing the book?

Ira Chaleff  3:32 

I'm not a political scientist by training, and yet, I've waited waist-deep into political science. A number of fascinating, sometimes, disturbing insights occurred to me. For example, I learned that Carl Schmidt, who was Hitler's jurist, did an assessment of politics in which he said politics distills down to one thing, friend or foe. That's a very problematic description, but yet it explains some of the behavior we see right now in the US political system. You can ask, “Why do very intelligent, aware, alert, sophisticated people keep supporting one leader or another when there are obvious problems with them?” Friend or foe. Carl Schmidt was, of course, after he was found guilty in the Nuremberg trials and received a short sentence, he was not looked at as a source you want to use. But then, he was rehabilitated because it turns out that his observations on politics were so germane, like Machiavelli, that you couldn't ignore them. So, here I am coming from a perspective of principle, purpose, honor as central to political action, and I have to be faced with this other reality of, no, friend or foe. So, in some ways, this book takes a very realistic look at political leading and following. There is nothing Pollyannaish about it. I look at how, at times, autocratic leaders are actually the right type of leader for their nation. But that doesn't mean that we need to give in to their tendency to then become dictatorial, or worse, tyrannical. So, I believe this book is teasing apart some of the strands that we in the leadership and followership communities need to understand better so that we're not speaking from the academy, we're speaking from the real world of what happens with leading and following on a societal scale with all the impact that entails.

Scott Allen  6:30 

Wow. What else? What other insights came to you as you went through the process of writing this book?

Ira Chaleff  6:36 

One of the things that we experience, particularly in a two-party system, is that each party is committed to making the other look bad. That's a very problematic way to develop good government. What happens is, through this barrage of dark scenarios that each party paints if the other gets into power, the public can come to believe, “We are in terrible shape. We're in crisis. We need a strong leader to save us.” Well, hey, Scott, you walk around big cities from time to time. You walk around Chicago. You can see millions of people are walking around, they're shopping, they're purchasing things. The garbage is being collected. Street lights are working. People obey the street signs. People are making reasonably decent money, not… I don't want to minimize it, some people have real struggles, which is a feature of our system, but, nevertheless, society is generally working. And I learned that this needs to be the baseline from which we think about leading and following, otherwise, we become susceptible to being seduced by radical perspectives that tell us everything is terrible or will be terrible, and that works against us making rational decisions about our political leadership.

Scott Allen  8:24 

I don't recall, Ira, was it the Fair Communication Act? Was that the Act that may have been repealed sometime in the 80s? Listeners, I apologize if that's not the exact name, but there was some instance where it used to be the case that both sides needed fair amount of time, and the elimination of this Act gave rise to characters like Rush Limbaugh, or you could go to Rachel Maddow, whatever flavor you want to take on. And with the advent of 24/7, 365 media, we get into this context. And as you and I both love the work of Barbara Kellerman, leaders-followers, contexts. I just observe the media, it's big business to keep us agitated. It's a multi-billion dollar industry to keep us agitated, scared, worried, frustrated, on edge, curious. And it seems to me that whole industry was worried about digitization and how are we going to survive in this new age, and they've figured it out. They've figured out the recipe, which is to keep us agitated, frustrated, angry, mad, confused, scared. And we're clicking. We continue to click. We continue to fuel the fire. And it's so interesting to me, Ira, because how do you monetize the middle? How do you monetize pragmatic behavior? Non-Luger. “Let's work together on some issues that we're both passionate about and help America move forward.” So your original kind of friend or foe, othering groups. And yes, you would have us believe if you pay close attention. I walked by an ad in my neighborhood this morning that just said, “Save democracy.” Well, okay. I understand that's a perspective, and I understand that people are motivated by that, but, to your point, the rhetoric is extreme, and it sells, and we click and we fuel it. And I just don't know how we lower the heat, or what type of leadership lowers that heat. Because, I'm going to go back to it, it's a multi-billion dollar industry, probably in the trillions, if you get to the globe, to keep us agitated, scared, worried, afraid. What type of leadership surpasses that and followership? It's fascinating.

Ira Chaleff  10:53 

I agree with your analysis completely. I'm not going to try to answer the question how we change that, I'm not sure how we change that, but what I do know is what we can do as individuals. And I prescribe this very strongly in the book. If we lived under a dictatorship, the dictatorship would be controlling the information we got through the media. We would only be getting the party line. That's awful. But now, many of us tend to do this to ourselves. We only listen to whoever the equivalent of Rush Limbaugh is now or Rachel Maddow, and we only get one perspective, and therefore we think, “My God, how does the other side arrive at their conclusions? They must be mentally deficient, or evilly motivated,” or whatever, which they are not. They are basing their conclusions based on the information that they are receiving, and then formulating judgments about. My strong recommendation, and I apply it to myself, Scott, is to, every week, not every day, listen to two or three very different sources of political information. It's difficult to do this, because whatever side of the aisle you are on, when you listen to the extreme other, your stomach turns, and yet you need to do that or you cannot possibly understand the other side, and therefore, you cannot possibly engage them in a way that is productive. And neither side should feel too self-righteous because both sides do this. And we have an extreme problem of extreme polarization in our nation, I'm talking about our nation now. But this is happening in Germany, it is happening in France, it is happening in Italy, it is happening in the UK, and I've just named the European countries where this is happening. All of us, minimally, what we can do with our time, with our dollars, is make sure we support listening to several different sources of information. And then, this is what's really interesting, Scott, is we have to internalize this debate and come out with where do we land as to what is reality and what is needed to improve the situation. Look at that. What we've just done by doing that is we have internalized the political process. That is what our legislatures are supposed to be doing. From all sides of the political spectrum, they're supposed to be having their debates, their information, gathering, presenting, evaluating, etc., and then come up with some kind of consensus about what is the way forward. If we each do that individually, if you believe that the universe is somewhat fractal in nature, whereas the pattern at each level replicates the other level, we begin internalizing and expressing a healthy political process. So, that's another thing that I learned in this book that I'm a strong advocate for.

Scott Allen  15:00 

It’s interesting because I couldn't agree with you more. As a leadership scholar, as a professor of leadership, I would explore the Huffington Post, I would explore Breitbart, I would explore Fox News, I would explore MSNBC. What's also interesting about whatever your political flavor is, what's interesting about that process is that you start to hear the inflammatory language from the bias you align with. It's very easy to hear it, agree, and laugh if you agree with it. And oh, again, let's go to the late-night hosts, in some ways, they can be just as toxic, just as divisive as Rush Limbaugh at times. Just othering, making fun of. Again, really, really doing damage. And as Joanne (?Chulo?) would talk about, causing resentment among large factions of people, and resentment is not a positive emotion. It's not an emotion that's going to help us build a bridge and encourage dialog. But it's really, really interesting the process of investigating the narratives on both sides. You start to hear even the side you might agree with a little bit differently, and more easily tune into some of that rhetoric that can be really unhealthy.

Ira Chaleff  16:18 

I agree with that. I also think there's another level working here, which is our personal relationship to authority. Look, we all grew up under real authority, i.e., whoever raised us, and there seems to be a human almost recoil against authority. So, in a way, the late-night hosts provided that they take the mickey out of -- that's an expression I learned somewhere, that means to make fun -- both sides of the aisle. They're releasing some of that pressure. They're exposing some of that deep resentment to authority we all carry around. Now that's problematic because, as you know, and as I know, we're not going to conflate authority and leadership, but positional leadership has authority. And we need to recognize how difficult political leadership is. You know, political dictatorship is not difficult because I tell you what to do and you do it. Political leadership is very difficult because I have to persuade you. I have to influence you. I have to influence my competitors, even my rivals, so that we can form some kind of consensus. Therefore, those of us who are in a follower role vis-a-vis political leaders, need to be aware of and manage our own resentments about authority and instead have some gratitude that, “I am not sure I'd want the job of a member of Congress, let alone the head of the government who are working continuously with massive pressures on them to do this, to do that, with complete exposure in the media all the time.” I know that it's sort of [Inaudible 18:30] to bash members of Congress to say, “Oh, look, they only work three days a week,” et cetera. I've been on the inside, I know that isn't true. Even when they are back in their home districts supposedly not working, they're doing 6, 7, 8, events a day to hear their constituents, let their constituents know what they're thinking. And then they all come back to Washington and they say, “Did you get an earful on this issue? Boy, did I get an earful on that issue.” And that's how the political process in a representational democracy is supposed to work. But this is very difficult stuff. And it's not that they're selling us out when they don't do what we want them to do, it's they're finding what is politically possible at this time in this context, and they're doing their best to stay as true as they can to their values within the reality of the pressures from the White House, from their own party, from their funders, etc. It is no easy task, and I think we have to be more mature about understanding who our political leaders are, what they're up against, and how can we constructively help them do better.

Scott Allen  19:50 

In your bio, it says 100 retreats for people across the spectrum over the course of your career. You have worked with these individuals and these players for decades, and you have incredible understanding and awareness and appreciation for some of what these individuals are up against. Now, as we shift a little bit to moving into the book, you use the term ‘tyrant,’ so let's do some definitional work really quick if we can. How are you kind of looking at this progression? You'd use the word ‘authoritarian.’ So, for listeners, take us through a couple of definitional pieces that you think are important as a foundation for the conversation. 

Ira Chaleff  20:35 

Yeah. It's very central to the book. Another thing I learned in writing this book is there is a difference between a dictator and a tyrant. I didn't know that. In our common speak, we don't make that distinction. A dictator in Rome was a position that the Senate conferred on an individual during times of crisis, external or internal crisis, where he was given complete power to do whatever was necessary to get the Republic through the crisis. But it was time-limited. It was a six months appointment. They might have it extended another six months, but it was a time-bounded appointment. And actually, when you think about it, that role actually occurs whether you confer it or not. Abraham Lincoln, during the Civil War, suspends Habeas Corpus. That was a dictatorial act. Franklin Roosevelt during World War Two suspends constitutional protections to Japanese Americans. Zelensky right now in Ukraine declares no male under 60 can leave the country because he needs manpower. So, dictatorial powers are not necessarily tyrannical, they have a tyrannical flavor. But the distinction is that if the dictator doesn't give up power and consolidates their power to where they become absolutely above any law or any other body that checks them, and they start to use that power, not only dictatorially, but oppressively and cruelly, that's when we have a tyrant. And we have tyrants all over the world and throughout history that get into that position. And once they start doing these horrendous deeds, they keep doing more and more of them. As Barbara Kellerman says in her new book, they never get better, they get worse and worse and more heinous. So, in my book, I identify the window before the autocrat starts to consolidate their power to become a dictator, and ultimately, potentially, a tyrant. And that is the window in which followers at each level of the polity need to act from within the powers that they have in order to disrupt that trajectory. W

Scott Allen  23:32 

Okay, a couple of things here. Yes, I think this book and Barbara's ‘Leadership from Bad to Worse’ they're beautiful compliments to one another in a really, really nice way. And, yes, a tyrant, arbitrary, unconstrained, cruel abuse of power, rule by terror. And I think one reason that this is a really nice compliment to Barbara's book because I don't think that Barbara goes in depth as much. It's been a few months since I've read it, but she does not go into depth as to, okay, how do we disrupt this? Where is that window where we can disrupt it? And you very clearly say, “Look, this is between abusing power and when this individual is now actively consolidating power.” That it's in that space where, most likely, this can be disrupted.

Ira Chaleff  24:16 

Yes. It's interesting about me and Barbara. I have had to say to Barbara, “I cannot read your next book while I'm writing my book because then I can't tell what is coming from me and what is coming to you.” Seriously. So, I did not read ‘From Bad to Worse’ until after I finished my book, and then I was stunned by how similar our analysis is. But again, we forget that Barbara is a true political scientist as well as a leadership scholar. I'm more of a practitioner, so my books always come from what can we do about it. Sometimes, Barbara thinks I'm a little Pollyannaish. She thinks that my use of courage to stand up to authority might get people in a lot of trouble. She's right, but nevertheless, it needs to be risky if we're going to do the right thing and avert the consequences of the worst use of political power. 

Scott Allen  25:26 

Take us on a little bit of a tour of the world right now from your perspective on where we're seeing some of these transitions occur.

Ira Chaleff  25:34 

Scott, whenever anyone heard what I was writing about for the last few years to stop a tyrant, they would say, “Boy, is that timely?” And I would say, “Yeah, that is timely.” And unfortunately, it's been timely throughout human history and in every continent. So, we're more familiar with European instances of dictatorship and tyranny, we’re less familiar, for example, with African examples. We have a certain limited capacity to track everything that's going on in the world, but, of course, many African countries have a terrible history of where the strong man gets into power, whether it's through coup, or through an initial electoral process, or through overthrowing colonialism, and then stays in office for 30 or 40 years and becomes tyrannical. This is why I start off my book with an example of Nigeria, where I was and I was doing work on courageous followership and democracy building. And to my great relief, when President Obasanjo, who was a fairly good president, he served for two terms, which the Constitution permitted. But then his second term was coming to an end, he started to do what each of these strong men do and tried to rewrite the Constitution for a third term. Well, I'm not going to take all the credit for this, but President Obasanjo had actually given copies of ‘The Courageous Follower’ to key senators several years before. Seriously. And inscribed them from him to them. And then, when he pulled this move, at least one of the senators that I worked with closely was a very strong sort of check on this, and they effectively stopped him from doing that. And, as a result, Nigeria has now had its fourth successive elected president. Which I know Nigeria has huge problems, as all countries do, but nevertheless, it has not gone back down the path of dictatorship like so many African countries. So, I'm heartened. Scott, we'll get to this in my book, but in this new book I look at the different circles of followers and what their unique powers are. Well, in this case, the powers of the legislature and also the powers of the senior administrators worked together to check President Obasanjo’s ill-advised ploy for more power, and they made a difference. And I can see, and I hope, I fervently hope, that if this concept gets out, that there's a window before power is consolidated when there are attempts to take more power than you need in order to govern. Everyone needs power to govern, but when you try to take more power than you need to govern, that is the time for all the different bodies of civil servant, of elites, of the general populace to come together and say, “No, because we know where that script ends and it doesn't end well. So, we're going to influence changing it now so it has a different ending, or else you are going to have a different ending because we're going to put you aside and find somebody else who will work with us to constrain the uses and abuses of power.” 

Scott Allen  29:37 

Well, you had alluded to this a little bit, and so I think with the time we have left what I would love to do is for you to highlight a couple of elements of the book that you would like to entice listeners with. Of course, listeners, we are going to have all kinds of links in the show notes for you to go ahead and explore this work yourself. But is there some context that you'd like to provide listeners with to kind of whet their appetite?

Ira Chaleff  30:03 

Well, one of the things I do, as you know, in this book, Scott, that has not been done before by me, or I don't think by anyone else, is compartmentalized followership by the degree of access to the leader. That's a somewhat different model. But, in politics, access is huge. So, what I do is describe the different powers that people have at different degrees of distance or proximity to the leader, so therefore anyone who reads the book can find out where they sit. And even though I'm talking mainly about head of state, head of government, this applies to any political figure. Your local mayor, they all have these same circles around them. So, this material can be applied anywhere. So, just as a brief thumbnail sketch, courage is needed by each of these circles but in different ways. So, for example, if you're in the general populace, a certain courage is needed to make up your own mind because your social set is going to be exerting a lot of peer pressure on you. And it does take courage to say, “Hey guys, that's not exactly how I think.” And it takes particular courage to do it at these mass rallies. And I find it so interesting that, in these days of social media, we still have so many mass rallies where people line up for hours, even days, to hear the political figure, and then their behavior changes in those rallies. And I think I do very important work in the book in explaining the crowd dynamics and what one can do to insulate oneself, and hopefully, also influence others around you. In the activist circle -- and activists are forced multipliers. These are the people who kind of put their life on hold and they say, “I'm going to do everything I can to get this person elected or to stop that other person from getting elected.” And we need activists, and we've always had them. The danger that activists are under is a similar danger to what's known as the true believer because, once you believe passionately in your person and you start selling them passionately, cognitive dissonance will start to take over and you'll start to screen out the things that don't comport to who you think this person is. That's dangerous. And the courage an activist needs is to recognize that their leader is not perfect. Call them out where they need to be called out, or if necessary, decide, “I've been promoting the wrong leader.” That takes huge courage. The third circle is the bureaucratic circle. No political leader gets anything done without the hundreds of thousands, or in the case of US, millions of bureaucrats who implement their policies. I've done a lot of work with bureaucrats over the years, and I do a lot of work in the book on the psychology and the norms of what happens in bureaucratic cultures. And having worked with hundreds of really smart, intelligent, capable bureaucrats, I don't diss them, but I do know that their culture tends to lead them to not hold themselves ethically accountable for the things they're doing because they're told to do these things. So, in the book, I take a really strong look at the courage for ethics when you're in a bureaucratic role. Perhaps the most interesting chapters, I think, maybe about the elites. All cultures have elites, and elites are always in tension somewhat with the populace because the populace, in a democracy, have all the votes, the elites have all the money and the star power and the influence. And there are real, real traps that elites fall into which they then come to really rue if their guy becomes a dictator or a tyrant. And go ask some of the people that Vladimir Putin has thrown into jail who were not so long ago billionaires. And the last circle are the confidants, family, and very, very close associates. And these are the people who see the real leader, not the image that is polished for public consumption. And there are traps that they fall into as well. And, in the book, I name those traps, I identify those traps, and I present alternatives to staying out of those traps. And you may not be an elite for the President of the United States, but you may actually be an elite for a city councilman, or a school board member, something like that. So, I believe that there's value in understanding each of these circles of followers and then how they work together or need to work together to disrupt what I'm calling a proto-tyrant; a leader who isn't a tyrant yet but is displaying the prototypical tendencies, and how to nip that in the bud while you still can do that. That's what this book is about. 

Scott Allen  35:48 

Well, and something I just really, really respect Ira is that, again, you have to get your thinking really clean here. I love how this can be my community, or it can be global leadership. I love the levels there that this framework and that this heuristic applies in all cases.

Ira Chaleff  36:08 

Yes. It can apply to your condominium board.

(Laughter)

Scott Allen  36:11 

No, I don't want to think about that.

Ira Chaleff  36:14 

See what I mean? That’s your politics…

(Laughter)

Scott Allen  36:19 

Or I should… Not the HSA, the HOA.

Ira Chaleff  36:21 

Yeah. Right. But I'll tell you, I have a whole chapter on political savvy that applies… I don't refer it to HOAs, but it applies fully to.

Scott Allen  36:37 

How about one more thing that you would like listeners to know about the work?

Ira Chaleff  36:40 

Well, because your following draws largely from the leadership scholarship community, I want to make a pitch, and we'll continue making a pitch, for saying that I know it's easier for us to study leadership and followership in small settings, like workplace settings, and there's obviously real value in that, but if you step back and think about it, the really huge impact on our lives comes from the political context we're in. It may not seem so when that context is operating fairly normally, but throughout history, political context always, at some point, cease to operate normally. And the thing to do is not wait until the Force Five hurricane is on us, but to see the gathering storm clouds and to learn how to preempt them. And we may not be able to preempt them, but how we at least have the agency to do our best to do that. I implore the leadership and followership scholarship community to pay more attention to this. People like Barbara Kellerman, like Jean Lipman-Blumen have done this for years, I don't have enough evidence that our contemporary scholarship is doing enough of this. It's a hugely important service to humanity. And, in this sense, I'm trying to disrupt the current status quo, at least, as I see it in the leadership scholarship community. So, that's the thought I think I would like to leave this wonderful conversation with.

Scott Allen  38:34 

Well, you are always so wonderful at challenging us to push forward. And Ron Riggio just told me the story the other day of you showing up at his office and saying, “Look, we need to talk about followers.” 

Ira Chaleff  38:47

(Laughs)

Scott Allen  38:46

Of course, the first time, literally, Ira, this is the impact you've had on me. I said this to Ron the other day, the first time I ever even thought of followership as a topic was at that Kravis Leadership Institute event. Maybe it was 2007 or 2009, I don't know when it was. But you're always challenging us to push forward and think more holistically, think differently, and I so appreciate that about you, sir. 

Ira Chaleff  39:12 

Thanks so much, Scott. Always great to have a conversation with you.

Scott Allen  39:16 

So, to conclude for the day, what have you been listening to, watching, streaming? What's caught your attention recently that listeners might be interested in? It doesn't have to do with what we've just discussed, but what's caught your attention? 

Ira Chaleff  39:29 

One of the gentlemen who gave a truly authentic, glowing endorsement for my book is a man who served as the 28th secretary of the Senate, Bob Dole. This is a true conservative. I've been reading his newsletter, it's something that progressives, the faint of heart, will have a great difficulty reading because he takes a fairly acerbic perspective on things that progressives may cherish, and yet his analysis is always so granular. And again, for me, this is just an example of how I have to be willing to open up and find people who are thoughtful, not who are inflammatory. Who are basing their analysis and even their advocacy on real knowledge, so that I then expand my vocabulary and how to have conversations with people who I would not have naturally had a close affinity with, but who I learned from, and hopefully, they will learn from me. 

Scott Allen  40:52 

Yeah. It's wonderfully said. Wonderfully said. Well, Ira, I always love our conversations. We'll do it again. And I just can't thank you enough for always challenging us to push our thinking further. And, in this book, you definitely do that. So, thank you, sir. Be well.

[End Of Recording]