 Yeah, welcome back to Monday Morning. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Community Matters. And if you hadn't noticed, leadership has become very important in our time in the time of COVID. And the Bar Association, the lawyers who practice law and who will help us knit the rabble sleeve of COVID, they become very important. They become important also to save our democracy. And the Hawaii State Bar Association is busy in that regard. And a former president, Craig Wagner, and a director of Think Tech, actually, and a person who has appeared on a number of occasions on our shows joins us now to discuss a program that he was involved in founding. And he shepherds through year after year. That is the Leadership Institute at the Bar Association. Welcome to the show, Craig Wagner. Oh, thanks, Jay. Nice to be here. Let's talk about the program. What is it intended to do? I mean, if it was intended merely to develop leaders in a state among the lawyers, that was a great idea 12 years ago. But actually, it has become even a more important idea today. But tell us about the history of this institute. Well, sure. The founding or the start of the Institute was part of a strategic planning meeting that took place I want to say 12, 13 years ago. Jeff Seale was president of the Bar at the time and had set up a strategic planning meeting among many of the different groups in the Bar and the Bar Association, its leadership. And they were looking at what are the areas that the board of directors and the Bar Association as a whole can do? What are the areas that we need to improve on? How can we do that? And one of the things that came out of that was the idea of developing a Leadership Institute and giving, essentially, continuing education to our younger members of the Bar who have come out of a legal education and started into a legal practice. But as all of us do, it needs some help and direction and how do I start to focus my energies to assisting the Bar as a whole, our community as a whole, and see beyond just the small area, perhaps, of practice that we're doing. And I think that that's where it started and that was the discussion. And then that went to a committee and then I had the pleasure of serving on that committee, which was the committee that was organized to design a program and plan for implementing a Leadership Institute. So I think this is our 11th year doing the Leadership Institute. There's been changes along the way. And as we've seen things that have worked well, things that haven't. But I've been involved both in the planning and in the selection process for our Leadership Institute fellows each year and also in helping to put on one or more of the programs. And one that we've done a number of years that I've done with Lynn Flanagan, our former executive director there is that community leadership program that you moderated just this past Friday. Yeah, going back, it strikes me that lawyers can find the wrong way. Can't they? They're smart. They went to law school. They passed the exam. They passed the bar exam. They're naturals for elected office. They're naturals, obviously, for judge jobs. Why do you need a Leadership Institute? I mean, don't they already know? Can't they find their own way? Don't they understand the nature of our institutions and our community well enough to develop leadership on their own? Well, I think, first of all, you're making a lot of assumptions about lawyers in general. And I think that there are attorneys that don't need the Leadership Institute that have natural leadership skills, perhaps, or have done many already involved in leadership going through law school and even before that and then moving on. But there is a large segment of the attorneys in Hawaii that come out of law school and start into the profession. They're working in a firm, or they're working in an organization and such. And they're concentrating very hard on their profession. They're concentrating on becoming good practitioners and learning how the law works and how their job will work. What they're unable to see is, how can I contribute outside of the particular area of the profession that they're in? The Leadership Institute was designed to allow not only training and such in terms of the profession and in terms of leadership in general and to see how others have been involved in leadership, but also to give an opportunity for them to give back and be involved. So our Leadership Institute fellows, when they finish the program, have already signed on as a part of accepting the participation to the following year participating in some kind of leadership role, whether it's within the Bar Association or even something outside of the Bar Association, but something that's helping the community. You know, when I went to law school at NYU, it was back in the 60s. I know that's hard to believe. They had a guy named Peter Frey. He was our professor, and he said, you guys are not getting enough New York civil practice, the kind of thing you really need on the ground. And he developed a course about New York civil practice. It was the rules of court and so forth in New York state. What I think is interesting is that the law schools, although they teach a lot of activist type issues and they try to make rounded citizens out of their students, a query, do they talk leadership? Do they have a course in leadership? Do they have a course in community service? Either, you know, instead of or in addition to the Leadership Institute and the Bar Association, which I personally think is a critical program, don't you think would be helpful if the law school taught leadership? I mean, a serious course in leadership, a three-point course in leadership, plus maybe community service, how to handle the obligation of a licensed lawyer to help the community to serve on boards to develop community organizations. Don't you think that would be good in law school? I do. I think there are a number of courses that would be good to have in law school that, unfortunately, they don't include. And I think part of that creates the frustration for many of us who came out of law school and realized that while I've had a great education in terms of the law in specific, the substantive law and even procedural law, how to practice, how to work with clients, how to work with people, how to become leaders, I mean, all of these things are not taught as a course in law school. And I think some law schools have started moving more towards trial practice and other having courses like that. And that, I think, is very valuable. But most people come out of law school realizing I know about some things about the law. I don't know how to practice law and how to even do that. So I think including courses in leadership and such as well would be really helpful. And I think a lot of people would find those useful, not just in terms of what they do as their profession, but what you do for the profession and what you do for the community. Because particularly as lawyers, I think we have not just an opportunity to help the community, but we have a duty to do that. Yeah. OK, well, let's talk about what the program is like. I entered the program. What am I expected to do? What am I expected to learn? What kind of events are included? What kind of lessons are provided? Well, I will start with the obvious that this is a unique year. And so a number of the more social type events, the get-togethers, the opportunity to do the face-to-face type things. Right now, we're in a flux. We're trying to work out as much as we can. I think one of the greatest values of this Leadership Institute program is and was the opportunity to meet and interact and talk with and get to know other leaders in our community, leaders in our profession, leaders in the bar association, leaders within the judiciary. And not just through a screen or not just the persona that they're required to put on for the public, but actually get to know them a little bit as people. And so that's harder when you're socially distanced either by having a mask across your face or having you're doing it by video or other things. So this year, we're doing our best to organize things so that the program includes as much face-to-face time as possible, even while social distancing and following other CDC and other protections. You know, you're asking about what can you expect if you're a student, a fellow that came in, you know, that our fellows come in and we have an orientation. That's part of getting to understand the program, but also getting to know each other because I think one of the values of the program over the course of about four or five months that this program goes on, is that the fellows get to know each other. They're all relatively in the same area in terms of the amount of time that they've been practicing law somewhere between five and 15 years is our criteria for selecting them, but many of them, you know, fall sort of right in the middle of that. So they're all roughly the same generation, if you will. And within leadership going forward as they develop as leaders and get involved, whether it's with the BAR or other community programs and such, many times we've seen that past leadership institute groups, they end up drawing from each other and bringing each other into programs and things that they're putting on because these are the friends and new leadership resources that they've now developed. So I think that's part of the value of it. Throughout the program then they will go to different, you know, about once every two weeks, they will show up and we were doing it at the Bar Association office and then at times at the judiciary, at the legislature in different locations we've been able to set up to have the program held there and they meet with various leaders within the community, whether they're political leaders, they're the judges and magistrates and others. Well, it sounds like the core point of the program is they get to meet people who are recognized as leaders in the legal community. Am I right? They go through those four months and at the end of that time, they will have met and heard from and rub shoulders with and had mask to mask discussions, if you will, with various leaders, you know, in the legal community. Am I right about that? I mean, that's the core offering of the program, isn't it? That's exactly right. And then, you know, on top of that, within the context of meeting them, it's not just a matter of, oh, here is so-and-so. Each of the, whether it's a panelist or the speakers and such that are kind enough to donate their time and be involved in this, you know, it's an off-the-record discussion of everything from what brought them into the leadership role that they're in to how they deal with and balance, you know, that role and that persona with their home life, with their spouse, their children, their other ambitions, you know, and it allows opportunities for each of the fellows to be asking questions of them. And so I think that we get a lot of different perspectives and an awful lot of opportunity to start considering, you know, each of them, the path to how they want to develop themselves as future leaders, you know, of the bar and of the community. At the end of the day, it's personal. At the end of the day, you want to be a leader, you have to have a worldview, you have to have a way of relating to the community, so the community has trust and confidence in you, people will follow you and so forth. And that means that the leaders to whom they are exposed to this program will tell them things that you wouldn't normally find out from an attorney general of the state and how she deals with her kids or a magistrate of the United States District Court, exactly what his career pattern has been like, what motivates him, what motivated him to look for that job. So that's something that is elusive in the ordinary course, but you provide that. And I thought it was interesting on, it was a Friday, just one business day ago that the sense of the group was they didn't want it recorded because they wanted it to be candid. And I told them, I said, okay, you made a choice. You want it to be, you want it not to be recorded, therefore you must make it candid. All you guys are committed to making it candid. And I think it was candid. Can you summarize who appeared on the panels and what they had to offer to the members of the leadership class, which was altogether about what, 15 or so, most of them were present in the room at the Bar Association Distance, of course, and the others were on Zoom elsewhere. And I was on Zoom, which I thought that was a challenge for everybody. So anyway, can you talk about the panelists? Who were they and what were they offering in terms of their perspectives? Well, sure. First of all, we had set up, this is for the community leadership program. And so this is just one component of it, but for the community leadership program, we had, as in the past, had done it in forms of panels, and we had two different panels and divided with two members each. So the first panel had Catherine Monayoshi, who is a senior vice president of Hawaii Medical of the HMSA, White Medical Services Association, and Michael Broderick, who is the president and CEO of the YMCA. Who used to be the administrator of the courts here in Hawaii and was a family court judge for some years. Exactly, exactly. And then the second panel had Claire Connors, who's our attorney general, and we're seeing on TV, in fact, right after the program, she had to run off to get on a plane and be on the news and such as she is almost every night. And then Magistrate West Porter, who's a U.S. district magistrate judge. Yeah, what an interesting crowd. And they were diverse in their approach to things and their career patterns. I'm sure they all knew each other, having rub shoulders at one time or another, but they were different in their own orientation and their own advice. And it's the advice that counted because they talked from the heart about how they got to be where they are and what their leadership advice was. But I would like to spend some time with you about what that advice was and distill the kinds of lessons that they were talking about. I mean, for example, I think they were all focused in some substantial part on credibility, on honesty, on being developing credibility, guanxi, if you will, over a period of time so that people would treat them as leaders because they were known to be honest. Absolutely. I think that was, if there was a resounding theme that was echoed in the comments of each of these esteemed leaders, it was, hey, Hawaii is too small a location for you to be dishonest, for you to promise something and not perform, for you to treat people poorly. And good leaders are obviously not gonna do that but one of the things that each of them said was, they're very careful about living up to what they promised. I mean, you mentioned the other story that we've heard many times from David Louie, former attorney general of the state that he says that, hey, when you get promised something, you turn around and as soon as possible, I mean, within the same day that you can do it but you turn around and you act on it. So I think there are a lot of, it's hard to characterize what was important to each of them other than to say, that was one. I think another one that was that each of them made reference to and such was the fact that they had to find that balance in their life and in working with everyone because it required a lot of time and a lot of effort. And so they had to find a way to balance things but that if for those that believe that, oh, if you're at the top or that you're a leader, that you get to go home and everybody else does the work, that isn't it at all. I mean, all of them are putting in more work than you have to be willing, ready and able to put in more effort than anybody else if you want to be a strong leader. And all of them are demonstrating that every day. It's actually high functioning and it worked very hard. Another touch point seems to me was the question of undertaking risk. You know, it's like you have to take risks in order to be a leader. You have to make choices based on your best analysis and take the risk and fly into the mountain as it were. That's your Sarri and in catch 22. But that would seem to be a theme also about risk. Can you talk about it? Well, I can, I guess is, you know, one of the speakers was talking about the fact that, you know, one of the things that you are put in that position to do is to make your best educated decisions and that not making a decision becomes a decision and oftentimes the wrong one. And so you need to use your best judgment and that's something that, you know, many people are born with, they have struggle, but also something that you can develop. But your judgment is extremely important and that's part of why you've been put in the position to begin with and you need to get beyond being afraid or concerned, so concerned with things that you're unable to exercise that judgment, make decisions and move things forward. Yeah, you know, it seemed to be a theme with some diverse approach to it and that was career management. Of course you have to manage your professional time with your family. It's really critical to keep balanced as a person. But also, you know, on the one hand, you have to manage and plan your career the best you can. On the other hand, and I felt there was attention on this point. On the other hand, you have to let it flow. Let it go where it goes. You know, fate will find you. And I've heard a lot of, you know, big leaders, tell me this, you have to just let it take you. And there was a kind of combination of views on that subject. Which one do I adhere to? Do I plan all the steps in my life? And some of these panelists, you know, had many, many, many steps. Catherine Radeoshi had been through like a dozen situations. And each one she was stepping to a better thing. But it wasn't that she knew exactly where it would go. It just happened to her. So what was the tension? And where do you come out on that Craig? Well, you're exactly right. I think part of the message and maybe part of the message of the leadership institute to the fellows is, you know, there's no one way of leadership. There's no one path to get there. Each of the leaders that were on the panel this last Friday, but many of the other leaders that are involved in our program sort of illustrate the fact that they found their way into the leadership position that they had through a path that in many cases was serendipitous that wasn't necessarily planned. I think part of the message that may not be said in that is that each time these leaders stepped into that position, whatever it was, they did everything they could to add value, to make the organization better than it was to improve things and to empower people with it. And that's one of the messages. I mean, you asked how I come out on this and it's interesting because, you know, for me, I'm certainly not in the kind of leadership roles that they had, but I did have my opportunity to serve in the Bar Association and serve as a leader there. I continue to do things with the Bar Association. And I look at that as part of my efforts to give back to our profession, to our community, and I enjoy that. And I see, you know, leadership and what I've learned from it and from many of these speakers is that, you know, a lot of leadership is learning how to empower others and to support others and allow them to, you know, to become, you know, to exhibit their skills, to be able to contribute to whatever the organization is and to be the best that they can be. And I was fortunate enough when I served with the Bar Association and the Board of Directors at the time I was president, you know, I had just an amazing group of people, all exceptionally bright, all very energetic. And we met before the year started, talked about what we wanted to do, made decisions, but we did it together. And when the decisions were made and we sat down and, you know, after that went to our meetings each month, everything was marked against a, you know, we had set up a, you know, our plans and what we were gonna accomplish. So everything was a measuring stick against what we wanted to do that year. At the end of the year, we were able to look back and say, look at what we've accomplished. I mean, these are the things we wanted to do. Checkmark, checkmark, checkmark, these things got done and also all these other things. But it was, in a sense, everyone walked away from that, I believe, and I certainly walked away from that feeling like that was a success. And it was a success because we did it together. And I didn't do it. It wasn't me doing it. It was all of us and different people took charge of different parts of it. And in that sense, I felt a great sense of both accomplishment and just gratification for having had the opportunity to do that. Yeah, well, one of your characteristics is modesty. And we'll forgive you for that. But you represent to me, Craig, constancy and kindness. You're always at it. You never stop. You always have your hand on the, you always have your hand on the tiller. But I want to go to an article. There was an article in the Atlantic a few days ago and it was about how history will judge the people in the Trump administration. And it was a really masterful article. Believe it or not, this article started talking about the leaders of the Communist Party in East Germany in the 40s. Extraordinary how different they were and how their philosophies and orientations were so different. And then comparing, you know, how leadership in America has worked and how leadership in the Trump administration has worked. And the bottom line of the article was history will judge all these people that we're reading about. And in Herrington, that statement is that it will not judge them kindly. I hope history gets to make its judgment soon. Maybe November, but anyway, the guy ended this article and I really commend it to everyone listening. If anybody wants a link to this article, I will provide it. The guy ended with this simple statement is the one common denominator of leaders who history will judge kindly is decency. Decency above all. And that is so important. If you're not decent, then, you know, what have you got? In any event, we have only a minute left and I would like to talk about my pet issues. One is that these leaders and all lawyer leaders have to be involved in the community more than before in the time of COVID. We have to re-knit the sleeve. They're tattered sleeve of care. We have to form corporations, encourage business entrepreneurs, help them. And the government has to do that too. And the government, of course, is controlled by leaders, many of whom are lawyers. That's one thing. It's a duty in my view, especially now in the time of COVID. And we talked about that Friday. And the other thing is the rule of law. It's very clear to any objective rational observer that the rule of law has been undermined, seriously undermined, and maybe for a long time by the Trump administration. And lawyers are sworn to uphold the rule of law. It's not just their training, it's their oath of office. And I wonder if you could comment about that as an element of this program and as an element of being a lawyer and being a leader as a lawyer these days. Well, I think it would be hard to add much more to what you're saying there than to just put my stamp of approval on it and agree with it. It absolutely, I'll start with the rule of law as attorneys, we are all not just subject to it. We have taken a notice of upholding. And that in whatever capacity we're serving, whether we're representing clients, whether we're a judge, whether we are in the legislature or another political role, whether we're in an administration. As an attorney, we are to uphold the rule of law. And that is an area that, as you've mentioned, I think now more than any time, certainly in my lifetime, is in danger. And I'm concerned about it. And I think that there are many that are concerned about it. We as an attorneys are also trained as to what the rule of law involves and what can be done to support it and to help. And so we should be stepping up. So our leaders through the Leadership Institute, but also our leaders who are already in place need to be taking the mantle and stepping that ball forward. Craig, it's wonderful to talk to you. Thank you so much for doing that program. Thank you for creating this particular term of it. Thank you for sticking with it even in the time of COVID. I'm sure there's a lot of challenges in putting it together and having people do the things that are necessary to carry it forward. You are constant and you are kind and you are decent. So thanks very much for that. And thanks for being decent enough to come on the show at 10 o'clock in the morning on a Monday. We really appreciate it. It was my pleasure. I can't, so many people work so hard to put this together and I won't name them all here, but I will tell you that be taking credit for the Leadership Institute puts me in an awkward position and all modesty aside, just given how much work our Bar Association puts in all the people involved in that program. So I'm very grateful to them as well and I'm happy to be a part of that team. Thank you. Craig Wagner, a member, an active member of the Illinois State Bar Association. Thank you so much. Thanks, Jay.