Name: POLITICS, POWER & PINK SLIPS: LEADING THROUGH UNCERTAIN TIMES
Uploaded: 2025-05-20
Duration: 15 min 20 s

Changing FEC commissioners requires Senate approval. But on February 6th, President Trump unceremoniously fired Commissioner Ellen Weintraub via email. Several members of Congress called for her reinstatement. This was an early indicator of unilateral – and, as Weintraub argues, potentially illegal – moves to come. Has the government adopted Silicon Valley’s flippant firing playbook? Is this the new normal, or, as former Patagonia CHRO Dean Carter argues, just bad for business? We’ll unpack recent employee separation trends and ask a bigger question: What are leadership’s responsibilities during these turbulent times?  

POLITICS, POWER & PINK SLIPS: LEADING THROUGH UNCERTAIN TIMES

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we've talked a lot about where we work, how we work, collaboration, culture, hiring, and reskilling, and now it's time to talk about firing. Abrupt informal terminations are becoming increasingly common across private business and now in government too, and they're sometimes delivered with little notice or explanation. The trend raises important questions about leadership, organizational values, and the responsibility that employers have during times of uncertainty. Joining us now are two leaders with expertise and direct experience in this area. Dean Carter is the chief experience officer at Modern Exec Solutions and believes in a people first culture. Ellen Weintraub, the former chair of the US Federal Election Commission who was dismissed from her post earlier this year. Please welcome them to the stage with Fortune senior features editor and summit co-chair Indrani Sen. Hi. Welcome. Uh, we're very lucky to have with us here today two guests who have a lot to say about courage and leadership amid these tumultuous times. Ellen Weintraub, who as commissioner and chair of the Federal Election Commission, has stood up for fair elections and regulation of money in politics for many years. She was dismissed by email in February from her vital role. And Dean Carter has been a powerful voice for moral values in business over his 20 years in people and culture, including 4 CHR roles in a decade at Patagonia, where really he set the standard. We'll be opening this up to questions. I'm sure you have so many questions for Dean and Ellen, so think about that. Put your hand up at any point and, and Mike will come over to you. Um, I'd love to start with you, Ellen. Your dismissal from the FEC was abrupt in public, and it came amid a career of striking success. I sort of want to anchor us in that experience. I know you were not terribly surprised by what happened, given your history of standing up for what you believe is right. But can you talk a little bit about the personal impact of your firing and which is an experience that so many people have gone through in the federal government and beyond? Thank you, and it's really such a pleasure to be here talking to you all. I was kind of expecting it, but I didn't expect it when it happened or how it happened. The normal thing would have been to replace me with another nominee, and instead I was just summarily fired. I was cut off from my email. I was cut off from all my databases. My ID card was decommissioned, so I couldn't get into the building or into my offices anymore without an escort. Uh, my staff had to scramble to find other jobs. One of them is still looking. If you know anybody, she's really great. Um, uh, it was, um, even though I was expecting it, it was still sort of disconcerting, and I find that still a lot of people can't figure out how to find me because they cut off my email without even giving me a chance to put in one of those. If you want to reach this person, email her at this address. So I'm on LinkedIn if anybody's looking for me. Dean, how do you see this, the erosion of legal and ethical norms in government affecting the private sector and leadership in corporate culture? I know you have a real air in on that and, and how can HR leaders like the people in this room make sure that compassion and fairness is still at the heart of their company's operations. Um, what I hope is that corporate America doesn't reflect what's happening currently in the, in the more public environment. I am, and I hope we have a stand up, um, and have a lot more courageous leadership. I think this is a really challenging time. I, uh, listened to and talked to a lot of CEOs in this moment and it's really difficult to navigate the, the, the question around is this the time to stand? Is it time to bend, is it time to hide? And I, and I think this is on their minds like is this a time to duck. Um, or stand up and what I hope is that we get to a place and realize this isn't the way that we would run our companies and certainly not the the model in terms of how you let someone go. Um, people have long memories and uh I just I think in this moment, um, it is. It's easy to be courageous in time when times are easy. It's hard to be courageous when times are hard and and I the thing to remember in this moment, it's not just you going through this, your employees are going through an incredible amount of uncertainty. What does this mean? What does the company stand for? What does my leader stand for? Where are you in this moment? And they really are looking for a lot of things. I'll talk about that in just a minute, like what are some actions you can take in this moment? To make them feel safe. And I guarantee you, when I go into a room and ask people, how many of you feel like this is the most chaotic moment in your life. I may ask you this, how many of you feel like this is a really incredible chaotic moment in time? How many of you feel like your teams are spending a lot of time trying to work through the chaos? There you go. So and you and you multiply that times 10 because you, you have power and your employees don't and have agency and they're just really struggling in this moment. So we'll talk about some real actions you can take on this. What, what gets in the way? I'd love, I'd love for you both to weigh on this, but what, what, what are the things that prevent leaders from being courageous in the moment? What are the factors? I think that there is a systematic effort underway to silence opposition voices and to intimidate people. I was fired in a way that was designed to intimidate other people at my agency and other people at other agencies, and I think the only response to that is to stand together. We all need to stand together. Your organizations have power. And no administration can go up against the entire Fortune 500. If your leaders speak out together, if they combine together, maybe it is counterintuitive for people who normally feel like they're in competition with each other, but this is a moment for combined action, and that is where we will find our strength and our power because it is so important for people to stand up and speak out. Winston Churchill said. You can't appease a crocodile. It just means you're going to be eaten last. So you don't want to be eaten first, last, or ever, and the way to fight that is to band together and find our voices. I think this time it's really important just to go back to what do we what do we stand for, what are our values and what are our principles. So this isn't about politics or red or blue or purple or whatever, but it is really about, you know, what the principles that you stand for and your employees are looking for like in this moment. You know what do you stand for and I think there's definitely a level of fear. Um, I got a call right after the whole DEI thing went down and some of the executive orders started to come in from um Lazelbach, and he said, Dean, I know you and a few other folks have some level of insolence and level of safety because. Longer in the head of HR role. By the way, Patagonia didn't didn't care about safety at all. We sued the president 16 times during the time, the last time, and you probably saw a lot of stuff. We were very, very public. There was an image on the cover of Time magazine of Yvonnehonard, the founder, and Trump, staring at each other, so we were Um, talk about courageous leadership. I mean, that's a great example, but he said, you know, I'm gonna try to see if we can get a bunch of heads of HR to sign this. This is Laszlobo, and so Dean, would you sign this? I was like, of course. And he called me back two days later and he said I could only get 4 former heads of HR to sign this. Do you think that's gonna change in time? I hope that it changes. I know that this is the time to stand together. And not, not to duck and uh and stand for principles. These are all, these aren't just like let's let's move beyond like moral and the right thing. These are business issues. This is just good freaking business. DEI, we've always said diversity, equity, inclusion are good for business. Treating people right on the day that they join the day they exit is good business. These concepts are just good business and if you're running a good business. These are the things you do and things you know and this is what you do as a leader that doesn't change. Not to mention supporting rule of law. I mean, there's a reason why these great companies were formed in this country and have profited in this country. It's because we do have rule of law, because we do have freedom of speech. It's because we do have protections for people that allow you to recruit from all over the world and recruit the best talent and that they will want to come. Here and not worry that if they say the wrong thing their visa is going to get pulled or or they're going to be ousted for some reason because they just expressed their own point of view. If you want to recruit great talent, if you want this to be the United States of America and not hungry, then you have to stand up for those principles, which is how business grows. Yeah, I think. Absolutely, um, the thinking about the challenges ahead, not, you know, again, putting aside politics but just some of the business challenges ahead, the tendency of leaders is to want to express optimism and to be upbeat. How, how do you advise, uh, HR leaders who are often kind of like I think courage whisperers, right? They're often the people who can. Who can help their CEOs um find that courage in themselves. How do you how do HR leaders help the CEOs find their courage and avoid that kind of delusional optimism that can sometimes be a bit of a, a kind of instinct for leaders? The, the only job more lonely than the head of HR is the CEO and uh the only person they don't have a lot of people they can talk to. And so it's typically the head of HR is the person that you can do some whispering in terms of help them be courageous and what what employees want, I believe. is to acknowledge their fear, acknowledge their concern, acknowledge where the moment is, and then move on to like here's some things that we still stand for and this is what we're going to do. I think that's really an important thing is just to to do that is to anchor in principles, acknowledge the fear and concern, and talk about the pragmatic things that we're doing around this company and what we still stand for. That's really what they're looking for and uh and they want. More than ever, transparent, authentic, courageous leadership. That's great. Any questions? Just put it out there? Um What do you see, uh, as the, um, well, actually, sorry, I'm gonna go to a different question. Dean, you've defined courageous leadership as speaking up for your values even when it's hard. I wonder if you could give some examples of what that might look like in action, like this week, next week, this month. Um, and what I mean by that is there was a moment when I was at Patagonia, I did an op ed and I presented to the CEO Rose Mercurio, and she said, Is it provocative enough? And I'm like, what do you mean by that? She goes, did you hit hard? Were you true to what you believe? I was like, and it was about, you know, supporting women at work. I'm like, no, let me rewrite it. So it came back in 20% of the people like that was it, you know, Dean, I got slammed on it and 80% had some reasonably positive. I came back and said, yeah, 20% really didn't like what I said. She goes, you crushed it, perfect. And so we're a courageous leader in standing for something, know that, and when you whisper to the CEO, you're not going to please everyone. When you stand for something, you're you're gonna upset this group and you're gonna upset and be really honest about that. And so that's an action you can help your CEO be courageous in this moment, go here's what's on their hearts and minds. Here's what they need for you at the moment. Here's what you can do. I'll stand beside you. I've got your back on this, and that's, I think what they're looking for is just a little bit of nudge. They're humans too, you know, they're dealing with this and dealing with their families and likely if someone else is impacting their families things. So anyhow, this is your moment, you know, to give them a little nudge and like I got your back. Let's go through this together. Everyone could use that, I think we have a question over here. Yeah, um, Ellen indeed, thanks for both for sharing uh Kyle with Deloitte. I, I think, uh, my, my question a little bit is there's a lot of different stakeholders, uh, public private companies will say, uh, I don't want the bottom line impacted or I don't want our stock price going down or CEO stands up and then the stock price gets hit and the board says that CEO's out, new CEO in or you know whatever it may be. And I know that's gonna be oversimplifying it, but, but how do you think about there's this shift from um companies taking really big stances five years ago to now, hey, here's topics we're actually not going to very publicly take a stance on in the external world uh because we're concerned about retaliation, whether, uh, so, so there there there's a lot of nuance and certainly I I'd love a little bit of your perspective of where maybe you've seen that evolution. And some companies absolutely they they can do it and they can and they will and and you know etc. but others are maybe like do I do it a little bit quieter or do you know so just acknowledging some of the new ones. Well, as I said, I think that working together gives you more power, but I also think that there are a lot of people out there who are looking for leadership, looking for leadership in corporate America, looking for leadership in government, obviously, but looking for leadership in academia. A lot of people are feel like they are under attack and I think. People will look back on this moment. Your, your clients, your customers are looking for brave stances. Courage is contagious, and I think we're seeing that in the university setting that, you know, the first university that felt under attack started to cave, and then other universities started to band together, and they have strength in numbers and um. But there are so many people out there who are looking for demonstrations of courage, and I think that will be rewarded. I think we have to look past the initial moment to um where where we're going, where we're gonna be in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, and how all of this is gonna look then. Love that. Great note to end on. Courage is contagious. Don't be the last person eaten by the crocodile. Thank you so much for your insights, Ellen and Jean. I