Good morning. Andrew here. Last week, a panel of six C.E.O.s gathered at the DealBook Summit to discuss what it’s like to lead a company these days, as artificial intelligence, politics and market volatility reshape business. Moderated by The Times’ David Brooks, an opinion columnist, the panel featured executives who together manage more than 250,000 employees: Alex Chriss of PayPal; Beth Ford of Land O’Lakes Inc.; Bob Jordan of Southwest Airlines; Ynon Kreiz of Mattel; Emma Walmsley of GlaxoSmithKline; and Pete Nordstrom of Nordstrom. Over the coming days, we’ll be sending you emails with excerpts and takeaways from all of the interviews and task force panels at this year’s DealBook Summit. You can also watch all of them on YouTube or listen to them as podcasts. (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.)
It’s the personal connections that keep leaders going
Rising tariffs, an uncertain economy and upended trade patterns are making the coveted chief executive position look anything but appealing. Nonetheless, a task force of six leaders from an array of industries at the DealBook Summit last week explored how to find value, meaning and purpose in their work. The true test of a chief executive’s success is, of course, measured in financial terms: profits, growth and market share. Yet work has a human dimension. It can be, as the saying goes, lonely at the top. Successes — and failures — are laid bare. Then, there is the responsibility for the welfare of employees and the need to keep them motivated. WATCH: How These Fortune 500 Leaders Navigate the Modern World LISTEN: The New Rules for Leadership READ: DealBook: A Special Section The panel, moderated by David Brooks of The New York Times, featured chief executives from companies with a combined market capitalization of $222.6 billion and a work force of more than 263,000. The discussion started by looking at what the executives found meaningful in their work and turned into a free-spirited conversation that included topics like motivation, China, artificial intelligence and time management. Many executives said they found meaning in personal connections. For Beth Ford, chief executive of Land O’Lakes, a member-owned agricultural cooperative, it comes from working with farmers and “elevating the understanding of what is happening in rural America.”
Farm profitability is down, bankruptcies are up and family farms are threatened. Ford said her task is making sure Land O’Lakes enables its member farmers to succeed, “not only for their business, but their family,’’ adding, “It’s very intimate to know these families.” Emma Walmsley, chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceutical giant, said: “I prefer not to think in terms of the pounds or the dollars. I actually like to think of the lives impacted.” The company’s goal, she said, is to discover drugs and vaccines to fight diseases and improve global health. For Ynon Kreiz, chief executive of Mattel, a toy and entertainment company, meaning comes from knowing that “what we do matters in children’s lives.” “You realize that what you do has a societal impact,” he continued, “real impact on the world out there.”
PayPal, the online payment platform, serves 30 million small businesses around the globe. Alex Chriss, its chief executive, said meaning is represented by “those individual small businesses that are able to survive, employ the majority of employees and be able to thrive because of the products and services we can put into the market.” Leaders also make hard calls. Bob Jordan, chief executive of Southwest Airlines, which recently changed policies about assigned seating and free checked bags and on Friday lowered its operating profit target for 2025, said “anything that we do that impacts our people is a difficult decision.’’ Brooks posed a question from Machiavelli’s “The Prince” about whether it is better for a leader to be feared or loved. The group generally agreed that love — or something like it — is a more powerful motivator than fear. Jordan said: “Fear is not sustainable. It’s not about they’ll follow the C.E.O., they will follow the fact that they believe in what this team is doing. There’s nothing more motivating and powerful than that.” Time management is critical. Ford said for her, it often means talking to customers and determining what are “critical priorities’’ outside of her office inbox. For Chriss, it means saying “no” on a regular basis.
“Time is the only resource we can’t make more of,’’ said Chriss. “I say ‘no’ often to stick to the discipline of what is actually most important.” Jordan said it is easy “to confuse busyness and going to meetings with leadership.’’ For 2026, he said, he plans to keep his afternoons free from Wednesday through Friday. He said he needs the time “to work on things you need to work on,” which includes “thinking about what’s important right now” and calling people “you need to talk to.’’ All the executives said they faced headwinds, the largest of which may be China. Pete Nordstrom, who shares leadership at Nordstrom, the fashion retailer, with his brother, Erik, has already had to deal with the growth of online shopping, the rising cost of luxury goods and the prospect of tariffs. Nordstrom said that a lot of what the company sells comes from China, and rising tariffs hurt. “We’re not agile enough to pivot all of a sudden’,’ said Nordstrom. “It takes us a year or so to source things from different places.”
Mattel has shifted from China, which once accounted for 85 percent of its production. After a diversification move years ago, Kreiz said, that figure is now around 35 percent. On the pharmaceutical front, “China has gone from a very low, single-digit percentage share of ‘first-in-class’ medicines for the world,” said Walmsley, “to overtaking Europe now.” She added: “We need to keep protecting and investing in innovation that comes out of this country, which for many decades has led the world.”
Moderator, “The New Rules for Leadership”: David Brooks, opinion columnist, The New York Times Participants: Alex Chriss, chief executive of PayPal; Beth Ford, president and chief executive of Land O’Lakes Inc.; Bob Jordan, president and chief executive of Southwest Airlines; Ynon Kreiz, chairman and chief executive of Mattel; Emma Walmsley, chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline; Pete Nordstrom, co-chief executive of Nordstrom. Thanks for reading! We’ll see you tomorrow. We’d like your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.
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