Airbnb’s former Chief Ethics Officer Rob Chesnut says it’s time for an ethical revolution in how we do business. America’s most powerful voice in business ethics shows that the “do no evil” mantra is no longer enough, and companies that do not think seriously about a critical element of corporate culture ― intentional integrity ― are destined to fail. Here, he explains why integrity is important and how leaders can nurture this culture at a corporate level.

Everyone thinks they have integrity, yet week after week, we see organizations like Facebook, Google, Boeing, or even the Houston Astros, come under fire for failing to live up to their values. What is “intentional integrity,” and how can it help us get out of this integrity crisis?

Integrity is a great buzzword; it looks great on a poster, but no one talks about what it really means. In today’s global workforce, we come from such different backgrounds and cultures—that diversity is a strength, but it also means that we lack a shared understanding of how to treat each other and how to act. Leaders are uncomfortable talking about integrity, perhaps because they’re acutely aware of their own human failings or because they feel uncomfortable imposing their own moral values on others. Where there’s silence and ambiguity, science demonstrates that people “fudge,” or do things that are in their self-interest, and convince themselves that it’s ok even when a neutral outsider could clearly see that it’s not. That ambiguity also creates fear and uncertainty, even among employees who want to do the right thing but aren’t really sure what that means.

Intentional integrity is a commitment from the top of the company to talk, in a specific and very human way, about how we all treat each other in the workplace, how a company treats customers, and how the company impacts the communities where it operates. It’s a message that can’t be outsourced to HR or a third party. It needs to come from leaders. It needs to talk about romantic relationships in the office, alcohol and work events, using office resources for personal benefit, and even hugging. 

What’s at stake if companies don’t directly and explicitly address integrity? 

Everything. We’ve all seen how brands have been ruined, careers derailed, and businesses sidetracked by ethical failures. The costs are enormous. And data shows that companies who act ethically by paying attention to things like the environment, governance, behavior by leaders, and social good actually outperform companies who do poorly in these areas. Integrity resonates with today’s employees, who see their personal brand closely tied to their employer’s brand and want to be proud of where they work. Consumers are increasingly making purchasing decisions based upon how they perceive the values of the business align with their own. 

We need companies to take the lead in solving many of the biggest problems that face the world. To lead effectively, companies and their leaders need to earn the trust and respect of their employees and the global community. Operating with integrity is critical to gaining that trust.

In response to the coronavirus pandemic, you updated your book with a chapter on leading with integrity during a crisis. What lessons have you learned?

A crisis fire-tests the character of a company. Trust can be formed and broken during these stressful times. It can be challenging to know where to direct your attention, but these three things should be prioritized. 

Put the health and safety of your employees first. A crisis can strain relationships with employees who may have legitimate concerns about their health and safety if they are still on the job. Anxiety tends to run high as people fear layoffs, and many struggle with isolation or juggling parental responsibilities while working remotely. It is a time to care about your people in a very human way.

Think about how you can work with all your stakeholders. Investors will be concerned that the crisis will put a tremendous financial strain on many businesses. But you should also be thinking about how your suppliers, vendors, customers, and communities where you operate are also suffering. 

Creativity pays off. We observed that many businesses have resources that enable them to pivot quickly, respond to new needs, or develop entirely new business models. We saw production lines change to make PPE, hand sanitizer, and ventilators; restaurants move to take out, and personal trainers and music teachers giving remote video sessions.  

During COVID-19, many people were laid off from their jobs. Is there a way to lay people off with integrity?

Of course, layoffs are not necessarily unethical. The truth is that some companies can’t absorb the financial impact of a crisis, and letting people go is necessary for survival. But a layoff is a drastic move, with financial and psychological implications for the affected employees, their families, and the communities where they live. To limit the fallout, leaders need to demonstrate that they are sacrificing first. You cannot credibly continue to take your full salary while putting the financial burden on those who aren’t well-positioned to manage it. 

Another important consideration is whether you looked at alternatives like a furlough. A furlough may enable the employee to continue on your health insurance plan—a huge plus—and it keeps the door open so you can bring them back when business rebounds. A pizza chain in Atlanta had to furlough many of their workers, but those who remained to handle takeout orders are sending pizzas home to the furloughed workers, demonstrating that they still care and want to help.  

Lastly, leaders should use their network to help the laid-off staff find work. I’ve seen leaders at companies that need to do layoffs go onto LinkedIn and post about the company’s pain having to release so many terrific employees. They often list the areas where cuts of strong, skilled workers were made an offer to connect any interested employers with their former colleagues.

How will intentional integrity protect employees from individuals’ bad decisions and fix pervasive corporate cultures that enable abuse of power, as we saw in the #metoo movement?

Intentional integrity is a proactive concept that sets the right tone at a company and creates a culture where it’s clear to everyone how to act. Bad behavior is contagious—if people see leaders behaving badly, it enables them to rationalize acting badly themselves. But integrity is contagious as well. If employees get a clear message upfront about what the company stands for and how the employees are expected to treat each other, and leaders live up to that message with their actions, you’ll avoid a lot of the bad behavior you see now.

Now, you won’t avoid all of it. We’re humans; we make mistakes. People will do things that violate the letter and spirit of the intentional integrity culture that each company creates, and that’s normal. Companies must create an environment where everyone is comfortable reporting bad behavior, there’s a trusted process for investigating that bad behavior, and employees—all employees—are held accountable with appropriate consequences.

You write in your book Intentional Integrity that “you can’t outsource integrity,” and that to be authentic, pervasive, and persuasive, integrity must come directly from an organization’s leadership. If you could give one piece of advice to every CEO, what would it be?

Look at integrity not as a roadblock to getting things done but as a potential superpower. You set the tone by your words and actions. Embrace that responsibility as an essential element of your job. Understand that when you act with integrity and encourage others to do the same, there’s a powerful ripple effect that goes throughout your company and into the community to build trust and give you a long term business advantage. 

How does your 6Cs process work to create a culture of integrity, and what’s an example of one or two of these steps?

The 6Cs are all about sending an authentic, human message that integrity matters at your company. One element of that is the way you communicate with employees about integrity. The “old school” way is to email out a canned code of ethics, put some nice language in your employee handbook, put up a compliance poster in the breakroom, and require everyone to watch a video created by some third party on sexual harassment. The law requires that you do some of that. Still, those things are no substitute for authentic communication from leadership about integrity, framed in the company’s language and culture. At Airbnb, I used to go to new hire orientation every week and talk to the new employees myself about the code of ethics and what it means at Airbnb, using real examples and situations they might encounter. The feedback I got was overwhelmingly positive. To have a leader come in for that conversation, right up front, makes a lasting impression.

What is your advice to a company or individual dealing with the aftermath of an integrity lapse—especially in an era of Yelp, Twitter, and LinkedIn where a bad decision can live online forever?

I spoke to Dan Ariely, a behavioral psychologist at Duke University, about this exact point. It’s hard to recover from significant integrity lapse, and it can’t be done incrementally. It requires a stop and a complete reset. There needs to be a very open discussion, from leadership, about what happened and why it was wrong. And it has to be followed up with a plan to specifically deal with the issue so that there is no doubt about where the company stands on it—things have changed, and from this point forward, we’re taking a new path. Incrementalism and subtlety won’t work.

You started your career as a federal prosecutor who tried CIA spies like Aldrich Ames. How did this experience help shape your philosophy about intentional integrity?

It’s hard to imagine a greater breach of workplace ethics than selling secrets to a foreign government, resulting in the capture and death of other human beings working for your country. What Ames did, and what others like Edwin Pitts and Jim Nicholson did later, sent shock waves through our intelligence community and deeply impacted so many people. It fundamentally undermined trust and integrity across a broad spectrum of government. It certainly impressed upon me at an early stage in my career how important it is to have a real culture of trust and shared mission, and how damaging one event can be to achieving your team’s goals.

What was it like to be running trust and safety at eBay during the dot-com boom and a general counsel and chief ethics officer at Airbnb, two companies that had to invent ethical rules in the nascent and less-regulated frontier of e-commerce?

I love working in a blank space — both places allowed having a lot of impact in big unexplored areas. In hindsight, I think I had it easier than colleagues at a lot of other companies. It all starts at the top, and I’ve been fortunate enough to work with leaders like Meg Whitman and Brian Chesky, who genuinely care about their companies’ integrity. With support from the top, the possibilities for building a culture you’re proud of are almost limitless. Without that support, there’s nothing you can do. I remember Meg told me right up front when I devised the rules that I was free to do the right thing in deciding what we could and couldn’t sell on eBay. Her instructions were not to worry about the revenue impact, but to do what was necessary to keep us on the right side of the law. We ended up banning guns, alcohol, tobacco, items made from endangered species, Nazi memorabilia, recalled items, and even body parts like kidneys. We voluntarily put caps on event tickets in states that had ticket scalping laws. In hindsight, those decisions look easy, but, at that time, there were debates. 

What are some of the unique challenges faced by Internet-based platform companies—like Airbnb? Do they have a greater need to act with integrity than a traditional retail company, hotel group, or grocery chain?

Well, I think all companies, large and small, should be concerned about integrity. We live in a world where it seems like someone is always watching, and when it comes to unicorn tech companies, it seems like lots of people are watching and watching closely. Tech is under a microscope, and when you look at some of the things that have gone on in tech over the last few years, I understand why. Tech, as a whole, like the entertainment industry, needs a reset on integrity. An intentional one, so to speak, where we acknowledge some bad behavior in the past and commit to a new way of doing business. We’re seeing that crop up now in pockets all across companies. You hear Marc Benioff talking about it. Cisco is doing some interesting things, so is Microsoft. That’s why I wrote this book to push the conversation and highlight why it’s important. The world needs more from companies, all types of companies. The old world where companies focused solely on making money now just isn’t working. 

In a digital and global age with shifting cultural norms, how can companies reinforce common integrity standards while respecting each employee’s right to their personal opinions and preferences?

We’ve all got to give a little, recognizing that the workplace is a unique environment where we all make a living and do our life’s work. For the good of creating a workplace where everyone can do their best and feel like they belong, there may be some sacrifice in the freedoms that you might enjoy outside work. Let’s take romantic relationships. If you’re a top exec at a big company, do you have the right to pursue a consensual romantic encounter with an employee in your company? On the one hand, I’m sure some people think that you can’t fight love. . . let it happen. Studies show that most people have engaged in at least one workplace relationship in their life, and some people end up marrying a work colleague. 

But if you’re a leader, you have a higher responsibility to set the right ethical tone. How will a lower-level employee react to your advances? Will they be worried about the career consequences if they say no? Or if they break it off? The imbalance of power is troubling. What will others at work think? They’ll believe that the employee sleeping with the boss has the inside track to raises, promotions, inside information. That undermines trust. And too often, these things end badly. I don’t think it’s too much for a top leader to refrain from engaging in any romantic work relationship or for managers to refrain from relationships with anyone on their team. Just talk about it, put it in the code of ethics, and live by it. 

Besides #Metoo, what are some ethical blind spots that companies should be paying attention to?

I don’t think that a lot of companies have put thought into combining alcohol and workplace events. Over and over during my career, I’ve been involved with terminations involving bad behavior that started with too much drinking in a work environment. Sexual assaults, grossly inappropriate language, insulting customers, even in one case, an employee so drunk that they bit a security guard who was trying to help him, drawing blood. Yet it is still common for companies to make large quantities of alcohol available in the office, without rules or supervision. Dinners and “hospitality suites” on the road where too much alcohol is served, holiday parties that get out of hand. All of this is happening, yet you so rarely hear leaders talking to employees about how dangerous mixing work and alcohol can be. Intentional integrity should include a real conversation about how much is too much at work, and leaders need to put thought into what can go wrong when corporate parties go on too long, with too much booze.

Ethics can be an intimidating subject to bring up. What advice do you have for leaders who want to kick start this conversation at their organization?

I think it was hard ten years ago. Now, when you raise it, you likely won’t get anyone saying that it isn’t important—look at the news to see what happens at companies when you don’t address it. The data around the ties to company performance is compelling. Study after study shows that companies who do ethics and governance well will outperform companies that don’t pay attention to it. You don’t need to make a “case” for it anymore. Now it’s just a matter of getting comfortable with what has traditionally been considered a “personal” topic. You don’t have to be a perfect human being to be an advocate for driving integrity into your company’s culture. Think of it as an opportunity to build your personal brand by speaking up on a topic that really matters.

Rob Chestnut’s new book is “Intentional Integrity: How Smart Companies Can Lead an Ethical Revolution.”

Since the turn of the century, we’ve learned that our leaders have illegally avoided taxes, lied about emissions in the car industry, rigged interest rates, presided over an offshore banking system that was larger than anyone ever thought, destroyed pension funds as they themselves grew wealthier.

Collectively, they oversaw the biggest collapse of the financial system and watched as their life savings placed into investment funds set up by leaders of unimpeachable integrity turned out to be Ponzi schemes. Our spiritual leaders have covered up sexual abuse in the Church. Our political leaders have cheated on their expenses, admitted sexually inappropriate behavior, and were taken completely by surprise by the Brexit vote. Our charity leaders have sexually abused the vulnerable. Our entertainment leaders are facing multiple allegations of sexual harassment and abuse. Our leading broadcasters have falsely accused some political figures of being child abusers while allowing actual abusers to commit crimes on their premises. Meanwhile, our sporting leaders have been caught cheating and doping.

These events sound unlikely, unbelievable, even impossible, but they all happened in the last two decades. Outside of the cataclysmic events of the world wars, it is difficult to remember a time when our leaders have appeared more wholly and thoroughly discredited.

How do we rebuild trust in our leaders? It won’t be quick or easy. We cannot establish the presence of the positive without first ensuring the absence of the negative. We have to understand why these events happened by asking what they had in common. Could it be that we lacked the imagination to think, this was even possible? Did the leaders never imagine that they would be caught? An obvious connection was that they all had leadership groups that lacked diversity. Another factor is that these groups were fronted by confident men. We’ve seen the effect of this in pollsters and pundits who didn’t see Donald Trump or Brexit or the financial collapse of 2009. We have to stop predicting one outcome and preparing for all outcomes.

Another factor was that all of these leaders had been traditionally educated in drill-down, analytic, Western Reductionism. This makes them good drilling-down but not necessarily at looking across. By their very nature, diverse groups tend to have a broader view, think longer-term in their views, and tend to be qualitative. A disproportionate number of MPs are from privately-educated background and/or attended Ivy League universities. Equality and representation in leadership is not just a matter of social justice, it’s a matter of business efficiency.

The over-reliance on logic and analysis tends to favor thinking rather than the feeling. This means or leaders can misread the mood because they’re too reliant on the math. During the British parliamentary expenses scandal, for instance, the politicians argued that the scale of the expenses abuses was tiny compared to state expenditure. They were missing the point about the overall level of trust.

If it’s a problem of trust you’re trying to fix, you have to start with an understanding that what makes us trust our leaders is not always logical. More data and more education may not be the answer. We’re looking for evidence that they are representing our interests first and not just their own. If they looked more representative of the communities they are seeking to serve; then this would be a start.

This is especially true of our technology leaders. They can no longer argue that they are furthering the interests of the community they serve when they treat personal data carelessly. Cambridge Analytica was an example of this. If this wasn’t enough, Facebook providing a live-stream of the murdering Muslims in a mosque was a watershed moment.

It’s no wonder people are angry with the current leadership. They feel they’re not listening. They think they don’t care. The elevators seem to be broken. This is dangerous. It opens the way for demagogic leaders with ‘simple solutions’. History tells us quietly that we’ve been here before.

Trust is something that takes years to establish that can be lost in moments. It’s so precious that we can no longer entrust it to one infallible (often male) individual. It needs to be invested in teams that work in a collective structure that have timeless values. These are called leadership institutions, and they survive the test of time better than any individual leader.

This is an excerpt from the book “The Leadership Lab” by Dr Philippa Malmgren and Chris Lewis (pictured above).

Dr. Philippa Malmgren is an author who writes about megatrends in the world economy. She is especially interested in explaining trends in the economy that people can take advantage of or better prepare for. She is very focused on technology and policy. Rather than just talking about the world economy, she tries to shape it by advising Presidents and Prime Ministers.

Chris Lewis is the founder and CEO of LEWIS. He is a media trainer who has coached senior politicians, business people and celebrities, and a published author and journalist who has written for the Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Times and The Guardian.

As Baby Boomers retire and our world begins the largest transfer of wealth in human history — an estimated $30 trillion — a significant part of these assets will go to the descendants of family-owned businesses. According to the Conway Center for Family Business, the largest portion of wealth in the United States resides with family businesses, and the U.S. Census Bureau reports that 90 percent of all businesses in North America are family owned.

But as inspiring as that sounds, research from the Family Business Alliance reveals only 30 percent of family businesses will actually transition to the second generation. About 12 percent will still be viable into the third generation, and a mere 3 percent of all family businesses continue operating with the fourth generation.

How do certain families bake in a leadership culture that helps their businesses remain viable for multiple generations? How can you emulate a leadership culture in your own family, whether you work a business together or not?

According to a 2015 Harvard Business Review article, “Leadership Lessons from Great Family Businesses,” family business leaders focus on the next generation — not just the next quarter. They usually put employees and customers first and dedicate their organizations and their personal time to social responsibility. At their core, family businesses have stronger values, dedicate greater resources to worker motivation and leadership, and measure success in ways other than just growth and profit. Their culture often encompasses a strategy akin to The Golden Rule.

In this exclusive interview, Real Leaders explores the leadership philosophy of Martin Luther King III, and shares his insight on how your family can grow and sustain a mission-aligned leadership culture that transcends your next generation and beyond.

The Martin Luther King family describes what family leadership looks like against a landscape of global problems and then helping us pivot to a more specific discussion on family business leadership.

MARTIN LUTHER KING III:

• Civil rights advocate and global humanitarian
• Oldest living child of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King (age 10 when his father was assassinated)
• Founder and president of Realizing the Dream, Inc.

Where to focus family leadership efforts.

There are monumental world issues that we should focus on as a society. Climate change is among the most important because if our water and air are polluted, then everything else is for naught. If we don’t find ways to address it, we’re going to all be in trouble.

Second is the eradication of poverty in the world and certainly, within our own nation. Our nation has an inordinate amount of poverty based on the amount of resources that exist here. My parents used to talk about the eradication of poverty, racism, and I’d say violence – although my dad used to call it militarism. Those triple evils are where leadership-oriented families must focus. 

The King family’s leadership focus.

Society has embraced a culture of violence. It’s in our cinemas and in the gaming industry targeting our children. It’s in our homes as domestic violence. Leaders have to think about how to create a culture of non-violence because non-violence is sustainable. Our culture cannot sustain itself if we continue to operate this way.

If we can live a day in peace, why can’t we live a week in peace? If we can live a week in peace, why can’t we live a month? If we can live a month, why not a year? And if we can achieve a year, why not a lifetime?

So many people look to the United States for leadership, but we are the most divided we’ve ever been. We can’t focus on one political interest — we have to look at what serves humanity. Leaders need to help communities get above the noise and think at a different level. 

As a family, we are focusing on peace, justice, and equity. While that’s furthering the legacy of my parents, it’s also the legacy of our family in general, and our 11-year-old daughter is working with us on it, too.

Role of individual leadership in moving the needle on world problems.

Start by deciding what kind of society you seek for yourself and your family, and then identify where you can make a contribution. Some of us are concerned about the climate, so they should focus there. Some are concerned with police brutality, so they should focus there. Some are concerned with reproductive rights, so they need to engage and get involved there. All of us have a contribution we can make.

Importance of listening to young people.

The truth is that young people are leading the rest of us. The Parkland students are a perfect example. They worked very hard to mobilize people around the country so that the needle can move on responsible gun legislation. These young people are totally engaged and leading us. I haven’t seen a movement like that since 1963 when 3,000 kids were arrested in Birmingham attempting to desegregate the city.

“No one person, no one organization can do all this work. It’s going to take a collective. Leaders need to help communities get above the noise and think at a different level.”  — Martin Luther King III

Then we’ve got young people like Greta Thunberg leading us around climate issues. And even younger children like Little Miss Flint leading us around the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

I go to schools and ask kids what they are worried about. Too often, they say they’re concerned someone will come into their school and shoot them. Think about that: Our children have to practice what to do if someone comes into the classroom shooting at them. Our society has accepted a culture of violence. Instead of focusing on eradicating violence, we are focused on teaching our children how to cope with it.

I’m inspired by children and how easily and naturally they take action. Unfortunately, adults don’t tend to get involved until they are affected by it directly. When there’s a catastrophe, we get engaged. But the kids are showing us that we can get engaged at any time. Adults just have to learn how to disagree without being disagreeable.

On encouraging a culture of leadership within families.

I’m always telling my daughter, Yolanda, that she has to be authentic. She’s been around leaders in her family for generations — parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, and uncles — we’re all involved. But I tell her she has to find her own authenticity. You don’t have to be like us. Be your best self. You’ve got to find your way.

She got a chance to speak at the March for Our Lives, and she went way beyond what I would have said because I am regimented by the laws of our land. At the event, she said she had a vision, her own dream (see sidebar, “Yolanda Renee King: I Have a Dream, Too.”) We did not help her with this speech or give her any guidance. She said, “I know what I want to say.” 

Lessons learned from my daughter.

From day one, she’s had an interest in homelessness and poverty. I never pushed her, but I’m thankful she has this interest. Families that lead let their child be who they want to be. And what if your kid is not focused on being their best self? Exposure is everything. Every kid has a gift, and when they find their gift, they are motivated to work on it because it’s what inspires them. 

Yolanda knows what’s happening and why there’s a need to focus on U.S. poverty. If a kid comes to school hungry, they won’t have the energy to do anything. Principals tell me they have many transient students. There are apartments out there where you get your first month’s rent free, so after that, they move. They are constantly moving because they can’t afford to stay, and the kids never get a chance to adjust. Many in our society are completely unaware that these kinds of things are going on. How do we inspire kids to be leaders until we fix these problems?

Some time ago, I visited a school in Sudan. The school was in a tent — in fact, the whole place was a tent village. Our sponsor provided us with a shiny black Mercedes to drive out there. We got out of the car, and the kids started running out and pointing at the car and then running back in and bringing out more children and pointing at the car. And I thought, “Wow, materialism has even made it out here to these kids in Sudan.” But then I realized that the car was so shiny they could see themselves reflected on it. They had never seen a mirror before and were seeing images of themselves for the first time.

You may think you know what’s going on, but it’s all a matter of perspective. American kids often don’t realize how bad other kids have it. Exposure helps them realize, and then from that comes the desire to help others. Parents want to protect their children’s innocence, and that is preeminent. But we still need to let them grow up. Leadership-oriented families expose their kids to things so the kids can embrace the problems and become part of the solution.

Hardest thing about living a consistent life of  leadership.

Most challenging is staying authentic in a nation where everything is quickly changing. You have to maintain your values and not let society change who you are and who your family is. But you do have to compromise to stay relevant.

We are focused on creating partnerships to align people and families who can help us with what we want to achieve. That’s what it’s going to take. No one person, no one organization can do all this work. It’s going to take a collective.

That’s what leadership is about — building this collective of collaborators. My dad would have called it creating the beloved community. And that’s what my wife and I, and even Yolanda, are focused on right now: creating these collaborations to continue the legacy and unfinished work of my parents.

YOLANDA RENEE KING:

• The only granddaughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King is an 11-year-old innocent who speaks the wisdoms of an old soul and solves the world’s problems in one interview.

Real Leaders:  Like your grandfather, you have a dream, too. Tell us about your dream.

Yolanda Renee King: I have a dream that this will be a gun-free world. We really need to solve this conflict. With a lot of young activists around the world, I think we can do it. We’ve done the rallying, but now we need to campaign to Congress — and we need to find a way to get this issue to the UN.

What makes someone a good leader?

A real leader wants to make a difference. They aren’t just doing it because they have to or to impress people. If that’s why you’re doing it, you’re not a true leader in your heart. Maybe you’re doing things as a hobby, but it’s not your purpose.

A leader needs passion. For example, Greta [Thunberg] has passion for saving the environment. But you don’t need a world voice. You can start things in your own community because even if you’re just doing something for your family, or your little town, or your small school, that’s still making a difference. And that’s better than sitting down and doing nothing and watching the news and saying, “Oh, that’s too bad that happened. Oh, well.”

Even in the smallest ways, you must stay active because that’s making a difference. A small impact can spread, and a lot of people making a small impact can make one big difference.

What are some things that make your dad a good leader?

Well, I probably have to go through a long checklist. It makes him happy to help people and help the community. He’s not just doing it to follow in his parents’ footsteps; he does it because it’s his passion. 

He is courageous and brave because not everyone is going to agree with what you say, and he doesn’t let that bother him. He just gets back up. And sometimes, he doesn’t even let the other person push him down. He has thick skin.

Most grown-ups are good people, and they try hard. But where do you think grown-ups could do better?

We have some problems today because of things the grown-ups did a long time ago. They made a mess and left it standing there, and now we’re picking up their mess.

Accidents happen, but some things, the grown-ups have been doing on purpose. They keep doing it, and they leave it and never come back to clean it up. And now, people who are totally innocent, it will impact their generation unless they clean up the grown-ups’ mess. 

So maybe they could do better by cleaning up their own mess. Or stop causing the mess. It’s never too late.

If you could wave a magic wand and change some things in this world, what would you change first?

I would change for all of us to get along. If we have peace and justice, then we probably wouldn’t be shooting each other. And all that hatred and negativity would get sucked out of everyone. There would be no more impoverished communities if we had peace. So, I would do one big magic spell of peace because that one big spell would take care of everything.

This whole world is one big community if you think about it. We shouldn’t hate anyone because they are a human being. Most of our world problems are caused by people. If every person was treated with dignity and respect, that would solve most of the problems in our world.