lger: What I’ve really learned over time is that optimism is a very, very important part of leadership. However, you need a dose of realism with it. People don't like to follow pessimists. I，d say that I've also learned, in general, to be more patient. I’ve learned to be more focused. I’ve learned to listen better and manage reaction time better. What I mean by that is not overreacting to things that are said to me, because sometimes it’s easy to do that.

lger: I’ve worked for some great leaders. Roone Arledge was a consummate perfectionist. He drove everybody to levels of perfection or to come as close as possible to it. You exhausted every possibility there was to make something great or make something better. Tom Murphy and Dan Burke taught me the importance of trust and managing people. You could learn from them but you also had the opportunity to go out and take those learnings and actually apply them on your own. There was a decentralized approach to the way they ran the company. Michael Eisner brought me into different types of creativity. I had been mostly a television executive and he taught me about creativity on almost every level，in every direction, from theme—park attractions to stage plays. My first boss at ABC told me I wasn’t promotable, so I’d have to put him in the category of “bad boss.” Clearly he had poor judgment.

Reporter: How did you react to that?

Iger： Well, when you’re 23 years old and you’re told you’re not promotable, there’s something kind of surprising to you about that, particularly when you’ve just embarked on a career and you have hopes for yourself-not necessarily high hopes, but I had hopes. I’d say it was just shocking. I don’t remember even being able to react, but I found another job very quickly, fortunately, within the company. It’s obviously a profound moment in your career. And the moment remains pretty vivid in my mind.