Valerie Jarrett praises Obama for creating ‘honest’ culture in White House

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Speaking to the Raben Group about former President Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett, who once worked as an adviser to Obama, praised Obama for creating an “honest” culture.

“Part of the job of a senior adviser is to be honest and be open,” Jarrett said. “And part of the job of the president is to make your team feel safe in doing so, because what you really want to do is make the best possible decisions.”

“He created a culture where we all felt very comfortable telling him the truth and telling each other the truth,” she continued. “And when you spend so much time with people over the course of the day, you begin to care about them a lot, and part of how we demonstrated that affection is through honesty and knowing that we could be honest and we could disagree without being disagreeable.”

She went on to say, “If I had to go in there and tell him something that I thought he might disagree with or take issue, I had to be really prepared, and I had to be prepared to defend my position, because he inevitably was going to push back, and that’s the nature of the relationship.”

“I think as a result of that, he made better decisions, and we were a good team.”

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