Truncale, then new to the top job at EY, immediately agreed and recalled Johnson showing her where to grab her name tag to mark her spot on the table as “everybody rushes in to put their name tag somewhere early.” The camaraderie morphed into friendship, and changed how Truncale approaches such gatherings. “In the last two years, I’ve frankly tried to pay that forward, so when there are new CEOs, I try to reach out and say, ‘hey, I’ve just been through this.’”

What I love about that story is what it says about personal connection in leadership, especially for women, whose share of C-suite and board roles has stalled.

Both Truncale and Johnson describe themselves as introverts—in my experience, most CEOs are—and they kept their friendship largely to themselves to the point where colleagues initially thought they didn’t know each other when EY won a deal to help transform Lumen’s network inventory.

“Liking each other isn’t nearly as important as respecting and trusting each other’s capabilities,” Johnson said. “I’m a capital allocator. I allocate human and financial resources, and there’s no way on earth I’m ever going to have enough of either, so I partner for expertise.”

About 25% of EY’s $57 billion in global revenues last year came from work generated through alliance and ecosystem partners, Truncale said. “As a leader, you have to be really comfortable with what you are good at and partner to gain expertise. That is not a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. Those who figure out how to combine those capabilities with confidence are the ones that are going to reach their ambition sooner and further and grow faster.”

What personal connections enable is a deeper trust and more innovative ways to get results. Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber talked on one of my panels about the importance of bringing not just your skills but your network to a corporate board. Sam’s Club CEO Latriece Watkins told my colleague Emma Hinchliffe that “when I feel most powerful is when I see the people I’ve invested in make moves.” And Olivia Walton is investing $100 million in partnerships to halve America’s maternal mortality rate, telling our audience that “everybody wants healthy families.”

Check out Kate Johnson’s “Daring Diaries” blog to get her perspective on the human side of leadership. I’ll be doing three fireside chats this morning with ADP CEO Maria Black, Revathi Advaithi of Flex, and Silicon Valley veteran Marissa Mayer. You can join us via livestream here.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

Top leadership news

FBI arrests OpenAI employee accused of secretly recording meetings

The FBI announced Tuesday that it had arrested Abdulrahman Alfozan, a former OpenAI employee accused of planting a secret recording device in a conference room used for executive meetings. OpenAI fired him after finding the device, though investigators have found no evidence of a leak.

Meg Whitman pushes for bigger changes at Albertsons as sales fall

Albertsons withdrew its financial forecasts as executive chair Meg Whitman pushed for faster changes after two straight quarters of falling sales. The company is reviewing costs, operations, and portfolio of brands to improve performance.

Hachette CEO says relying on AI could weaken leaders’ communication skills

Hachette CEO David Shelley told Fortune he writes his own emails and warned that AI-written messages could create a gap between how leaders come across in writing and who they are in person. He also worries that outsourcing writing and reading to AI could weaken executives’ judgment, curiosity, and ability to think on their feet.

The markets

S&P 500 futures are up 0.2% this morning. The last session was flat. Japan’s Nikkei 225 ended the day flat. South Korea’s KOSPI fell 0.4%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell 0.1%, and China’s CSI 300 fell 1.4%. India’s NIFTY 50 is currently down 0.4%; the STOXX Europe 600 is up 0.5% in early trading. Bitcoin is below $83,500. 

Around the watercooler

Applied Materials’ $5 billion AI lab aims to cut chip development time in half—and restore Silicon Valley’s edge by Alexei Oreskovic

The GOP billionaire behind the biggest political gift in U.S. history could be sued for allegedly fueling a Chicago rat infestation by Catherina Gioino

More than a third of Americans earning over $500,000 say they’re living paycheck to paycheck, Goldman Sachs finds by Steven John

Meta’s Muse models reach the AI frontier—and kill any hopes to ‘pace’ it by Emily Forlini

Today's edition of CEO Daily was curated and edited by Joseph Abrams, Jason Ma, Nicholas Gordon, and Lee Clifford.