Summary:
A big failure? Making important decisions without laying everything on the table. Ruth shares how holding back on expressing her concerns let to a costly detour in her career.
Ruth shares an important lesson with Thuy about the price you can pay when you hold back on expressing all your concerns. Being more candid could have made a big difference for Ruth.
Many people look at you and they see you as the ultra successful CFO but I would imagine that as you were climbing the ladder there were perhaps failures that you had to overcome is there a failure in your life that you would say you came to value because it taught you so much about yourself and how to lead?
Yes I think we all have many failures along the way. I think the one I probably talked about the most with my teams is at one point in my career two of my bosses left Morgan Stanley two people with whom I worked most closely and they went to work at Smith Barney and they invited me to join them in a great role to run something really important and I didn't really want to leave Morgan Stanley. I was pregnant with our second child and at that point in my career all I could hear was something a managing director had said in front of me in front of a client which is, women may come back to work after their first child but they don't ever come back after their second well they certainly don't make it after the second and I was terrified by I was terrified this is in 1991 and I was worried that if my two bosses left I was going to be in an environment without those who really had sort of protected and coached me along the way and I wasn't very direct with people as I was exploring whether to stay at Morgan Stanley or leave and I left and after a very short period of time I said you know what this place isn't for me different culture different approach I want to go back to Morgan Stanley and I was told I couldn't because at that point so many people had left.
Fortunately two and a half years later I was invited to come back and thrilled and I did and the main important lesson that I've told people repeatedly is if you're in a position where you're thinking of leaving a role put everything on the table make it really clear what's on your mind hmm you might be surprised and you might be told you know what you're wrong or there's a better role for you you might have your issue addressed and if you don't you'll never one I am a hundred percent confident if I had been direct and said here's my concern I heard this it worries me. I would have been told that was grossly inappropriate. It was wrong the firm didn't agree with it and I would have had my issues addressed. I didn't put everything on the table and that was the wrong thing to do and so I think anybody who's thinking about a tough choice just be direct about it because you might you're probably going to be surprised.
