Fire the Client

Have there been times in your career where you felt your principles were being challenged or tested and how did you deal with that?

Well I have worked in my view in very ethical organizations and I think that's one of the most important things I would obviously encourage anybody starting their career make sure that the values of your company are consistent with your values. I mean so I haven't that I haven't dealt with business ethics issues where I have felt compromised. I think the tougher one has been sexual harassment or professional harassment because I was a woman might be another way I would frame it and what that those as you're in particular a young associate coming up in a bank. Those were challenging and I'll give you one example.

I had a client, CEO I was a young associate and he said things that were just stunningly vulgar and inappropriate and I went to the managing director and said I can't work with this guy thinking I would be taken off of that that accounts and the managing director said not only am I taking you off of that account but we will fire him as a client and his view was anybody who lacked personal ethics probably lacked professional ethics and for me that was so gratifying to see that it how important it is to speak up to use your voice and to see that I had people who were really protecting my back. So those were that those were the tougher ones and really I think the response I got was what I would have expected from an organization as ethical as where I was.

Do you think that informs your leadership style now because your leadership style now you've talked about it many times is that it is important to give employees a voice to make sure that they're not afraid to speak out.

To me one of the most important things as leaders is to make it safe for people to come to you with issues I think the risk for people as you rise up through an organization is that you find yourself in a bubble an information bubble so there are multiple elements to your question but yes I think that bringing bad news early is really important I actually created an award for people who bring things early because you said he asked the team I think it's really sometimes it can be scary to say you know what this seems to be a problem let me try and fix it but oftentimes time is our most valuable resource and so it's it is incredibly valuable for people to bring issues and as a team try and figure out well what do you want to do about it how do we fix it and so absolutely ensuring that you make it safe for people to bring what are their concerns is key.