From the sociology class he took in college to the stern talking-to he got from a mentor in an office closet, Jamie Price’s astonishing career has been informed by a breadth of experiences and perspectives that we should all aspire to as we seek to become better leaders.
Leadership Conversations – Unleashing Possibilities (ft. Jamie Price)
A discussion with Jamie Price on the well-rounded perspectives that make a great leader
OPENING QUOTE:
“And so it was more of a personal awakening for me, recognizing that in big companies and small companies, taking risks and impacting the whole organization is absolutely doable. In fact, you do it anyway. If you're not intentful about it, you're not doing it well.”
-Jamie Price
GUEST BIO:
Jamie Price has spent most of his career in financial services, building his expertise through roles such as regional sales manager for Prudential securities, theme legion sales director, and onto COO before moving to UBS to become head of wealth management advisor and member of UBS Global Group managing board. Jamie then moved into the startup world as a founder of 1-800-DOCTORS, remotely connecting people around the U.S. with expert doctors and medical experts. He then returned to financial services to become CEO of Advisors Group, one of the largest independent financial advisors in the U.S. He was voted Best CEO in 2021 in U.S. wealth management for large organizations.
CORE TOPICS + DETAILS:
[5:41] - The Importance of Being Well-Rounded
A lesson from Jamie’s father
In college, Jamie’s father convinced him to go outside his comfort zone and take a range of classes— even those that may not directly apply to his area of focus. So he took sociology classes alongside his economics and finance classes, and found that this made him have a much more complete, informed worldview that’s not only enhanced his career but also enhanced his life.
[10:14] - Leadership is Conversation
How leading people boils down to talking to them
Jamie frequently says that 90% of leadership happens through conversation. In a leadership conversation, you don’t speak about past factors that got you where you are. You’re realistic about the present and speak in honest terms, while being optimistic about the future— an optimism powered by real belief that’s contagious to the people around you.
[16:49] - Failing and Cheering
Setting ambitious goals and celebrating when they fail
At a management offsite featuring GE legend Larry Bossity, Bossity told Jamie something unexpected: “We rarely hit our internal target and we celebrate wildly.” His point was that when you set lofty internal goals, they’ll push you to outperform the competition even when you don’t meet those goals. Then, you still have reason to celebrate.
[27:06] - Invisible Influence
You are making an impact, whether you know it or not
Everything you do influences your organization in ways you can’t predict. You influence your partners, your colleagues, and others in every interaction you have. As a leader, impacting everything is your job. Are you being deliberate and conscious about your impact?
[36:51] - When Your Team’s On the Field
A lesson learned in an office closet
After he publicly criticized a team member’s comment in a large meeting, one of Jamie’s mentors pulled him aside in a nearby closet and told him that if you want someone on your team off the field, pull them off the field. But never make them miserable while they’re on the field. That lesson applies to anyone in any leadership or collaborative role.
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CREDITS:
Jamie Price:
And so it was, I would say more of a personal awakening for me and recognizing that in big companies and small companies, taking risk and impacting the whole organization is absolutely doable. In fact, you do it anyway. If you're not intentful about it, you're not doing it well,
Chris Roebuck:
Welcome to Perspectives From The Top. I'm Chris Roebuck, global keynote speaker with unique leadership experience, from military, business, and government, best-selling offer, and your guide to greater success. Together, we'll discover powerful insights from the world's leading thinkers, doers, and trailblazers. The must-know trends, thought provoking revelations, and practical actions you can use immediately. This is your exclusive and personal shop of insight and inspiration to help you get to the top.
Chris Roebuck:
Welcome to you and all of our perspectives from the top community in 40 countries across the world and growing. It's great to share the insights of such successful people with you, to help you get to where you want to be. Today's guest is Jamie Price, who has spent most of his career in financial services, building his expertise through roles such as regional sales manager for Prudential securities, then region sales director, and onto COO before, moving to UBS to become head of wealth management advisors for Americas and also as a member of UBS global group managing board. Jamie then took a really interesting career move into the startup world, as a founder of 1-800-DOCTORS connecting around U.S with expert doctors. After that, he went back to financial services with some new ideas to become a CEO of Advisors Group, one of the largest independent financial advisors in U.S. And he was voted best CEO in 2021 in U.S wealth management for larger organizations. So congratulations to Jamie on his award.
Chris Roebuck:
Jamie, welcome to Perspectives From The Top, talking to successful people about how they became successful. Often somewhere, somewhere is a boss, a teacher, a mentor, a family member in the past who truly inspired them to get them to where they are now. Did you have somebody like that, that sort of started you on the journey?
Jamie Price:
Yeah, no doubt about it. I think I was fortunate enough to kind of know what I wanted to do early and got in the financial services business right out of college, and had people who took chances on me. And so very early on, I had thankfully good role models, two in particular who I think brought very different disciplines to me. One Wick Simmons, who had been in the financial service industry for a number of years, went on to run NASDAQ and sit on some boards. I think was a really good role model early on because he was extremely current, early in the FinTech kind of movement in financial services 20 some odd years ago, 30 years ago. And wasn't afraid aid to put some resources behind new ideas, whether they were going to ultimately work or not, but take risk kind of early on and be extremely kind of well read on what was going on and how it might impact the future of the business. And at the same time, very good at amassing and eclectic group of leaders at the senior leadership team.
Jamie Price:
I think back in my early days, there were no two people alike. They were all very different from different backgrounds and walks of life. And I think he was able to see value in what people brought to bear by being different than the person sitting next to him in the executive suite. And so I found that to be unique, particularly that early on. And FinTech was just kind of just started. The other one was George Murray, who just beat senselessly into me the importance of the numbers at a level of detail that I don't think I would've been into naturally, even with a finance and economics degree. He was very much into a level of detail and made sense out of numbers in a compartmentalized way, so that he could look at unit costs in almost every part of a P&L, and at the same time was quite a good people leader. And so I would have to say those two, right out of the gate my management leadership of career early, were great role models for two very different reasons.
Chris Roebuck:
That's really interesting the difference between the two, but the fact that when you get that combination of the excellent at the figures bit, and also the good with people bit and bring them together. Certainly, the concept of a senior leader selecting a diverse leadership team, particularly where members of that team don't reflect them is so counter-cultural to what most leaders do, who make the assumption that if you are like me, you must be a good guy, so I'll recruit you.
Jamie Price:
Yeah, I think that's absolutely true.
Chris Roebuck:
So those are great examples. But you mentioned when you were at university, you were attending a sociology class. And that was the point where the sort of human interaction, the communication clicked for you. So tell our listeners about that.
Jamie Price:
Yeah. So I was kind of very much a math, science nerd, if you will, in high school and had completed my freshman year through AP classes of university to go into premed. And it was really my dad who was a doctor by the way, and who I admired greatly, who convinced me that I should, while going into university have the luxury, particularly since I had my first year kind of done, take some other classes and things that I hadn't expanded my thinking or couldn't do in high school. And so I took a finance, an econ class, and I took a sociology class. And quite frankly, the combination of those things completely changed my career. I completely switched my major from premed to finance. And I have to say the sociology teacher... People who work for me today will often say that I'm a really good people leader, genuinely good guy, et cetera.
Jamie Price:
I was the kind of shy book nerd guy. And it was a sociology teacher that created such an interest in the ability for somebody in a very large group of people to move an audience in a direction. And he did it without any notes in front of him. There was a curriculum and certainly a textbook, but he got up in front of a sold out class every semester, standing room only, and lectured at the very detail of the class coursework, with never a note in front of him. And I finally, one day got the courage to walk up to him after class and said, "I've been sitting in your class for half a semester and noticed that you are able to keep the audience engaged at a level of detail, and yet you never have a note in front of you. How do you do it and why don't you use notes?" And he said, which I thought was quite uncanny, "If a great win came through the hall and blew my notes away, how would I ever teach if I didn't speak from the heart on what I truly believed?"
Jamie Price:
And I thought, God, it was that moment where I realized his connection to people because of his authenticity and the fact that he truly spoke what he believed, not something that a textbook was telling him to dictate to people from a learning curriculum standpoint. You could read that on your own. The nuance he brought to his own belief system on people in the room, engaged them in a level of detail of the subject that I don't think he could have gotten by just reading the book, nor would you have been of interested in it. And it was amazing to watch how he moved people in the room and created interest in a subject that, for most people, was a check the box, a mandatory part of graduating credits that you needed, unless you were a sociology major. Most people were taking that class and never going to see it again and never use any of it. But people, it was standing room only every semester, and people signed up as early as they could so they didn't miss out on getting in.
Chris Roebuck:
That is amazing. If you think about the normal way these classes go at universities, it's sort of, "It's a drag. I have to go to this. I tolerate it." And it's certainly not standing room only. But I think you picked up that point there, the phrase, "Speak from the heart about what I believe in." And everything that you and I have seen over business... And it's worth me being honest at this point in time to say that we worked together at UBS for a few years. So we've interestingly experience some of the same things. But in that sense, we've seen that work in any number of organizations, where when people speak from the heart, the audience gets it. And it's maybe the non-verbal signals or whatever, but that passion just conveys the message in a way that reading from notes doesn't.
Jamie Price:
Yeah. And I think, both of us had the experience of UBS where we leveraged some of the Darden School leadership curriculum across the entire organization. And I'll never forget one of the taglines on speaking from the heart is that people find it unconscionable to object when you're speaking from the heart, versus just expressing some fact based thing. And I think it's true. People really will listen more intently.
Chris Roebuck:
Well, that's interestingly, because that leads on to a quote that I've got from you, which was you said, "90% of leadership happens through conversation," which is a follow-on from what you experienced with that lecturer. Talk to our listeners about what you think a leadership conversation is, perhaps more than just a conversation. And is it more than those words that are spoken? Is it the body language as well and all the rest of it? How do you view that?
Jamie Price:
Yeah. First and foremost, I think... At least the way I think about it and clearly some of the stuff we went through at UBS ingrained some of this in us. I think you have to think that when you're having a leadership conversation, very specifically it's a different conversation first and foremost, versus one where you're having more of a management or even a crisis conversation. Where it's very specific and you don't have a lot of time for any miscues. I think in a leadership conversation, first and foremost, I think leaders uncannily, and this is something Wick Simmons did back in my early days very well. He walked into a very difficult company, with lots of problems that could have been blamed so easily on the past management. He never, ever allowed us to speak ill will of the past.
Jamie Price:
And I think leaders do speak respectfully of the past. They're realistic about the present in really common, honest terms, and they are extremely optimistic about the future. And I think when you're having leadership conversations, those are three kind of elements of what you have to keep in the back of your mind. Secondly, that I found in looking at really speeches that have kind of stood the of time. We looked at the man on the moon speech I know at UBS, and we looked at Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream speech. And these things still carry weight today in such an inspiring way. And by and large, what both those people did, Gandhi did the same thing, is they created a future that people right now couldn't see, but they made declarations about a future and put belief behind it, and were public about it in a way that made them have to carry through on the promise.
Jamie Price:
And I think that's one other thing that leaders do in leadership conversations, is they make declarations about the future and they really create possibility thinking, and they change people's worldviews on what's either appropriate and/or possible even without any evidence to support it in the current. And most of the big breakthroughs and/or leading edge kind of disruptors in industries, I think by and large had set a future state where people thought they were almost crazy when they laid it out. And so I think when you're having leadership conversations, you're allowing people to think freely and think of the art of possibilities. I find this with myself at almost 62 years of age. There isn't anything you haven't heard, and you build lots of files in your brain on behaviors and experiences you've had in life and growing up in business. And you can tell yourself immediately, "Well, that's just not going to work. That's a dumb idea."
Jamie Price:
And I think you almost have to pull files out of your head and just think openly with your team in a leadership conversation. I think the big nuance at the end of a leadership conversation, versus just a direct management conversation, if you will, is that people are left with a sense of ownership. Because I do think the impact of leadership is what happens when you're not in the room. It's not how you impact the room when you're in it. I think it's what happened when leadership isn't in the room? Do people have an ownership mentality of what it is the company's shared values are? And do they believe that they are impacting that and have very much a say in the outcome? And I think that takes way more time than management conversations. You have to spend a lot more time on kind of why questions and open-ended questions, and getting kind of people enrolled in their own belief system while changing their worldviews through leadership conversations.
Jamie Price:
It's sometimes a lot easier to just have a compliant conversation. "You're going to do this. Here's how you're going to do it. And I need it by Friday." And there are times where those conversations are hugely important and have to be done, but they're not leadership conversations. They don't change outcomes longer term.
Chris Roebuck:
Yeah, it's a process. The leadership conversation, from my perspective as well, of the ones that have an impact are the ones that create a belief, a genuine belief in a future state that everyone can sign up to. It's the vision, the vision that inspires, the vision that fits together with where we are now and where we want to go. Now, leading on from the sort of vision statement, the sort of financial performance that you've delivered via organizations Prudential, UBS, 1-800-DOCTORS, and Advisors. In all of those being they listed, be they startups, be they private equity, from everything you've seen, do you believe that there is actually a link between having inspired people, good leadership, and the results it produces financially?
Jamie Price:
There's no doubt about it. 100%. You can even see this, Chris, in UBS where we worked various departments, where people were switched on and committed. You would about a department being on fire, not just a person, but the people in a department all switched on. And so I absolutely positively believe that you get way more power out of people momentum than anything else. And interestingly, I thought one of the greatest changes in my career in a goal setting process at year end, which we've all gone through in our careers. Martin Hokstro, who, as you know, worked with us at UBS and at one point ran Global HR, changed the framework of goal setting at UBS.
Jamie Price:
And it was very much akin to a conversation we had, had at a leadership conference with Larry Bossity, who, as you know, worked at GE, was extremely successful and then went on to run Allied Signal and general dynamics. And is one of, I don't know, a handful of CEOs who every single quarter outperformed earnings at every company around every single quarter over a career. And one of the questions we asked him in that management offsite was, "How do you constantly outperform the street estimates on your quarterly earnings? And in some cases in manufacturing companies, which aren't exactly the most exciting businesses sometimes." And he said, I'll never forget it. I asked him to repeat it, because I didn't quite understand what he meant when he first said it. He said, "We rarely hit our internal targets and we celebrate wildly."
Jamie Price:
I thought, "What the heck does that mean?" And what he was saying was look, we appropriately set targets for the street. We do a bottoms up and top down budgeting process. We kind of know what our competition. But internally, we spend a tremendous amount of time goal setting on big, hairy, audacious goals and the art of possibility. And what would have to change for us to even remotely hit that target or to do triple digits instead of single digits. And they spent an enormous amount of energy inside the goal setting process, setting those types of targets internally. And no one got penalized. If they had year over year performance and they beat their competitor, even if they way under shot these big hairy, internal goals that they had set. But the fact that they were pushing the envelope on thinking, got them way further than they ever would've succeeded on in the numbers, by just living with what they kind of the constant thinking was inside of most companies, which is set your targets, bottoms up and top down realistic, but stretch.
Jamie Price:
They went way over the top on this stuff and didn't penalize people when they hit it, because the out-performance was still there. Martin, I think did a nice job doing that at UBS and changing our whole goal setting process. Where we really got paid for out-performance of the prior year and we got paid for outperforming our competitors. But the goals we set were stretched, really stretched.
Chris Roebuck:
Yeah, absolutely.
Jamie Price:
And we didn't get hammered if we didn't hit them, because we typically outperformed the competition by just stretching further in our own thinking and enrolling partners to help us with things we needed from shared services and other parts of the organization to make us successful. And so I think that is all about people, mindset, possibility thinking, and unleashing power of people's kind of thinking and more neuroscience than academic.
Chris Roebuck:
Yeah. It's that neuroscience that the management are effectively saying to the people, not, "This is your target, this is what you are going to do." It's, "What do you think you could do? What do you want your target to be? What do you think is an outrageous goal, but you're going to go for it? And how are you going to get there?" Because that then opens up the conversation and consistently not just in UBS, but in all sorts of organizations I've worked with. It's interesting if you ask the people what they think they could achieve if they were given the right support, often, if it's a culture where people are buzzing, they will choose a goal that is greater than the management themselves would've chosen.
Jamie Price:
Of course. I believe that to be true. And I do think financial services is an industry that is kind of very goal and bonus heavy. And so for years as a leader, I would go into my boss and I'm just making this up, but let's assume I thought I could do 10% more growth this year. Well, I'd go in with 6% and negotiate down to eight, and walk out and say, "I thought I could do 10, but I'm going to start at six." The whole process was perverse because you were negotiating for a lower target so that you could hit it, versus really thinking about how could you just knock the cover off the ball without being penalized on the backend, as long as you outperformed your competitors and you did better than last year. And I think the freedom to think that way unleashed a whole bunch of power, at least in myself. And it was not there before, it was literally a boss kind of changing the roadmap.
Chris Roebuck:
Yeah. And that is so powerful. And as you said, interestingly, that's one of the things we achieved at UBS because at UBS, the greater vision was the creation of a brand new global bank where one did not exist before and a bank that would break the mold of how the industry worked. So that in itself was an audacious goal, but then the ability for everybody further down the line to say, "Okay, this is the audacious goal, how can we do it?" Created that buzz. But there's an interesting point I think for listeners who are leaders here, which i is think about that question. As to whether you don't say, "This is what I think your target is." You just say, "What do you think you could really achieve, really achieve if we gave you as much support as you wanted?"
Chris Roebuck:
So linking into the sort of discussion about UBS one 1-800, the moves that you've made in your career have been quite significant in that you did Prudential, then UBS, which was financial services, but as we've just said, the creation of a brand new bank where nothing existed in that sense before. Then 1-800, which was a startup. Now into Advisors, which is private equity. What is that journey? What are the key lessons of that journey between massive listed global bank, albeit a brand new one, a startup, and now private equity? What have you learned, Jamie?
Jamie Price:
Yeah. When you read it that way, you can say, "God, how did you pick?" I'd like to say this was all coordinated. It was not. But there was very much leaving UBS, and of course the financial crisis had a big impact on global banks and UBS for sure. And I remember thinking, look, I was on a garden leave at UBS and I'd run into a neighbor of mine who I knew, not well, who was a serial entrepreneur in the healthcare field. And found out through a conversation with my wife at this party for a mutual friend of ours, that I was not at UBS any longer. And he came over and started hounding me to come join this startup. And I, right out the gates aid, "What do I know about healthcare, number one?"
Chris Roebuck:
Sorry, do you want to quickly explained to listeners what 1-800-DOCTORS does
Jamie Price:
Yeah. It was a brand that this serial entrepreneur had bought and kind of parked and was dusting it off and building it as kind of America's healthcare concierge, partnering with health systems as a branded entry, into all points of care, whether it's telemedicine, land-based care, primary care, specialty care, et cetera. And literally, it started with no clients, just the brand. And he was building a deNovo from scratch. He had owned it for a while, and I said, "Well, look, I got free time." And he says, "Why don't you come up to one of our management meetings on Monday and just sit in?" And I did. And what I recognized was there was very much, I thought, things I could bring to the table having worked in corporate America. These guys were all entrepreneurs, all out of healthcare, former CEO of Roche, very much steeped in healthcare, but very much entrepreneurs. And somewhat lacked some organizational capabilities. I very much coming out of UBS thought I could bring more of that to bear.
Jamie Price:
What scared me to death is I knew nothing about healthcare, and here I'm going to try to hang with these guys. And I think I mentioned this in a prior interview, the Affordable Care Act in the U.S had just come out and I read the thing cover to cover thinking that it would make me smart on healthcare and hat I would be able to hang better with these healthcare entrepreneurs. It was the biggest waste of time, probably reading that thing and didn't help me at all, other than my own self confidence that I wasn't worthy enough to be in a field that I knew nothing about. But there was this deep intrigue in me that having been in financial services doing one thing since leaving college, is it a company that makes you, or do you really have transferable leadership skills, particularly when you've done something for such a long time? Can you do things in other parts of the industry, different parts of the industry, or even a different industry? And not only is this a different industry, but it was a pure startup.
Jamie Price:
And the energized nature of being at a startup was not an issue for me. That was an energizing part of the whole thing. I felt like going through the crisis, there were parts of the bank that didn't do so well and had an impact. And my reaction to that when I came out of it is, is look, I want to have more control all over my destiny. And if I'm going to screw things up, I'd like to be at the fingertips and blame it on myself, not on other parts of a business. And so I was very much interested in entrepreneurial, that didn't scare me away. But there was this intrigue on whether you could do something in another industry and were skills transferable. And I think the one thing that was transformational for me is that, when you work in a large organization as big and global and complicated as financial services, and as big as UBS, there are very much governance to that keep you in your lanes of work.
Jamie Price:
And yet truly from a leadership standpoint, everything you do influences everything. You are influencing your partners, your colleagues, every interaction you have. Everything you do in support of our asset management company at UBS, et cetera, you are definitely bringing influence to all parts of the organization. And I think you, at least I did, lost some of that view and even accountability to the whole organization versus my own business unit and allowing the governance structures to manage everything else. And as you go into an entrepreneurial world, you don't have the same governance apparatus. You're not public. You can take more risk, you can think longer term, and you definitely are impacting every part of the organization just by sheer size if not anything else. And I don't think that should be any different in a big company. I actually think at some level in the organization, your job is to impact everything.
Jamie Price:
And in fact, you do whether you know it or not. If you're not intentful about it, I think you're missing the opportunity to create a bigger wake in your leadership. And that was the big aha for me. Most of my friends thought I was crazy. I hadn't booked my own travel reservations for years. That stuff never bothered me, booking my own travel, making my own coffee. The entrepreneurial part was energizing. It was really the confidence of whether skills were transferable in another industry, and they clearly are. And so it was, I would say, a more of a personal awakening for me in recognizing that in big companies and small companies, taking risk and impacting the whole organization is absolutely doable. And in fact, you do it anyway. If you're not intentful about it, you're not doing it well.
Chris Roebuck:
That's an interesting point that I think leaders listening, particularly in large organizations, need to think about. Because it's obvious that within a small organization of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 people, the impact that you will have will be greater because you can see how it spreads through the small of people around you. Whereas, going to your point about the large organization. The fact that a large organization there are still ripples on the pond, every time you do something that ripple will end up somewhere and you might not see the impact of that.
Chris Roebuck:
And I think one of the things that we tried to do at UBS was to help people understand where the ripples went, rather than just saying that there weren't any ripples. It's interesting. I find it quite amusing, because you don't know what I'm going to say. Because when I left UBS, I went into healthcare. I spent two years in the UK National Health Service. But what was interesting was that within that context, some of the structures that you and I had worked on in terms of leadership and delivering inspired teams, transferred directly from a global bank into a healthcare system.
Jamie Price:
Yeah. Not surprising.
Chris Roebuck:
Exactly, that's the point. And some of the leadership skills you had used within UBS, you used effectively within an entrepreneurial environment, I'm assuming.
Jamie Price:
Yep, absolutely. No doubt about it.
Chris Roebuck:
So for listeners listening, it's just actually, and I think you listeners might have picked this up from other episodes, which is actually, there are certain things that you can do as a leader in any environment with other people that will get the best from them, by building that connection by building that belief that you mentioned. Interestingly, linked to that comment then, if we extend that. Now you're in Advisors Group and you experienced the startup plus the entrepreneurial leadership at UBS, the startup experience, how are you utilizing those sort of things where you are now? Sorry, maybe just briefly explain what Advisors Group does.
Jamie Price:
Sure. So in the U.S, the fastest growing segment of the wealth management advice industry is the independent entrepreneur. Those going from an employee model to owning their own entrepreneurial business and serving kind of the American retail public with advice. Over years and years and years, the availability of product, the kind of unleashing of technology to democratize tools and capabilities that here to fore could only be afforded by large banks and employee-run wealth management firms. The FinTech explosion is just unbundled all that. And so the independent marketplace is growing dramatically and continues to grow at double digit rates faster than the employee channel.
Jamie Price:
And so we serve 10,000 independent financial advisors in the United States, providing all of the course compliance and supervision oversight, which you have to do through legal entities in the United States, very regulated industry. But we also provide all of the training development product due diligence, product shelf. We partner with clearing firms to provide statement processing for clients and the likes. So we're a turnkey operation for advisors who to become entrepreneurs, own their own wealth management firms, and need a partner to do so with scale clout that can bring pricing content and capabilities to bear. And that's what we do in the U.S.
Chris Roebuck:
And within that, so therefore, as I said, the idea that you've gone from the novel concept of entrepreneurial leadership within a brand new global bank UBS, you've moved then into the startup with 1-800. You're now applying both of those experiences to where you are now. Because, listeners won't know, but you were voted or selected CEO of the year for 2021 in that business, and have achieved significant success. What do you think the lessons are that you took from UBS and 1-800-DOCTORS that are proving really useful now where you are in Advisors?
Jamie Price:
Yeah.
Chris Roebuck:
Or is it just a continuation? Is it just a continuation of that creating belief story?
Jamie Price:
Yeah, I believe it's a continuation. Look, I was fortunate enough to walk into Advisors Group with foundationally a pretty good company. Half the leadership team was here when I got here, half I brought in. And I think it still is very much kind of people focused. I think we've done a really good job of bringing in really good talent at the senior leadership side of the organization, and made the talent work, even though they're all different. And as I like to say, they're not spending weekends with each other, a lot of them, but they do work well together and they trust each other and they each bring something different in the table based on their backgrounds, experiences, both work experiences and their personal experiences. And so I think it's a combination of time in the job.
Jamie Price:
I think being fortunate enough in my career, even though I was in one part of a career for a long period of time, being able to have an entrepreneurial experience much later than probably I wish I would've now and getting into what is more of an entrepreneurial business and private equity on which I wish I would've done way earlier in my career. I'm fortunate enough that I had all these learnings even late in my career and that I was open to it. And I think that's probably the key thing for me is that I didn't stop learning, and didn't believe that I had it all figured out. And I am, I think, intellectually curious all the time and I also don't think I have all the answers at any given point in time. And which is why I think I'm never afraid to hire people smarter than me and surround myself with good people. So I think it was an iteration, Chris, really.
Jamie Price:
And I wish it would've happened earlier in my career, because I think I would've been an even better leader earlier in my career. But I'm glad that it happened. And I'm glad that I was open to it. Making and taking risks that I've taken way late in my career, I wish I would've done it earlier.
Chris Roebuck:
So to sort of pull that together then, we're talking about taking of risks. We're talking about don't stop learning. We're talking about creating a trust within a team. One of the things I mentioned and since it was at UBS, you have the whole concept of a we not me ethos. Where actually everybody is in it because it's not about the argument about how do we divide a smaller cake? We don't even consider that it's how do we make a bigger cake where everybody gets more?
Jamie Price:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I do think trust is a big deal in teams. I learned a very good lesson earlier in my career where I had the ball thrown in front of me and in a big management meeting of people that reported to me, wasn't very kind openly to one of our leaders who I thought made a ridiculous comment. And it was a leadership coach who was not coaching me, he was coaching some people on our team. Pulled me aside actually into a closet and said to me, "What was that?" And I said, "Well, it was a really ridiculous comment." And he said, "It was a ridiculous comment. You made that painfully clear to everybody in an open room." And he put his finger on my chest and I was 34 years of age at the time. And he said, "These people all play for you on your team. Don't torture them while they're on the field playing for you. If you don't want them on the field, take them off."
Jamie Price:
And I thought, "God, what a great comment." Because we all get to select our team. It's the one thing a CEO gets to do is select your team. I don't know anybody on a board or even our private equity owners that would hold me accountable to a team I didn't choose. And so I get to pick my people around me. And so if they're working for me and I've picked them, I agree with that. Don't torture them while they're playing for you. Actually give them more support, spend more time working on their worldviews, coaching them, and getting the team to work with each other, including spending more time, one on one with each other on how they can help each other. And I think it was a great early lesson for me.
Jamie Price:
I never wanted to be... And I've worked for a few people that I would not care to work for again. I didn't want to be that person. And so I do think there's a big trust. And if you're picking really talented people, they're your people. They're coming to work by and large for you and the promise you're building about the future. And therefore you should treat them with every bit of respect, transparency, honesty, and I think consistency is a big one. And be consistent with them.
Chris Roebuck:
So within that, you're effectively saying, yeah, there is the big plan, there is the logic of what we are going to do, the strategy, the objectives. But what makes it really happen is that trust that belief. It's actually powered by those emotional bonds. And both you and I know that it's that emotional bond through the neuroscience that is really powerful in making people open their minds and want to give their best.
Jamie Price:
Absolutely. And to not be afraid to call up and say, "Hey, I screwed something up." We're not going to throw them overboard because of it. If it happens multiple times, different story. But the two transparency, honesty, and the trust allows people to be authentic all the time. And therefore, if you can be that well then you're just... My dad had a great saying when we were kids, I have three brothers. My dad always said, "Just tell the truth. It's really easy to remember."
Chris Roebuck:
But to your, to your point, one of the things I do when I'm speaking around the world is I ask the old audience, "What are the things that the best boss you ever had did on a day to day basis that made them special?" And one of them that is always on that list, any culture, any sector, anywhere in the world is, "My boss understands that sometimes I make genuine mistakes and they don't blame me for it."
Jamie Price:
Yeah. Agreed.
Chris Roebuck:
And that's just not rocket science. So finally, just pulling it together Jamie, what is one thing that you would say to any developing leader they should really do or think about as a leader? And for our listeners that aren't leaders, they're just a member of a team, what would you say that they should do to be a better colleague?
Jamie Price:
Yeah. UBS had this thing called Bilas. I don't know if you remember that, which were bi-laterals. And Chris, you always do that with your superior or your direct reports. But one thing that got ingrained with me at UBS is you didn't cross colleagues. And I have asked everybody on our executive team to have one-on-ones on some regular cadence with a colleague on the executive committee. And the basis for that one on one is nothing more than how can I help you be more successful in your department? Not I need this from you. That stuff's happening in our leadership meetings, our management meetings, where we're talking about goals and what we need from this department and how we would work together to get this done. And we do cross-functional planning sessions every year. But in one-on-ones, I think you can build relationships and trust really quickly by showing people that you care and that you want to try to help them be successful. And they will in turn, want to help you be more successful.
Jamie Price:
And it creates a spirit of teamwork that gets I think more power in the organization. And ultimately, in organizations as they get larger, you have shared service functions. You're not these days running enclosed businesses. You have a finance department, you have a legal department, you have maybe operations and services are very much serving multiple business lines. And so they are every bit as important to your business and to your success as you are, as are you to they. And in many cases, I find when people don't have employees under their business unit and therefore they don't think they control them, they think they can't control them. And it couldn't be further from the truth. Influence, I think is the single thing that defines a leader, their ability to influence people, to change what people think is either possible and/or appropriate at any given point in time. And most of that happens through conversation and through building trust.
Chris Roebuck:
And to be honest, that was one of the key things we tried to do cross-functionally between back office and front office at UBS, was to get people to ask that fundamental question, "How can I help you be more successful?" And you would ask me that same question. And you're absolutely right that influence is not about reporting lines. It's about how you interact with everybody you meet on that journey. Jamie, that's been absolutely amazing. How can listeners find out more about you and what Advisors Group does and those sort of things?
Jamie Price:
Yeah. You can certainly go on our website, www.advisorgroup.com. And if you Google me attached to Advisor Group, there's articles out there from Forbes and others that I've either been commenting on or written, and you can hear a lot more about the industry and what's going on kind of in the democratization of financial services and the un-bundling of financial services and the re-bundling of it now in the U.S. There's lots of stuff on the internet about our company, about me, et cetera, and about the industry.
Chris Roebuck:
That's brilliant, Jamie. And to our listeners, there is just so much in there. There is all the sort of strategic stuff about what the sort of development of the industry that Jamie's just mentioned. But within that, there is really, really powerful stuff around trust, that question how can I help you, that all of you can just go and do as of tomorrow. Jamie, thank you so much. That was absolutely brilliant. It's just great to just talk to you about some of the things we worked on together and what we achieved, and how it can still be of value to anybody out there by doing the same things.
Jamie Price:
Sure. Well, Chris, I appreciate you having me on the podcast and it's great obviously always catching up with you.
Chris Roebuck:
Take care. That is great. Thank you, Jamie.
Chris Roebuck:
As a long-serving financial services leader, Jamie is obviously focused on the figures, but he's also absolutely focused on the people and leadership, but not just on a surface level, but as we've heard, really digging down into the day-to-day practicalities of making leadership live and inspire people to give their best. His beautiful comment about that leadership is not about what happens when the leader is in the room, it's about when the leader has left the room and then what do the people think and do. Just the power of speaking from your heart and also just asking people the simple question, what do you think you could really achieve? And so enabling possibility thinking that isn't just limited by the traditional annual increments everybody tends to use. But also his other question that enables everybody to be their best, how can I help you be more successful?
Chris Roebuck:
And finally, those three simple words, transparency, honesty, and trust. Some great insights there on how to truly make leadership live day to day. Now have a think about how you can use some of Jamie's is to help you get to where you want to be. Don't forget that in a week, I will give you a more in depth interview of the key takeaways from Jamie, my insights, and three ideas for action in my Reflections On The Top. And if you've used any of the insights that you've got from previous perspectives from the top guests, and that they've helped you, send me your success stories. I'd love to hear them. Also, don't forget to sign up on the website, so you don't miss any of the great future guests over the next year.
Chris Roebuck:
Thanks for tuning in. Check out the show notes from today's episodes at perspectivesfromthetop.com, where you can not only enjoy additional resources from today's show, but all previous ones. If you haven't already, subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your favorite podcast, so you don't miss any. And if you really enjoyed the show, please give us a five star rating and review. Have a question or comment? Let's discuss it. Message me on LinkedIn. Perspectives From The Top is produced in collaboration with Detroit Podcast Studios. So have a successful week. Use today's new learnings and actions, and remember it's onwards and upwards. See you next time on Perspectives From The Top.