Yahoo Finance Dimon: 'I never had someone who advised me in my career'
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon encouraged MBA students at a recent town hall to “learn from watching other people” rather than relying solely on mentors to advance their careers.
“I’m for it,” Dimon told Yahoo Finance’s editor-in-chief, Andy Serwer, referring to mentoring.
“But very often the people who want to be your mentor aren’t going to give you the right advice,” Dimon added at the Tuesday town hall. “And I never had someone who advised me in my career, ever, like almost not once. When I grew up, it was much more of a sink-or-swim type of thing. ”
Dimon, who graduated from Harvard Business School in 1982, famously turned down a number of lucrative jobs for a lower-paying post as the legendary Sandy Weill’s assistant at American Express (AXP). While Weill ended up firing him in 1998, Dimon indicated in a speech last year that the two had since come to terms. Still, Dimon didn’t mention Weill’s name when the topic of mentorship came up during his conversation with Yahoo Finance.
The importance of “watching other people”
Dimon did sing the praises of Robert Lipp, whom he worked with at Travelers Group. He studied Lipp’s behavior and learned from it, Dimon said. “He was the iron fist in the velvet glove. He treated people respectfully. And he knew the facts, the numbers,” Dimon said. “He ran meetings incredibly well.”
When speaking to MBA students, he advised them to also seek out role models to observe.
“So I would go way beyond a mentor. I’d look at what you can learn from watching other people,” Dimon said. “And read a lot. There’s nothing like reading and talking to other people, where you can learn their techniques.”
Dimon has thrived in his career, despite claiming never to have gotten career advice. He has attained a net worth of $1.1 billion, an unusual feat for a bank CEO in an industry where it’s the hedge-fund tycoons who more often become billionaires. In 2015, Bloomberg noted that Dimon was one of two notable bank CEOs to achieve billionaire status. The other exception? Sandy Weill, whom Bloomberg referred to as Dimon’s former mentor.
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