Name: This is what makes employees trust management
Uploaded: 2015-03-12
Duration: 4 min 40 s
Description: Charles Schwab CEO Walter Bettinger tells Fortune’s Stephen Gandel what makes a great leader.

When I think about leadership, there's, there's two things that really are important. The first one is authenticity. When, when you're going to be in a position of, of leadership, people want to be able to count on the things that you say, believe in the things that you say, and know that it's really you, that you're not just up there speaking something that isn't from the heart. The authenticity is what encourages people to believe in a leader. The second thing is that when you're entrusted with a leadership position, it's really about serving others. When I look at the people that have been in senior roles and run into trouble, so often they made it about serving them. And, and real leaders create followers among those who work for them. Great leaders create followership because they love people, they care about people, they're in the job to serve others. And when you have followership, that's when you can generate extraordinary results in any company. And you touched on it a little bit there, but what do you think the difference between a, a great leader and a great manager is? Well, leaders create inspiration, right? Managers create strategy and execution. Uh- huh. So, if we were gonna take this to. Say the battlefield. I mean, a manager designs the strategy, where to place the soldiers, where to place equipment what, what is the approach that we're gonna to take in our attack. A leader is someone who motivates people to go do what needs to be done, to execute on that strategy. And the CEO, what portion of a CEO's job is management versus leadership? Well, it's gotta be a blend, right? It's a, it's a mix of the two. I don't know that I can give you a percentage. But if you're not adept at both I think it becomes a real struggle over time. Because those weaknesses get exposed. Either the strategy is not correct. And maybe the leadership's great. Or you're a wonderful leader but you're not able to formulate strategies that take the company into the future given all the change involved Tony, that's going on in our business world today. And in change in volatility. You took over in 2008? Right? Yeah. Coming into the financial crisis. My timing was good, huh? [ LAUGH ]. What, what extra skills? Wh, what did you learn coming into that kind of volatile time? I think what is most important is not what we did in the middle of that crisis, it's what we did before that crisis. So if you waited until you were in the middle of the financial crisis, it was too late right? We saw what happened to so many firm and financial services. That, in the buildup to the crisis, made decisions that when the crisis came there was little they could do other than except accept a handout from the Federal government. What we tried to do at Schwab is, prior to the crisis, understand who we were strategically. And so we didn't veer off course when the financial crisis came, we sailed through it and we picked up enormous market share as a result. > Knowing who you are, knowing your strategy and staying with it is far more important than any miraculous action you can take when you are in the middle of a crises. And, and you took over as CEO from the guy who had his name on the door right from the founder of the company. What was that transition like, taking over from the guy who's founded the firm's names on the door? > Well, first. Chuck did a amazing job in managing this transition. What he did is, in the couple of years leading up to the transition, he would include me in every major issue and every major decision that we came across. I'd sit in the meeting. After the meeting the two of us would sit down and talk about it, and then he'd make the final call when a decision had to be made. > Mm- hm. As the time got closer to the transition we'd do the same thing. But sometimes he'd make the call, sometimes he'd ask me to make the call. But from the moment of the formal transition in the fall of 2008, he's always now said to me, " Walt, you've gotta make the decision. I trust you, I've taught you. I 've worked with you. You know my philosophies, you make the call ." I mean, who could ask for anything more than that? What's the best advice you ever got, for business or being a CEO? The best advice I ever got, was from my late father. He told me ," virtually everything in this world, is available for sale, but one thing. Your reputation ." And how has that, how has that affected the way you manage your business, manage your career? I think what I've tried to do is recognize that there's a difference between who we are and what we do. What I do is, as CEO of Charles Schwab. Who I am is something totally different, as a husband, and a father, and a son, and a friend. And in many ways, people get in trouble when they start to mix those two. particularly at very senior roles like CEO. People start to identify their own self- worth, their own self- esteem with what they do for a living and that's what gets you in trouble when you're faced with difficult decisions. Whether they be. Ethics based or, or other areas when you can't keep those two things separate.

Charles Schwab CEO Walter Bettinger tells Fortune’s Stephen Gandel what makes a great leader.

This is what makes employees trust management

Leadership

Charles Schwab CEO on being a great leader.