Hey, everybody. Welcome to Howl Leaders Lead, where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Now you can ask any decent leader if it's important to get feedback and you're going to get the same answer. Of course it is. We have to listen to what our teams and customers are saying if we want to improve our performance. But getting good feedback is harder than it sounds. You can't just put a comment box in the break room and call it a day. If you truly want to embrace feedback, you need a plan to get it and a genuine desire to listen to it. I mean genuine desire underlined. I got to tell you. She embraces feedback better than my guest today, Kelly Coffey. She's the CEO of City National Bank, where she oversees 5,000 associates in 70 offices, plus $100 billion in assets. And she's building something really special because she is so open to her team 's ideas and her team knows that she wants them to share those ideas with her. You're about to learn so much about how great leaders embrace feedback. So here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours, Kelly Coff ey. Kelly I want to get to your amazing career, but I always like to start at the beginning. Tell us about your upbringing. Well, I grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania, part of a big boisterous, loud Italian Irish family. And I'm the oldest of four. I have two brothers and a sister. It was a lot of fun. And it was pretty rural. It was one of those places where I joke with people. I actually have gone cow tipping, which is where you knock them over there. I can't say I pushed, but I was definitely there. So that tells you a little bit about where I grew up. I grew up in Missouri, so I'm probably one of the few listeners that do what cow tipping was. That's right. You have a story from your childhood days that will tell us a lot about the kind of person that you are today. I think we grew up in a family that everybody was expected to work hard. And I was really close with not only my parents, my grandparents. And so we did the everybody over on Sunday, lots of days for dinner, which was fantastic, obviously, always together for all holidays in general. But I was very close with my grandfather, who lived to be 98 years old, and was the CEO of a small bank in Pennsylvania, and I used to go to work with them. I used to love to go to work with them. I'm sure I drove everybody crazy there because I was young. And then as I got older, I did internships and would run credit reports, et c etera. And while I had a long, long career, more in the area of investment banking than in community and commercial banking, I think back and think a lot of the lessons I learned about how hard he worked, what he did, I think probably influenced who I am today. You know, I saw where you earned a Masters of Science in Foreign Service at Georgetown University. What took you in that direction? It was interesting. I even loved math, or I loved languages. And so when I went to college, I was really focused on international affairs because it married a lot of different disciplines together. When you got a degree in that, you had to study economics, you had to study history, you had to study languages. And that to me were all the areas that I thought would be really, really interesting. So I really didn't think I was going to become a banker. I was not at all going down that path. I was thinking about living abroad. I actually went pretty far down the road with interviewing with the CIA, which is another funny story I could tell. But I think it was really just me being interested in those subjects, why I chose to study it. And then when I did a joint degree at undergrad at Lafayette College in French International Affairs, and when I finished, I actually had funny enough and offered to go to work for a number of banks, one of them being Chase Manhattan. But I chose to go do graduate school at Georgetown, really on the advice of a professor because I was interested in getting to Washington and really thinking about what careers you could do there. Because it's very broad. And I think I needed a little bit of focus to think about where I wanted to go next. Tell us about the process you went through to really get that focus that said to you, hey, I'm going to pursue a career in finance. It was probably a long process for me because when I graduated from Georgetown, one of the things I didn't do was to do an MBA. I really thought a master's in foreign affairs would be more interesting. But I also thought that as I evolved and I worked in government when I was down at Georgetown, I worked in the trade representative's office, which was really fascinating. And I saw a change of administrations. And I realized that going straight into government might not be the thing that I had the patience for really when you see some of the things that happened there. And so I decided I needed a grounding in finance. And to me, the best place to get that grounding in finance was actually just go and do it as opposed to study it. And so that's why I picked to go to work for JPMorgan. I interviewed a number of different places and had offers. But JPMorgan had the best training program at the time. And so it was probably five or six months long. And so I jumped in, not intending to stay as long as I did. But I always found something really interesting and there was lots of change or in the middle of so much that's going on in the world. Thirty years later, I'm still in banking, which is pretty amazing. It is. I want to get to your banking career. It is amazing. But I know everybody be mad at me if I didn't ask you to tell the funny CIA story. So the CIA, I thought that was kind of fascinating. And I went down and I did, you know, they do some testing and all those sorts of things. And then I got to the point where they were talking to me about what it was like to be in the CIA. And I remember them saying that, well, when you're here, you may have to disappear for months at a time. You can't tell your family where you are, et cetera. And that's where I stopped and said, there is absolutely no way, not only can I not do that, but my mom, we used to joke that she really could be a five-star general. I mean, she tended to every detail, kept us on track and could find me in any part of the world, no matter where I was traveling. So she probably would have been able to find me and blow my cover. So I decided that wasn't for me. Well, you went on and you did land your first job at JPMorgan Chase, as you talked about. And you went to Argentina. Tell us about that learning experience. That was fantastic. So when I started at JPMorgan, Glass-Steagall had just been undone. And we got our debt underwriting powers back and then equity underwriting power . So the markets business as it exists today didn't exist really at all then. And it was a pretty fascinating time to be there. After our training program, there was no research department. So they basically took the whole training program and said, start to write research and do research on various things. I think I had health care. Research is just not something that is my favorite thing to do. And they pretty quickly needed somebody to go down to Argentina to work on a transaction really quickly. And I raised my hand and said, I'll go. And I spent about a month or two working on a sale of a plant that a large European company was selling at the time and didn't speak Spanish. I spoke French coming out of Georgetown and actually it was in the middle of hyperinflation. It wasn't necessarily the most fun place to be. But a couple years later, maybe it was only two years later when there were a number of bankers that left and there was privatization was happening, they needed somebody to come down and help them. And I think I was the only person they knew and they asked me to go and so off I went. And it was a fantastic place to work. Unfortunately, the country's really gone and cycles up and down. And so it's had its issues. But I was there and what they call Los Anos Doros, the golden years where they were selling off all the state owned enterprises. There were so much fascinating work. And because you were part of a small team, you drew on the headquarters in New York when you needed it. But you got to do everything from, I've worked on Argentina's first debt issue back into the capital markets and then I would work on an M&A transaction the next day. It was a really fantastic way to get a lot of great experience. And I learned to speak Spanish. So now my Spanish is much better than my French. How has that skill helped you after leaving Argentina? Yeah, I think knowing Spanish has helped me. When I came back, I still did Latin American M&A. So certainly Spanish was helpful there. Spanish is incredibly helpful in New York City. It's actually really helpful in California. So clients are surprised every once in a while when I can just zip into Spanish to talk to them about it. And I've used it as often as I can. It's fun. Did you have a coach or mentor that really helped you grow early on? And what did you learn from him or her? Yeah, David, I've had a lot of different mentors and sponsors over my career. And they've all helped me in different ways. And they're not always senior to you. You can learn from just about everybody on the team, whether they're digital natives and how you need to think about technology. I think good ideas come from everywhere. And so there's probably two from my days at JPMorgan. My name is Carlos Hernandez, who was in Latin America. He now runs investment banking globally for JPMorgan. And he was the vice president in M&A, Latin America, when I was the, I guess I wasn't associate. And he was the one that first sort of kicked me out to do my first presentation . I remember Gerber, baby foods, was coming in and they wanted to think about a Latin American strategy. And he turned to me and he said, "You're doing this. Tell me what you need. Front to back. This is your deal." And really has been there at lots of different points in my career to give me great advice and help push me where I needed to be pushed. And so he's been fantastic. And then of course, Jamie Diamond, there's nothing like working for Jamie. I've learned a tremendous amount about leadership, about how to run a company, how to face facts, how to do follow up. The list goes on and on, but he was a tremendous, not only mentor, but real sponsor of me at JPM. Yeah, he's a great leader. No question about that. And you started in finance in 1989. You know, how has the industry changed? And how much has it affected you as a leader? Well, the industry has changed in a number of ways. I mean, one of the things I think that's changed so much is just the speed at which things are moving. I do feel like the pace of change is accelerating. Certainly the information flow is much faster than what it was at that time. And so you can accomplish much more because things are moving 24/7 and technology enables you to do things faster and faster and faster. And so what that means though is that you have to, it's harder and becomes harder and harder to take that step back and make sure you're prioritizing and you're focusing on those things that really matter and that what you really need to be the person to do. And I think that's just an ongoing struggle that everybody has. Prioritization is probably one of the most important things that you have to do . When you think of the banking industry, you think of the white male and the suits and ties. What was it like in '89 coming up in, let's call it, the good old boy network? Yeah, it was a really different place. I did have somebody say to me, he was British the first day early on in training saying, "Not that long ago we wouldn't have hired somebody like you," which was kind of an interesting attitude. And I just sort of barrel through all that. I think most times in my career, I never felt like I was held back. In some ways, you could use the fact that you were different a little bit as an advantage. I mean, funny. In Argentina, I was the only woman and one of the things that I always could do was finish my thought because men in Argentina wouldn't interrupt a woman very often. They also wouldn't get upset with you. So I remember I got much more CEO, probably visibility than I would have as an associate or vice president because when they had a tough message to deliver to some CEO, they would always want to send me because at least they would hear me out and I could hopefully get them to a better place. And so I've always been really good at delivering those tough messages in a way that people understand, internalize and can move on from. Maybe that came from those days there. But it's changed tremendously. Just even the dress. People are, I think that that's what the tech and innovation economy has really added. We've had to change with it and I think it's been really great. People can express their individuality much, much more in the industry today than they could in 1989. You were running a major part of JP Morgan Chase, the US private bank. Was there a big aha moment that made you decide to leave and consider other options? Because I know you were highly respected at JP Morgan Chase and had to be in the running there for CEO someday. I don't know about that, but I do know it was probably the hardest decision I 've ever had to make. And there wasn't a specific aha moment necessarily. The story about me taking this role, Russell Goldsmith, who was the former CEO and the Goldsmith family really is one of the founders of City National Banks on the fourth CEO. And when Russell called to get together, I said, I'd be happy to get together, but there is a zero percent probability I leave JP Morgan. I love the firm. I love what I'm doing. But I was happy to meet with them because he had sold the bank to RBC and I thought he should be a client of the JP Morgan private bank. So I met him many, many times. And then over about a year of him talking about it, talking about it, it became just this really interesting and I think a great challenge of this really special bank that has a tremendous culture around the client. And it's got that really like small relationship first, agile feel with a really big powerful partner like RBC, Royal Bank of Canada, who owns 100% to tap into where you need scale. So how do you stay agile, small, and really take that close relationship view with the client, put that first, but then tap into the scale where you need it. And I thought it would be really fun to stretch and own the whole balance sheet and be able to really see what I could do as a leader there. So I took that very, very hard step of leaving JPM. You know, you're the fourth CEO in 65 years for City National Bank and you're the first woman in the CEO in the bank's history. Does that put any additional pressure on you? And do you get tired of people like me asking you that question? Not at all, not at all. I think if you're where I am, you always feel an incredible pressure to perform because there's a lot of people that depend on me doing my job well. I have 5,000 colleagues across City National and they're all looking to me for leadership. Now I don't feel like I'm in it alone because I'm building a fabulous diverse team around me to take us for the next 65 plus years. And so I certainly do feel a pressure, but I feel more of an excitement. And in my experience, one of the things I think I did, I was proud of that I did at JP Morgan within that big hole as I took businesses that either were really small and figured out how to grow them or that were broken and figured out how to fix them. And in every time I built a strong team around me to do that and then was able to move to whatever my next challenge was, but not take away from that business I just built. Meaning not grab some of those leaders and move them over. Because first of all, I did a lot of very different things. So it didn't always translate. Number one, number two, I don't like to take away from something I put so much blood and sweat and tears into to build, to build the next thing. And I think that's something when I moved to the private bank. I didn't take up a bunch of people from the investment bank to move over and do that. I saw who I had there, figured out who I thought was the leader in the future, made some interesting promotions and recruiting in. And I know I had a fabulous team in the US private bank when I left and I'm doing that same thing here now. And I think as hard as it is, picking the right people is the most important thing you do. It's hard, but I actually think it's what I probably enjoy the most because I keep doing it over and over and over again. I know that I've heard from others that you really love learning. And that's one of the reasons why you've really been attracted to the financial industry and stayed with it for so many years because it presents new opportunities. What do you think is the biggest learning, recent learning that you've had? One of the things I'm working on here is on the technology side. And I've always been in and around technology for my whole career, but it's becoming more and more important. And so I have been in a crash course of thinking about how do we design the right digital strategy for City National Bank for our clients to make sure we're at parity with what you need to do, but also to really think about certain clientize. We do a lot in, for example, the entertainment industry and building that ecosystem around entertainment where we really excel and making sure you're doing that in a very customized way for clients. And so from a learning standpoint, that's been really interesting because I'm going deeper into that than I've ever done before. And I'm going deeper into that industry than where I've gone before. And that's a fascinating industry that's changing really, really quickly as you have all the streaming come online. There's more production being done today than ever before. And the past content is clearly key. So I'm really enjoying learning all of that. My new book, Take Charge of You, is all about how to master the skill of self coaching. And when I wrote it, I wanted this book to be more than just valuable information. I wanted it to be practical. It's why in this book, we included exercises and action steps in every chapter so you can develop a thorough knowledge of the concept and know how to apply it to your life. I really believe in the power of self coaching. And I'm convinced that if you know how to be a great self coach, you can develop a career and life you really love. And I want that for you. My team and I have developed a comprehensive personal development program designed to help you become just that, to help you become a great self coach. You can access this program at takechargeofu.com. When you go to that page, download the free program kit, then buy your copy of Take Charge of You. The book along with the program kit includes everything you'll need to become a great self coach and coach yourself to the life and career that you'll love. Go to takechargeofu.com today. You talked earlier about the fun you have building a team and developing people . And I know you're a big proponent of collaboration and sharing ideas. And I heard that you launched this internal program called Advice Calls. Could you tell us about that? Advice calls was something to help everybody get better at their craft by focusing on advice. So not focusing on a product in the investment side or a product in the credit side, but really sitting down and saying, "How do you actually think about giving advice to a client? What are the questions that you ask to make sure you can give the right advice ?" And so we got a group of top advisors around the table. At once a week, we would spend an hour, which was great. Talk about what was going on in the market with clients. What are those things they really need advice on? How are we approaching it? And then what do we do to really think about how to broadcast that across the entire private bank so everybody around the country gets the benefit of the learnings of that group. And that's collaboration to learn. People had fun doing it. We featured lots of different people on our morning call. And it became kind of a rallying cry around how to think about having those conversations with clients. The other thing I think is important about collaboration is just making sure you're constantly getting feedback and input into the business and how to make it better. I've learned that from the best in the industry. And I launched here something I did also at the private bank. I gather feedback everywhere I go. All my trips and I meet a lot with providers on the front line. I go back into operations, et cetera. But I launched something called Telkely which is just a central email that they can send any question or comment or thought from anywhere around the company. Maybe sometimes people don't want to speak up in front of me. So it's another mechanism for getting input. In addition to what I'm getting, it just helps me stay focused and it helps us think about why are we doing this that way? Why don't we change that? And I think that's another source of collaboration. Everybody sitting anywhere here can teach me something about the business and why we're doing it a certain way and how we should be doing it a better way to help a client. And so that's something else I launched. It's been fun. And it's sending a message to about feedback. You know, you mentioned that some people may not want to speak up to you because you're the CEO and they might potentially be intimidated by that. I guess that's what you're saying. How do you as a leader break that down so that people can feel like they can tell Kelly? Yes, exactly. It's a really something you have to just focus on every single day I've found. I need to not only be very open to it, the way I receive that feedback is really important. That people know that when I get feedback that something that's not going well, I want to understand why and understand how the team reacts to that feedback that has to change something. It doesn't mean that all of a sudden there's going to be repercussions for that . There's not. There may be a change that comes from it. And I look more carefully at how people react to that feedback. And if they get defensive or if they don't get defensive and how they are becoming better. And that's how I judge people more. So I think it takes me constantly saying what I'm using it for. It takes my leadership to understand what I'm trying to do and also emulate that as they approach their businesses. And then I think it's going to take people time to see that when they say something that we need to improve. And by the way, we get good and bad comments in this, which is great. But when there's something needs to improve, there's not any kind of repercussions against them. And then I think that feeds on itself. You get to that tipping point where people understand that this is just to make us better and that I value that. You're in a business where you've got to get your company to change. Because the market's changing all the time. Tell us about the biggest change that you tried to make with your team that's met with the most resistance. You change or you die. You have to keep changing, especially with the way the world is it is today. However, you have to do that without losing your core culture, your core principles. City National is completely wired around helping the client and helping them quickly with what they get. And we can't forget that. We serve not only entertainment industry, we serve entrepreneurs. And we are many times the organization that stepped in and do something really difficult from a credit standpoint and supported their business. Therefore, they became incredibly loyal to City National Bank. And so the changes that I have to make here are more about how do we get a little bit more scalable but not lose that. And so I'm sure there's some people, as I think about talking about optimizing our processes a little bit about how to make sure we're putting technology in place to do that. That's going to be hard because getting the right technology to put in place, I think it's the technology part that's the easy part of it. I think it's the people and getting people to change how they're doing things, getting people to not be afraid of it that is going to be the harder part. We talked about the heritage of the bank and the customer focus that is already there. Is there a couple of new behaviors that you want to build into the culture that aren't there today? The ability to make sure that we are open to say what we need to improve on. I mean, City National Bank has been incredibly successful growing really fast over the last three, four, five years. And I think it's making sure that we don't get at all complacent about that. And we continue to make sure we're hustling for the client. I think we are. And I think the biggest change in the culture that we need to make is just setting fewer priorities and making sure we're getting them done, particularly when I think about the technology and the digital agenda that we have. I think we've been probably trying to make a little progress in too many places as opposed to focused. We're going to deliver on this and then we're going to go to the next thing. And if you do that, you'll ultimately get more done, even though there's some things you have to push off. You have a quote that I like, which is, "Have confidence in yourself and be yourself no matter what you're doing." Did you learn this lesson the hard way or has this always been easy for you? I think I learned it over time the hard way because I think if you reflect back on every time I took a new job, there's always that moment that you say, "Oh my God, what did I do?" My life was so easy. In my old job, I knew what I was doing. I was jamming along. It was all good. And then I took this new challenge, which was exciting. And there's always a point where you say that to yourself, "Can I do it?" And then you get through that and you look back and you say, "I did do it." And so I think it was something that built over time that I started to get a pattern recognition about. So now, if I'm going through something where I start to say, "Everybody has that little voice of internal doubt sometimes, I know that I've gotten through it before and it just gives you that confidence to say, "No, you're going to figure it out and you're going to reach out to the right people and you're going to move on." And growing up, my father was an orthopedic surgeon. He was dealing with, especially when he was operating, matters of potential life and death every single day. Whereas what I do is really important, but it's not life or death. And I think that just puts it in perspective for you. Anything that happens, I truly believe we're going to figure out how to get through it the best way we can. And we're going to deal with whatever the facts are and move on. And I think that gives you that confidence to move on. But you've built it up over time, at least in my case. You definitely have a lot of optimism and it comes off really clearly. And many leaders that I talked to Kelly, they have a failure when they look back on their career that really ended up being a blessing in the skies because it taught them so much. Do you have a setback like that that you could share with us? I always look back and say, "I never would have done anything differently because you don't know that you would be, you love where you are today. So would you be where you are today if you did something differently?" So I agree with that. There's always, whether you think you have a setback, you didn't get a certain job, etc., at one point someone came to me and said, "We want you to step up and run part of the business." And I was kind of early in my career and it meant that they were going to be pushing aside someone who I worked for. And I felt incredibly uncomfortable with that. And so I actually went and argued to not give the job to me, but to give the job to my boss. And amazingly they did it and that person quit pretty quickly after because of course had felt the lack of confidence of senior leadership, etc. And by that time things had moved and I was in a different position. And so I think it ended up working out for the right reasons because I ended up going on to do bigger things and derivatives by saying, "I remember the next year sitting back and reflecting and saying, 'Why would you say no to a big promotion and argue that someone else should get it? I don't think that's something people should do in their career." That's one I would say. You're a big believer I know in diverse teams because they drive better results . Can you share an example of where you've seen that happen? Absolutely. I definitely believe that. I've always benefited from having a variety of different viewpoints and opinions around the table. And you need the mix of people and then figure out where you come in the middle . And so that's diversity of background, that's diversity in all meanings of the way. And I also think it's just more fun. So when I came in to run one of the derivative teams at JPMorgan, and it was viewed as a broken business at the time I came back in, and there were very few women, for example, in the business. And some of the women that were in there, I wasn't sure where the strongest fits for the job. And when I moved on to run the next from that team, that team was more than 50% female. And it was a much, much stronger team. And it really just took some focus on making sure you picked the right people. And I found that it got to a tipping point that all of a sudden it became a place where people kept asking me to help them recruit because all the young women were wanting to join my group because they saw, they didn't see that it was all women, but they saw that it was a diverse group. And therefore I got the pick of the best talent that was going to come in to be part of that group. And I think that you're not only making better decisions from having that different viewpoint around the table, but I think you're able to track better talent. I've seen that in every single business. I've run same with the private bank. My leadership was more than 50% female. And that's not the only form of diversity, but I've seen it over and over again . It's a different viewpoint brought to the table. And you can see that you've got maybe the pessimist sitting at the table, the optimist, somebody who knows something on technology, and you get all those viewpoints, and I think you can balance in way better and make a better decision. Kelly, when you talk to up and coming leaders, what would be three bits of advice you'd give to aspiring leaders? Well, first of all, you've got to work hard and know the details. I think that's the base level and so keep doing that. And I would also tell them, as I said before, to make sure you're listening and make sure you're transparent with your team. And then as you want to aspire to be a leader, watching different leadership styles and watching how people do them, it's a really great way to learn. I have learned just as much from bad leaders of what not to do as I have from good leaders of what to do, how you think about how to delegate, all of those things or things you can learn from looking at people around it. Do you have any additional advice that you'd give women coming up in business? Yeah, you know, what I say to women in particular is going back to the point you made before David on confidence. One thing I have now seen too many times, so it definitely is a trend, is that women in general think that they're not qualified for that next step when they are. And I have more times than not had someone I was sitting down to give a promotion to and say, I think you can take a bigger role and they would go through with me the 10 things that they didn't think they had yet to take that role. And I would always say, but that's fine. I wouldn't be coming to you if I didn't think you were qualified and I will help you get there. I have never had a man say that to me. In fact, they probably walk in the room, think they can do my job better than I can. But that confidence is really important. So I do think that's really important to have the confidence you can do it and ask for help where you need it. But you don't assume you can't do something because there's one little piece of the puzzle that you're missing. When I look at it, I think that's the most important thing for women to remember. What advice could you offer men on how to work best with women on their team? We had this great program. It was the Women's Network within the Investment Bank when I was there and I led that. And one of the programs we had there was a real sponsorship program. And what we did is we picked a group of women who were executive director levels. That was the level before managing director and wanted to really get involved in helping them get to the next level. And we tried to focus not necessarily on the superstars. We're really clearly going to get that. But those who are really strong and just needed a little bit more. And what we found time and time again is that in that situation, men weren't always comfortable giving the tough feedback to make women better who were on their team. I think that's something that you really have to be straight with people. If they're not moving in the right direction, if they need direct feedback, you 've got to give it to them. Everybody needs that. But I found it was a little bit less comfortable for men to give it to women on their team. So my advice there would be figure out a way to get comfortable. But if you can't get comfortable to please get somebody involved to help you, give that feedback to them so they're actually able to improve. What is it like dealing in the world of entertainment? Do you have any story that is really relevant there? Oh, it's you never know what's going to come. Creative talent have certain ways they do things. And I will tell you, I have a new found appreciation for the business management industry because the business managers really have to think about, you know, make sure they're spending what they should be spending, they're investing how they should be investing. We're really focused on that business is the payment side of it. So how we can, you know, how people get paid in entertainment is really complicated and music we do and sports. So how do we make sure we can track who owes what to whom and have it all go through City National Bank? The crazier stories are probably on the business management side of like who wants a yacht and they needed a close within a day and who wants a new house that they need, you know, it's a service business. The team here does it really, really well. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Kelly Coffee in just a moment. Is clear Kelly is a great listener. And that's a big reason why she's a great leader. But is listening to skill we can actually get better at? I tackled this exact question in my conversation with Rob Light, the legendary partner at Creative Artist Agency. After decades of managing artists like Bruce Springsteen, Beyon ce and Prince, Rob has seen some pretty amazing things happen because he learned how to listen . I always tell people if you're going to learn to listen and encourage people to speak, never ask a yes or no question. Think about when you say to somebody, did you like a show? It's yes or no. Why did you like that show gives you a different response. So learning how the art of communication, getting people to speak is a skill. And so you really have to understand the power of that. Speaking of listening, go back and listen to my entire conversation with Rob. Episode 57 here on How Leaders Lead. Well, Kelly, you've been CEO now for a few years. Is there anything about being in the seat that surprised you or that you didn't expect? You know, David, I've learned that every single day is something that I didn't expect happens. But I think the biggest thing that happened is the pandemic. And I had to pick some of my team and hire some of my team through the pandemic . Now I didn't really hire anybody without meeting them at least at some point, but I found that I had to spend a lot more time. I did a lot more zooms to get to the point where I was ready. And then we would hopefully find one of those moments where we could get together in person safely tested, et cetera, to actually hire them. So I think the hiring process was probably different than I would have anticipated. I've been CEO for a number of times. I obviously worked in another company with a fantastic CEO and you do really realize how everybody's looking at you. And that's different. And I don't know that you can really know what that feels like until you actually feel it. You know, I don't know too many people have better interpersonal skills than you. And that had to be hard for you doing all those zoom calls, trying to hire people out. That took you out of your comfort zone for sure, right? Very nice to say that. I really do enjoy being with people. And so I do think it was really hard on zoom. And I, for example, hired a president. I had met him in person and he was the last person I had dinner with before everything shut down in March of 2020. And I literally did a zoom with him for an hour every single week until I finally hired him in June when he flew his whole family out to have dinner because it's the person. I want to know the person in addition to their qualifications and it just takes more time. It's really hard to have that feel on zoom as opposed to in person. Yeah. Well, tell us a story about the best day on the job so far. Oh, gosh, I've had a lot of great days on the job. It's hard to just pick one that's the best day. I will tell you what the best days contain. I am somebody who likes to get things done. So when we actually get things done, I find that to be a good day. And then I love spending time with clients. Just the other day, I had a great lunch. I sometimes do small lunches with different clients from different parts of the bank. And I did a small lunch with a group of women who were just fantastic from different areas, real estate, mortgage, business, et cetera. And I always come back from those incredibly energized. So my best days on the job are the ones that have a varied amount of those types of activities that I get to do. You know, anytime a leader comes into a new job, you see, things that need to be changed. Tell us about the biggest change you've made that actually met with the most resistance. I've had to make a lot of changes. And I've found that any change that I make, you need to make sure you're over communicating the why. So I don't think there were overwhelming resistance, but I came in the door and our bank didn't really have an app that worked, for example, a mobile app. And I very quickly got a team together. And within a year, we built one that worked and launched it, thank God, at the beginning of the pandemic. There were some people who were kind of skeptical that why are we spending so much money on something like that? There was pushback there. And I just really gathered the people who were forward looking. Most of those people aren't with the bank anymore because they were prior leadership. And I had a lot of leadership to change. And I changed them. And I find if you have the right leaders around and you're telling them what you're trying to accomplish, that really helps get the entire organization behind whatever you're trying to do. And one, sometimes you have to change things, whether it's new rules, regulations that come in that people need to change how they're doing things. And you just need to put a lot of support around and more communication than you think you're going to do would be the other thing I'd say. And then finally, I'd say I'm going through one right now, David, that I don't know exactly how I'm going to resolve it. It's this, how do you make sure? I believe it's really important that people are spending time in the office together or spending time together as we're coming into this new world of hybrid work. And I definitely have had a lot of pushback on we're going to lose people. I think we're going through a change right now that I am really working through on how to make sure people are spending time together enough, whether it's in the office or somewhere else. Because I truly believe that for our culture, for collaboration, for people to really know and work together and for us to be truly successful, we need to be spending more time in the office than everybody is right now. And so I'm setting out more expectations. And I'm making sure that I'm listening to people on the other side. But I'm still, you just have to get to a certain point where if you think some change is important enough, people can make their own choices about what they do after you make the change. But as long as you explain it clearly and you feel strongly about it, that's something that I've been working through on how many days I expect people to be in the office and whether Mondays are important and things like that that I definitely know there 's some people who don't agree. Well, absolutely. It's one of the more controversial subjects in business today. You know, what's the biggest thing you and the team have accomplished? Something that you're really proud of. I would say two things. And one's an output of the real thing. We have changed so much of the leadership team of our most senior 20 something leaders, probably 70% are new in the last three years. And we've done that without dropping the ball and actually with picking up, I think, and doing better in a lot of client relationships. So the bank has almost doubled in that amount of time in terms of assets. I walked in the door at 50 billion and we're a little over 90, you know, so closing up on 100 billion. And so I'm really proud. There's a lot of things that went into that. But when I think about all the change we had to do to have our clients feel good about doing business with us, 80% of our business comes from existing clients doing more with us. And I'm really proud of that. That's fantastic growth. Congratulations. And there's so much talk these days about cryptocurrency. You know, as a leader, how do you go about learning about this complex subject and what's your point of view on it? Well, when I want to learn about something, a couple of things I do, I read a lot and I take suggestions on what to read from a lot of different people. And I usually just seek out people who are experts in a field that I'm trying to look at. And so crypto has been interesting. We don't do a lot at City National in crypto. I look at it. There is a certain, you know, speculative asset class that I think is part of it. But where I'm actually spending more time and we're spending more time is thinking about how blockchain and how NFTs are going to change the entertainment industry. We're very significant in banking in the entertainment industry. And so a lot of our clients are selling NFTs. They're making money from it. They're not, you know, directly trading or doing anything in the actual instruments themselves. But I need to understand and stay on top of it. And so I speak to a lot of people in the industry to make sure that I'm hearing about how they're doing, they're investing in whatever it is they're investing in. World of Women or Board A club or and that's where I'm spending more of my time on it. We do have a big working group across City National and RBC and they're doing a lot around making sure they're learning and positioned, again, not custody, not trading in it. And so when they make some decisions on things to do, then I just decide what I think is relevant for our clients and I can piggyback on what RBC has done. Everyone talks about how you should leverage your strengths. What do you think about how a leader should handle his or her weaknesses? For me, it's pretty simple. Hire people who are strong at where your weaknesses are. You know, there are certain things that I'm really good at and certain things that I'm not. And so, you know, I'm good with people. I know I like to ask for a lot of opinions. If I'm in a meeting, I get really caught up in the discussion at that time. This is a very simple example. I'm not great at keeping time on making sure we're moving along. So I just make sure that I have somebody at my side that's prompting me to say, "Hey, you got to move on to the next topic. Let's bring this to a conclusion just to remind me." And so, you know, same things. I tend to be somebody who's always trying to problem solve. I like to look forward. I don't necessarily look back as much as I should. I have some people around me who are really great at looking back and thinking about what should you have learned for that? And let's make sure we're incorporated into what we're going forward. So I sometimes contend to want to move fast. And I have some people who slow me down. So I think you just have to make sure when you're building your team that you 're finding people that have a diversity of thought as well as a diverse backgrounds and diversity in all senses. And that's how I keep making sure that I have somebody there with a strength that I just don't have. You know, Kelly, this has been a lot of fun. And I'd like to have a little bit more fun with the lightning round of questions. Are you ready for this? I'm ready. Here we go. What are three words that others would use to describe you? Authentic, transparent, and I hope fun. If you could be someone beside yourself for a day, who would it be and why? I'd be a rock star for a day. I'd be a delve. So talented. I can't sing. So do somebody like that? What's your biggest pet, Steve? I don't like when people try to sell me on something. They spin me. I want to know the facts. And I want to know them pretty straightforward. And if I feel like someone's trying to leave something out that I have to then go press, they pretty much lost my confidence. If you turn on the radio in your car, what would you hear? Oh, it's probably Ella Fitzgerald or Stevie Nix. Those are the two I listen to most. What's something about you that few people would know? Few people would probably know that I almost went to work for the CIA instead of coming into banking, but I dropped out. What's the funniest thing that's happened to you in the past few months? Oh, this is not necessarily funny, but can I tell you when I just threw a dinner party? I had a great chef come and cook and she caught my grill on fire and they managed to put it out. So it ended up in a good way, but it was pretty fun to go through a dinner party and have that happen. So you throw in a dinner party. What's your favorite dinner party question and why? I like to ask people at a dinner party, whether they're optimistic or pessimistic about the future and why. That's a good one. You know, one of the things I'm noticing here, Kelly, is you've got your own podcast microphone. How do you use podcasts internally at the bank? That's a great question. So I use it two ways. Right when the pandemic hit, I felt like people really needed to hear from me on a more frequent basis. And so I started a weekly podcast and it was quick when I started 10 minutes and I might say, here's what's going on. Here's what I want you to be aware of. And then I started pulling different people from around the company that I would do a quick, you know, no longer than 10 or 15 minute update on what's going on in the entertainment team, what's going on in Nashville, what's going on in some other part of our bank. And now I do every quarter, we cover our earnings on a podcast as opposed to just an email, you know, 90 plus percent, open it and listen to it. And I like that they hear directly from me. Now I don't do it every week. I do it every other. And sometimes I hand it off to another person to lead so that they hear from somebody. And that's one way to make the bank continuing to feel small. And then the other thing I do is I also do a podcast that you can find they put out externally with our clients. I just did one with a pretty incredible woman out of Atlanta who's got a great app called Gooder and she's trying to solve the logistics of hunger in the world. And because 40% of our food goes to waste and I, you know, everything from her to one of our famous clients. So I'm not as good as a podcast as you are, but I try my hand out a little bit every month and a while David. I'm sure you're, you're great. You know, you're in that 24/7 business. What perspective can you give on how to bring balance when it's so easy for you to feel like you always have to be on. You know, you've got to be there. For me, you have to take some breaks. There's a couple of things I do on an almost daily basis that help me. I work out almost every day and I do also, I am a big fan of meditating, even if it's not the whole 20 minutes just to take a moment in the morning and try to ground yourself. But you do still can get overwhelmed. So I try to set up some rules about, I like to say that, you know, I'm not going to anything on Sunday unless it's really important. So my first response typically on a Sunday is going to be no because I just need a day. Read, relax, hike. And it may be that I'm working, but I'm not working in a sense that I'm on the phone and doing Zoom unless something special is happening. And I found that if I just tried to carve out time in different places, it didn 't work for me. I actually had to have a rule that I, sorry, I don't do anything on Sunday. I make an exception for the Tony Awards. I make exceptions for different things. But in general, I try to find those rules that give you space to let you take a deep breath and just disconnect a little bit. And I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing. That's interesting. You know, the Tony Awards would be work for you to a certain extent, wouldn't it? It is. I present an award every year. Usually it's to the best regional theater. It's a lot of fun, but that is work. Yeah. And sometimes I go to the SAG Awards, I go to different shows or parties and it 's fun to do it a couple of times. I don't have to do it every year. All right. Well, wrap this up with one last question. What's one piece of advice you'd give to anyone who wants to improve as a leader? You know, I think one of the most important things to do as a leader is to make sure you're listening. There's so many good pieces of feedback or advice that come in. And if you don't listen, I don't think you can lead authentically. I don't think people believe that you're hearing them and so much of my job, even though I'm telling people what to do. And hopefully I hire a lot of great people who know what to do. But I have found that sometimes people just want to make sure you heard them and then they're moving on. Well, let me tell you something, Kelly. You got to be doing a good job listening because the business performance is amazing. I always say, show me a good leader and I'll show you a good business. And let me tell you, you are a great leader and thanks for being on how leaders lead. I really appreciate it. Oh, David, thanks for having me. You're super kind. You're the great leader. I've learned a ton from you and from all of your books and coaching. So thanks for everything you're doing to help people be better leaders. Well, you know, Kelly is one of those people you beat in life and you know immediately why she's risen to the top. She's a genuinely special person and I just love how she's building a great team and growing City National Bank by embracing feedback. Now let's pause here so I can offer you some coaching for the week. We all know the importance of feedback, but we've got to make sure our teams know we welcome their feedback. Kelly literally set up an email address where anyone could share their ideas to improve the company. So how can you make sure your team knows that you really want their feedback? And here's an even better question. When they give it, are you ready to listen and do something about what you've heard? Now I'll be honest, when you open yourself up for feedback, you're likely to hear some things you don't want to hear, some really unpleasant stuff. But as you respond to it, you'll create so many opportunities for your business and you'll have a stronger team that knows that you're listening. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders embrace feedback. Coming up next on How leaders lead drum roll please, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, just in time for the start of the football season. I really do believe the NFL is at a level of success that we've never been before, but I think our opportunities are so great right now that it's on us to seize that and missing that opportunity would be a failure for all of us. I think when you can identify the opportunities and the potential for success, I think people get that and it's your job to identify that and make that vision clear for them and they understand if doing nothing is a risk in and of itself. So let's seize that opportunity. So be sure to come back next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of How leaders lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I may get a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be. [BLANK_AUDIO] [ Silence ]