Welcome to How 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. You know, I hate to break it to you, but you won't make it very far as a leader unless you know how to summon courage. You see, leaders have to speak their minds. They got to get out of their comfort zone. They got to take risks and dream big. And all of that, it all takes courage and lots of it. That's why I'm so excited for you to hear from today's guest, Marissa Montiel, who has got to be one of the most courageous leaders I know. She's the former Deputy CEO and Vice Chairman of Deloitte, and she has blazed a trail as one of the most accomplished and admired women in corporate leadership. She believes we all have to summon courage, and when you can tap into it, you can dream bigger, learn more from failure, take charge of your own career, and so much more. So here's my conversation with my good friend, and soon to be yours, Marissa Montiel. You know, Marissa, you worked your way out from the bottom to become the Deputy CEO and Vice Chairman of Deloitte. It's the largest accounting and consulting firm in the world with 180,000 people. I mean, that's quite a feat, but I have to ask you, you know, sometimes these titles can be so confusing. What's a Deputy CEO do? Well, it does all the stuff that the CEO doesn't really want to do. So I had many things that reported to me, if you would analogize it to the corporate world, it would be like a cheap operating officer. We had obviously insight operations and the managing of the business of Delo itte, and then we had obviously things that were external, and the external piece of it was led by someone else. And I basically led with the day-to-day activities of the firm, including one of the most challenging things that reported to me was risk because that was the most challenging worldwide as well because we had many conflicts around the world to navigate and deal with, but also internally because that was the growth engine of the firm, but you had to figure out a way to manage the risk effectively. But I had a hot spot of things that reported to me. And so it was a great career and a great role for me. And you had this incredible passion for leadership development. Was that a place where you could really drive that home? Yes, well, that came with the development of the Deloitte University. And then from that, I talked to the then CEO to try to combine that into creating not just the university for learning and development, but creating a leadership center and that we needed to revolutionize the way we look at leadership development in the firm. It was siloed in each of the businesses, and we needed to ensure that we were building leaders for the 21st century and not looking at what we had done in the past, typically kind of learn on your own, have a mentor, work with an outside coach. That isn't leadership development. Leadership development is really doing something entirely different to prepare our leaders for the future. I have to tell you, Murch, I have really enjoyed being on the Comcast board of directors with you. And one of the things that I've noticed is that you have a great knack of being able to step back and identify issues that need to be addressed. You know, how did you pick up that skill? Well, first of all, I think you have to be intently in the room and in the meeting and listen to everyone's points of view. And the second thing I think is a lot of times people used to say to me, you often say the things that everyone is thinking, but is afraid to speak up or say it. And I think having the self-confidence, having the insight to present your point of view or suggestion, but I think it starts with listening and understanding every day I learn something new from someone, even the people that you least expected in life, you learn something from. So I think it's all about intentful listening is what I would say. Before you left Deloitte, you wrote this book entitled "Dare to Be Extra ordinary, Life Lessons from Women Who Take the Lead." Tell us about it. Well, I was an unusual leader, you might say. A lot of people would have said I was a minority twice a minority. I was a woman, but I was a Hispanic. And I didn't want to write a book about leadership. First of all, I used to tell everybody. There are more books on leadership as there are on cooking. And I didn't want to write one more book. And I also didn't want to write a book about me. I wanted to write a book about the greatness of the women that helped build Del oitte. So I said, I'm willing to do that if you allow me to handpick the women, which are featured in the book, and allow them to have their voice be heard around leadership and their leadership lessons. And then the other thing that we did is I wanted it to be because the law university was such a big part of me in my last few years at Deloitte. I wanted it to be among the books that were featured when you check into your room. There are all these books that Deloitte partners have written. And I wanted the book to be there so that anyone's curiosity who perks up, because the title is there to be extraordinary, would want to read it and read it from these great women that had great careers and were great leaders. You came up in the auditing profession when there were virtually no women. I mean, you were a real trailblazer in many respects. What kind of obstacles did you face in that period of your career? Well, first of all, I must tell you, looking back, there are times that I even surprised myself that I lived through it all. But I think adversity makes you stronger. So you can't blame anybody for this. It was the times. I was the first woman, the first Hispanic. There were very few women in the profession at the time. So everything from working with men on teams where I was the only woman or having to travel out of town with men. I mean, all these things were just things that we were sort of learning how to do and how to be. And it was a difficult transition as much for me as I think it was for the men that I was a part of and trying to be a part of a team when you're this person that people don't quite know what to do with is a real challenge. So I thought it was up to me to adapt and embrace. And one thing I learned, I will never forget this, my father always told me you have to learn how to speak the language of men. So that meant to me, I had to read the sports section every single day. And so to this day, I still read the sports section every day. And it gave me a conversation or something to talk about with guys because everybody is a sports fanatic. And so it gave me something to be able to converse with them about and learn the language and adapt. But I wouldn't change a bit of anything. It made me who I am today. I've heard you share that you've been overlooked for promotions and assignments because you were a woman. So you share one of those stories with us and how did you handle it? I believe in destiny entirely. And I believe that everything happens for a reason. And yes, early on in my career, it was always about you wanted to be on the clients that were the best clients and you could learn from and you wanted to work for the people that were the leaders in the office. And the reality was I didn't have those chances. And so I had to figure out how to pivot and how I could create a brand for me that would enable me to be successful in that environment. So I ended up going on engagements that no one wanted to be on. And they didn't want to be on, not because there was anything wrong with this client or this company because they were just tough. It required you to work a lot of hours. It required you to be in an industry that perhaps was not as sexy as some of the other ones. And so I had to learn how to reinvent myself. And I ended up volunteering for one of those. And actually I met the first person who became my dear mentor, Leon Meschak. And I learned so much from him. So it was God sent that I was destined to do that. And looking back, I think it's what helped me grow and develop into the person that I became. Has there ever been a time when you felt like you've been held back? Well, it was actually, I talk about this in the book. It's the one three syndrome. So we had two evaluations every six months you would get your evaluation on your performance. And it was one being the highest and five being the worst. And my current performance was always a one. So I never complained about that. But then you had an evaluation on your long term performance. And it was always a three. And that meant it was undecided. And so it used to frustrate me David to know. And then I finally asked the person who was providing me this feedback. I said, well, who makes this decision? I want to talk to him directly. And he told me who it was. And I said, I'm going to go over there and I'm going to speak directly with him . So I made an appointment. I go into his office. And I challenged him and I say, what is it you think I have to do to earn the unlimited potential lady? And he looked at me and he gave me this look of, where it's a week, quite frankly, don't know what to do with you. There's not been anyone else like you. And so I left saying, I think you're wrong about my potential. And I'm going to prove to you that you're wrong. If you'll be patient enough with me to let me provide you that proof. And I did, and in the long term, I did become partner and it was a great career . I wouldn't change it for anything in the world. The CEO of Deloitte describes you as a natural builder and you don't build a firm with mottas. How do you build a firm? Well, it starts with any leader. I think who leads anything, you have to have a strong sense of what you're trying to accomplish and understand that it's not really about you. It's really about the team. And we had many challenges like any other business, but I remember talking to the CEO when he asked me to move to Washington DC to lead what was then the region. He talked to me about the possibility, the art of the possible, what it could be like if we could create a federal business at Deloitte and provide services to the federal government. And he had a white paper on this topic and he said, take a look at it and tell me what you think we can do. And so I think it's the largest professional services industry in the world and we were not a player in it. And so I put together at his request a strategy with other people to help lead this. And I remember going to the board of directors. It was my first encounter going to the board of directors to do a presentation. And when we were done, I left the room and there was another managing partner at the time, he runs out and he tells us to me, where it's at, this will never work. We tried doing this and it will never work. Well, it did. We are one of the largest provider professional services to the government and federal practice today. And it's a growing business. And it's one of the reasons why Deloitte has grown so fast over the last few years. And I'm proud of that. It just requires a lot of tenacity and sometimes believing in yourself when others quite frankly aren't there yet. So you build a business from scratch that Deloitte had never been in. How did you do it though? I mean, how did you really make that happen and how did you get other people to believe? Well the first thing that I did is, and I encourage all leaders to think about this, is I went out and I tried to recruit the very best partner that I could to help lead it. I didn't know anything about consulting and I certainly didn't do anything about doing business in the federal government. So I recruited a partner at the time who was consulting partner because most of the business that we did with the federal government was consulting. I recruited an individual who didn't want to do it because of the risk involved . He had a great job in the consulting business. Why should I leave what I'm doing to go do this? And so sometimes your number one job as a leader is to recruit people, right? Spend a lot of time, you're only as good as the people you surround yourself with. And we embarked on trying to recruit other people to make sure that we had the right people facing off against the client and the opportunity. So we did it by recruiting one partner at a time, getting focused on, I remember the Department of Homeland Security was just formed at the time that we were building our federal practice. It became one of the biggest clients that we had in the firm because there were new, we were new, and we brought commercial best practices to the government. And that's something that was unique about us in providing services to them. So it's a great story of a lot of people that were a part of it. You build that business in Washington up. Once you had the success, how did you keep the pressure on to build on it? You know, how do you fight complacency? Being an immigrant and starting out with almost nothing, I think there's this little thing inside of you that always says, "You better work. Don't worry about what's behind you because there's always a storm lurking out there and as a business." I think the number one job of a leader is to invent the future and whatever that future is with disruption these days, David, when you and I started out disruption took years, but nowadays it just happens overnight. And I always said, "Let's focus on what our strengths are. Let's focus on what we're going to do." And let's figure out, I always thought that it was important to understand what the competition is doing, but that you had to bring something of value that was unique in order to grow the business and sustain it. And so we spent a lot of time understanding the client, the changes, what was, you know, like I mentioned, homeland security, what were going to be the other areas of growth. But we had a relentless focus on the things and the clients and the things that we wanted to achieve as an organization. And we ended up actually acquiring the assets of very points federal business in bankruptcy. And that was a big, big, big, bold thing. Professional services firms have no real market value because the people leave. There's no assets. People leave every day. And so that was pretty bold that we were able to execute that. And that was part of what fueled the growth in the federal business. So we knew long-term what it took. We knew we'd have to get bigger and we knew we'd have to go in areas that we were not in. Now, I'm sure you'd agree, you can't get better as the leader without a plan to help you develop. It's why I send out a weekly leadership plan. This weekly plan gives you practical steps you can take to develop leadership skills that will help you grow. Each week focuses on a different leadership topic, topics like culture, control , innovation, and handling conflict. Now, you might know a lot about these things, but how often are you taking time to actually get better at them? This free weekly leadership plan will help you do just that. It will improve your leadership skills and give you simple ways to navigate any leadership challenge you'll face. Sign up for the plan today at howleaderslead.com/plan. You know, the CEO that described you as a builder earlier, and he also said that you made him believe in himself before he really had that belief and that you were there for him as a coach. Can you give us an example of how you did that with him? If you're going to be effective and successful, you need to surround yourself with people that are smarter than you. And there were a lot of people that I surrounded myself, there were a lot smarter than me. And he was one of them. I thought he was at any given room, the smartest guy in the room, but he just needed a little help. And he needed a little help on how he showed up as a leader, his presence. And also, he was a highly introverted individual, and he needed to come out and be a little more assertive. So, I decided I would mentor him, and it was a great relationship for many, many years. I believed in him when others did not. I pounded on the table for his success. I remember there were two individuals that were up for partner that year, and he was going to get deferred. And the other guy was going to get promoted. And I remember telling my boss at the time, this guy that you are deferring will be the CEO of the Lloyd One Day, not the other guy you're promoting. I think you're making a big mistake. And you know, it turned out to be true. You got the last laugh there. I did it. I did. You know, tell us a story, Maritza, from your childhood that drove you to be the kind of leader you are today. I think you always have to have a sense of humor in life. And I was a little child. So, you know, I had my sister to look up to and my younger brother. And I always took life overly serious. That was not a strength of mine. And this is going to sound terrible. But one day we lived in a house that had a lot of termites. And I went to use the toilet and the entire toilet went down with me in it. And the lesson in life was when I cried out for help, my family was laughing so hard. No one could fool me out. And it wasn't until I laughed at myself that I couldn't get out of the hole that I was in. So, I don't know about the graphic of this, but it was a learning lesson about how to take life in stride and how to ease up a little bit and not to be too hard on myself and others. So, that's what comes to mind, David. That's a great story. You talk about being CEO of your own career. Give us an example of when you put that concept into action. Well, I was asked to relocate to the Central Atlantic region at the time, which is headquartered in Washington, D.C. And my husband was a very successful career in Miami. And I was talking to going there and helping lead to practice included this white paper on the federal practice. And my husband wasn't going to move, but he was very supportive of me doing this. And I would commute back and forth. And I remember sitting down with the CEO sort of talking about what we were going to do in the region. And I broke the news to him that, you know, I wasn't going to move. And of course, we have never had an office managing partner that didn't live in the geography that they were leading. So he said to me, but go ahead and negotiate this with your direct report, who was the guy that had the job in that region prior to me getting promoted. And I remember talking to him about the same challenge that I would be there Monday through Friday, but that my husband wouldn't come and I would commute and he would come up every other week and we would work it out. And he said, it's impossible. That's never going to work. You represent the community and you have to live there. And I looked at him and I said, okay, let me make sure I understand. I am the eighth leader of the region and we're last in the marketplace and all my predecessors lived in the community. So why is living in the community necessary since that didn't seem to make a difference for the eight other guys that preceded me. So I made a deal with him. I said, let me try it for two years. And if I'm not successful, you can fire me. And so the rest is history as they say. That takes courage. And you talk about two kinds of courage. One is making the best of the way things are. And the other is believing in yourself when no one else does. We talk a little bit more about that. And I imagine knowing you that you got a good story at how you arrived at each one of those points. If you don't believe in yourself, it's kind of hard to have others that you expect that others would believe in you. I just had a sense of I feel sorry for whomever challenges me that I can't do something because it's the feel that gives me the motivation to try to prove you wrong. And so I thrive in chaos. I thrive in adversity. I'm not scared of anything. I have failed many times and I've learned from that. But I believe that there are no such things as huge problems. There are just lots of little problems that put together are big. And so if you view a challenge as an opportunity and you don't view the gigantic thing as a problem, but you view it as everything is solvable and you surround yourself with the right team to face off against that challenge that you can be successful. So courage comes in many different ways. Some people are afraid in the moment, but then run to it and seize it and are successful. Other people sort of raise their hand and they say, let me have the ball coach. I'll go take care of this. But everyone has courage. It's just that sometimes I think fear of failure paralyzes people. And so I always say to people believing yourself, make sure you have a plan of what it is you want to accomplish. And they're the dream. One of the things I always when I had my one on one sessions with my leaders, I would always end the sessions with tell me what your dream is. And it sort of caught people off guard at the beginning, but the next time we met, they came prepared to talk about that dream. It didn't have to be they would ask me about what? And I would say, well, they're not my dreams. They're your dreams. That's what I want to know. And so it forces people to think about the art of the possible and it forces you to think about. You know, if you spend two weeks planning your vacation, but you don't spend more than a day thinking about your future, it's kind of not the right balance in life. And I had lots of dreams. And so it's amazing how if you dream, a lot of times they do come true and it gives you the energy and the confidence to want to do more. What are some of the big dreams you had in your life and career? To put the me the number one was to just get a job. I mean, you know, you have to understand how poor we were. My mother raised three kids on her own because my father died of a heart attack very young. You know, we lived very modestly. I went to a community college on a grant and a scholarship. And then I got fortunate enough to be able to get into the University of Miami on a grant and a scholarship. I had to work full time and go to school full time and maintain a GPA so I could get tuition for the next semester. So life has been hard. So for me, the number one dream was getting a job. The number two dream was I used to observe out the windowing when I was in college, all these kids with their fancy cars. And I said, one day I'm going to get a Corvette. And that's so that was my second dream because the last day of college, the beat up Mustang that I had was stolen. So I literally went to work my first day on a bus. And it had the same money to buy a car so I could get to and from work. So I rode the bus to work for two weeks before I could have enough money to buy a car. My dreams weren't huge. And then I had a dream of becoming a partner. And you understand, there's just nobody else like me. There were no women. There was no Hispanic. You think about the population of Miami now, but it wasn't anything like that. It started with that. It started with the tenacity to kind of hang in there and just go for the moon. And I was able to achieve it. You know, Ritzy, you've talked about self confidence a little bit. You seem to be so self-assured, so self-confident. Was this something that was just in your DNA or did you have some cataclysmic moment where you realized, hey, you know, I've got this. I can do this. Well, David, I think I got it from my mother that no matter what the challenge in life is, I can persevere. I don't know how I got it, but sometimes it's a plus and sometimes it's not. But that's what I am, David. You have great phrases. And one of them is that you say life has no rewind button. That's right. You know, give us an example of how you coach someone to recognize that fact. The majority of my time later on as a leader, I was spent really motivating and helping people. I had a passion for observing leaders and what makes them successful. And sometimes you need someone that can observe you from a different angle and a different point of view to provide you the insights that you need to realize how much better you could be if only you did these two or three things differently. And I know I had a coach later in my career at Deloitte. I had never had one before and I learned so much from him. And the most amazing thing that I learned from him is how others perceive you and how no matter how many times you think it's one way. It's always something else. It's the opposite. And so I try to instill in people this notion that you can do anything you set your mind to do and everyone in life has God given gifts. It's up to you to figure out how to exploit those and how to take the weaknesses and make them irrelevant and how to take your strengths and exploit them. And so I'm a believer in people. I love seeing when people succeed like you and I just admire those that have been revolutionary people in the world and study and read up on them. I think it's fascinating. I've never heard this phrase before. Woman up. Is this your phrase? I love it. And what do you mean by womaning up? This woman up concept came about because we elect our leaders in the firm by the way. So there's no one is anointed. But a lot of the partners would come to me, particularly the med partners, and they had a clear speech, like a campaign speech on why they should be the CEO. And the women would come in and they would be, well, I don't know. Maybe it was just sort of like such a difference. I think we as women tend to give ourselves permission to whine more than men. Men have no patience for that. So I would always say to them after listening to them. I would say, you know, you got a woman up. You got to just realize that no one wants to hear this. If you want to do that, you just have to go for it, but you're going to have to fight your way through it. And so it was a way of making sure that feeling sorry for yourself was not a good thing and that you needed to move on with life and have the courage to do it. You're obviously a really bold leader. I mean, you take risk. You're a rule breaker. How do you get others to take risk? People want to follow people that inspire them to want to go to a different place that's better and that they're a big part of that puzzle. So I just think it's really, really important as a leader that you know that you are the mirror to the soul of the enterprise that you lead and that when you walk in a room, you are this person that people look up to and encourage them to take the journey with you or create more importantly a journey of their own. I believe having a plan. I loved your book. I thought it was a fantastic read on how to be your own coach. I encourage people to buy the book and read it because I learned a lot from it. So it's just one day at a time, David, but courage, dreaming, know what you want to do. I love Elo Mosque. Someone asked me the other day if you could have dinner with someone who would it be. I think he's one of the most interesting people. I wouldn't want to be on his board, but I think he's one of the most interesting people to lead a company. Can you imagine what that would be like? But I think people that invent the future are people to be admired. And so I encourage everyone that there's a future out there for you to build. Just figure out are you going to create it? I got to ask you this because you are such a risk taker and you'd buy your Elo Mosque. You know, it just said you wouldn't want to be on his board. Is that really the truth or you just say that in just if he called you up, you wouldn't be enticed? I admire his genius tremendously, but it would be hard to work with someone who is just so out there and different from a governance point of view that as board members, I think we would always scratching our head all the time. I'm perfectly happy with the boards that I'm on and the seat wheels that lead them. They're all great. They're all great. You talk about unwritten scorecards as well. What do you mean by an unwritten scorecard? You know, David, you talk about yourself, how private time in the airplanes when you were all alone was the best time. And I had to educate myself on how to ensure that I had time to think every day . And it takes a lot of discipline to do that. And I would often feel like I was working 12 hours a day and not accomplishing the things that I wanted. And then I realized with retrospect that I was spending a lot of time doing things that were not adding value. It's funny how your calendar gets full of people that are feeling challenged performance-wise and you're not spending a lot of time with the high achievers, the people that are creating the value and the business. And I wanted to change that. And I also wanted to spend more time with clients. It's all about the clients and it's all about the marketplace. So it requires a great deal of discipline to take charge of your career and it starts with your calendar. I hated the fact that everybody could see what you were doing and not doing. And I couldn't figure out a way to get rid of that, by the way, at Deloitte. Maybe other companies have figured out how to do that. And I had the best assistant in the world to help me do that. But it was a challenge for me. I must admit. Why did you want to get rid of the calendar itself? Because I think by people going on your outlook calendar and seeing that you have space, they send an invite and it's just real easy for your assistant to accept. And so I didn't want to get rid of the calendar because the calendar is your discipline. But I was spending time doing things that were the priority for other people, but not necessarily the priority of what was going to make us cumulatively successful and not spending enough time on the outside and spending too much time on the inside and sometimes spending an inordinate amount of time helping people that were struggling in their jobs and not enough time with the ones that are going to create the future of the firm. And so you have to find a balance to all that. But I did not hate the calendar. I just hated how people... You can get filled up. You can't fill up a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Maritza Montiel in just a moment. But first I want to tell you about another incredible trailblazing woman, Indra Nui, the former chairman and CEO of PepsiCo. And like Maritza, she is so intentional about building others up so they can succeed too. Mentoring and developing other people. I mean, that is the single most important thing. And I just calculated in the last six years in PepsiCo, I gave the world I think nine CEOs, but three CFOs and three CHROs and three CMOs. So I look at that as perhaps one of the biggest accomplishments because we develop those leaders. When I talk to Indra, she shared so much practical wisdom for how leaders can elevate others. Go back and listen to my entire conversation with Indra, episode nine here on How Leaders Lead. You mentioned this earlier. You headed up the team that oversaw the learning and development strategy for Deloitte University. Tell us about that experience and how you think you really broke new ground. You visited a lot of different places. What did you do that was really different at Deloitte? It was really world class. I spent six months going out and talking to GE and IBM and how others developed leaders, universities, et cetera. And I learned when I went to GE that Jack Welsh had this theory that the functions or the businesses don't own the people that he owns, the people when he was CEO and he merely rents them to the businesses. At Deloitte, we were so siloed in everything that we did from learning and development. And so the first barrier was convincing everybody that leadership is a skill that is across the universe, no matter what business you're leading, whether it's tax, consulting or audit, this is a skill that needed to be developed as a collective Deloitte as opposed to individually. Each of our businesses had their own version of leadership development. And at the end, when you get to be CEO of Deloitte, you lead all those businesses. So you need to learn how to run a consulting business as much as the consultant needs to understand how to maybe not lead an audit business because of the regulatory environment and restrictions. But you need to understand how to walk in the shoes of an audit partner if you 're going to lead that business. And so it took a lot of effort, it was like hurting the cats to convince them to have one platform for leadership development. And the other thing that I had to do is because we pride ourselves in solving all the world's biggest problems is I had to come back to them with, here's what I've learned from the outside that would give me credibility because after all this was not, I wasn't an expert on leadership development, I'd never done it. That's just something I had the passion to do. So it was one intervention or interaction at the time with each of those leaders who led the functions to convince them to do something different. And today it's what we do at one of the many things we do at Deloitte University and it was a great journey to get that going. How did you boil down the essence of leadership? Ah, yeah. As many colors in the rainbow, the definition to that David, I think it's different for different people. I've often said that companies don't fail, but people who lead them fail. And I also believe that there is a skill match for every situation. For example, I believe CEOs that are great are doing turnarounds. Sometimes they're not the best to lead in a high growth environment. And then vice versa, those that are more dreamers and focus so much on the future are probably not the best at doing a turnaround. So I think that's why there's so many books written on leadership because the definition is endless and it comes in different sizes. And now we have lots of women that are part of the definition of leaders. And you could see how many people are non-US born leaders that are leading fortune companies. And so I think it comes in many different ways and many different attributes. And I think you have to match the circumstance to the individual. One of your principles of leadership I know is to get your fingernails dirty. What do you mean by that? Well, like I said to you at the beginning, I figured out the best way for me to get noticed was to volunteer for the jobs that nobody else wanted to do. Whatever had to be done, whether I had to go make coffee for the team or we had to order food and go get it, it didn't matter what had to be done. One of my pet peeves is for people who say, "Not my job." That's not a quick way to impress me if that's your attitude in life. I believe that teamwork requires each and every one of us to do whatever it takes, whatever it takes, whatever that is and be there for each other. So getting your fingernails dirty is part of that. And you use the Maslow's hierarchy of deeds for solving problems. Explain that. That's, you know, you're pretty down to earth. Now you're getting up there. Well, you know, I always felt I never understood why we had all those classes in my community college on humanities and things that you later on don't know why you're even there. But I never have forgotten Maslow's hierarchy of needs because when I talked about earlier about gigantic problems and solving transformational challenges, when I took over Deloitte University, I succeeded someone and we had issues. And when I first arrived there for my first team meeting, you know, we had a PM O and there were a thousand pages. This was over engineer like consultants, over engineer everything. And I said, look, we have to open by this date. And there were some financial reasons why we had to open by the state. And I used the Maslow's hierarchy of need example. I said, everybody remember that from your classes in college? You probably were asleep through them. But I was, I was not asleep to this one. I always, I never forgotten. I said, here's what's got to happen. They wanted Deloitte University. The elevators got to work. The toilets got to flush. The technology has to work. We have to have hot water and we have to be able to feed 800 people at once. Everything else is day two. So we got to focus on the day one problem we got to solve and all the other stuff and you know, the wallpaper and the, you know, the, the this and the that, you know , you got to get to day one, right? So we try to make the gigantic issue of the problem into the lowest level denominator of what it needs, what needs to happen. And I think it gave people a focus and it allowed people to say, in fact, it became the Maritsa, that said Maritsa day two problem, not a Maritsa day one problem. And so there was a lot of money at stake because we were going to get a lot of tax credits for opening up on time and there were contractor incentives. It was all kinds of things. And we had made a big deal out of opening day. And I wasn't going to be the one that would call a CEO and say, well, you know, we, we had a bit of a setback because we're worried about the wallpaper. It wasn't going to be a good conversation. You have a real ability to tell it like it is. I mean, you have no problem. It seems like standing up and speaking your, your mind. And I'm sure you've had people who've worked for you that disappointed you, that did not meet your high expectations. Can you talk about one of those times and how you go about handling it? Oh, yeah. It's happened to, I think all of us, I mean, it's just part of life. I think as leaders, sometimes we hang on to people too long. I learned that lesson. It's funny, you can see it when other people do it. But when it's you, you don't see it. Sometimes the best advice that you can give someone and the best action you can take is to suggest to them that maybe they're, they're not fit for the career that they 're in and they should go do something else on the outside. And I cannot tell you how many countless people that I know of that left the Lloyd, it just wasn't for them. And they've turned out to be great CEO somewhere else or they turn out to create new businesses. So, you know, it's as important that you help people understand what their gifts are and how they could best succeed, even if it's not at the place that you're in. But listen, tough conversations like that are always hard. I mean, I have a heart like everybody else does and it's hard. It's one of the hardest things I think as a leader you have to do. You mentioned advice. What would be the three best pieces of advice that you've ever received? Well, Leon Meschak, my mentor, was famous for telling me, "Hang in there." I didn't understand what he meant back then when he said this. But whenever I would ask him, "Why is this happening to me?" And he would often say, "Because you're a girl." And it didn't connect the dots for me until much later on in life. And I also had to learn to basically say, "You know what? That's just genetically how I was born." And figure out a way to not make it my problem. There will be people that would say whatever about you. It's not about them, it's really about you. And no one can make you feel inferior unless you give information. And I think that was Leon's way of telling me that life's going to be a little tough for you, girl. And that was Leon's way of telling me to woman up. And so that was, I thought, great, great advice. Hey, your mother, what would the best advice your mother gave you? My mother was, I'll tell you, there was not a problem in life that she didn't face, that she didn't think she could be successful at. And never give up as one of her mantras that I learned from her. One of the bits of advice that you write about in the book was that who you work for is more important than the job. How did you learn that? Well, I had that advice given to me by a partner by the name of Pete Jensen. And he was a tough guy to work for. Many people used to tell me, "I got along with him wonderfully. I kind of knew what was important to him and I never had an issue." And I had an opportunity to do something in the firm. And I went and had dinner with him and asked him, "What do you think?" And I had my doubts about it for lots of different reasons. It was a great upward mobility move by any measure, right? So I was intrigued by it. And he looked at me and he said, "You know who you work for is more important than the job." And I said to him, "Okay, I'll think about that." And I didn't do it because I didn't think that it was a right... That leader was the right best option for me to go end up work for him. So I think it was a great career movement. I thank him for the advice. It was invaluable. You know, that's the more courage that you have there. You know, your favorite metaphor for women in business comes from golf as I understand it. Tell us about it. I try to explain in the book for people that have never played golf. The three different teas for golf and that the women can't drive the ball as fast. And so you tee off from what the color is, red. You tee off from the red teas, the men from the white teas. And then golfers like David Novak, you do it from the blues, right? It's a way of balancing the playing field when you're competing with men. And then there's the handicap, lots of way of balancing the field. In business, there are no red teas. Not only are you playing against your competitors and the marketplace, and everyone has to hit the ball from the same place and try to hit it as far and try to still achieve a par or achieve a birdie if possible. But there are no advantages just because you're a girl and there are no advantages just because you're a long hitter or a short hitter. It just is life. Yeah, I love that. You know, what's your vision, Maritza, for women in business? There's not a job. I think women in the world can't do. And so my hope is that I think mentorship and being able to have role models is so important that I just wish that there were more women in leadership roles that little girls growing up can look up to and say to themselves, I could be like her one day. And so I'm a huge fan of cheering women on. I believe that you're smarter when you have diversity of thought and opinion in the room. And I think for organizations that haven't figured out how to do that yet are at a huge disadvantage. But I think the world has changed from when I started in business. David, when I started in business, I remember there was a club in the building that I worked at and I was a manager and we had clients that flew in and we wanted to go to the club that was there, the luncheon club that was there in the building and went in and I was there with five other men. And we knew that women were not all thought in the club, but I had a person I worked with at the time. He said, well, it's torrential rain, Maritza, don't worry, don't let us in. We can sit in that room over there and they said, no, because you're a girl. And we left. I remember it was torrential rain and I never forgot that as long as I waited a long time and one day I became the partner in charge of recruiting and we used to have all these events at that club. And they finally allowed women to go there. And I said, when they lost all the Deloitte business, so the guy that ran the club came to see me and he said, why did you take the business away? It was very, very, very good business for them. I said, because you wouldn't allow me in to have a lunch many years ago. But I'll tell you what we do if you agree to admit to other women into the club and not charging for the entry fee, we'll go back to having events at the city club . It was the city club. And he did, by the way, and we went back to do an event there. But I got a little bit something out of him back. But the world has changed for women. Those things don't exist anymore. But I went through all that. Yeah, it was not any fun. What's the challenge you give to both men and women when it comes to working together? Seek to understand. We make a lot of rebuttable assumptions about things that women cannot do. We do have the challenge of raising the family. And if you have elderly parents and you worry about them and you're the caretaker, you're the CEO of the home. And you have to be sometimes the CEO on the outside as well. It's very hard. But in today's world, I think men share a lot of that responsibility. And men are trying to be the best parents that they can as well. I think seek to understand, try to figure out what it feels like to be in their world and vice versa. Try to figure out how to work with people of diverse backgrounds. I think culture is a big one too, David. I know when I went to DC, I had to really come to the US and Miami as a mixed culture. We do everything late. Time is less important to us. I remember going to DC and the meetings would start on time. And I was like, wow, Miami, you start the meetings when everybody gets there. And it's okay because we're all Latinos and the Americans become Latin ized and they get their late too. It's a whole different world. So I think culture is terribly, terribly important. And the world is so much smaller these days and it used to be. Everybody has an epic fail. Mine I've talked about many times was Crystal Pepsi , a great idea, poorly executed, I must say. And it was totally my idea. So I take ownership of it. Do you have an epic fail? Oh, my goodness. Yes. At a very young age after I made partner, I was given the responsibility to lead the audit practice in the Miami office, greater Miami office. And it was right after the savings alone failures. And we did about in Florida, almost 80% of the savings alone. So it was a huge financial crisis for us. And we were facing challenges we had never faced in our entire lives. And so we had this offsite meeting. And I took the trouble of figuring out the size, the 10, the sneaker size of each one of our partners and buying Nike sneakers. And the theme of the meeting was just do it. Well, first of all, when they got their sneakers, they were all like mesmerized, opening them up and they couldn't figure out how to connect that just do it to the sneakers. And we figuring out that we had to grow and we could do it. It felt so flat. I can't tell you. It was like, it was like my worst nightmare. And to this day, I have never forgotten it. So whatever it is you do in life, sometimes people just aren't ready to listen to that message. And quite frankly, Maritza, a pair of sneakers wasn't going to fix that. So you know, it's like, you not only did you read the environment wrong, but you read the room wrong, everybody went out and had a nice pair of sneakers, but it really didn't accomplish a whole lot. And as a leader, my first coming out meeting, I wanted to put it back over my head and just leave. So that was, that was, yeah, that was my epic failure day. And it was having a very young age. It was a lot of humble pie back then. And you remember that one, don 't you? Oh my goodness. I will I to this day if I see a pair of Nike sneakers, I won't buy one. Maritza, this has been such a fun conversation. And I want to have some more fun with you with my lightning round of questions. Are you ready for this? I am ready, David. Okay. What would be three words others would use to describe you? Tenacious, courage, enthusiastic. What 's your biggest pet peeve? People who wine. Who's your favorite female leader and why? Oh, Margaret Thatcher, tremendous courage and adversity took on everything. She went to war, reinvented the economy in the UK at a time when it was floundering, just a great role model. Who's your favorite male leader and wife? I love leaders that walk in the room and immediately they're a magnet for making everybody else feel better. And so I won't name an individual, but that quality is something that you have. And I think it's a gift. Oh, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. What's something only a Cuban would know about Cuba? They're the most beautiful beaches in the world. Absolutely. Favorite thing to do in Miami? Go out on a Friday night, watch the Miami heat and have dinner on El Gaviano prior to going there. If you turned on the radio in your car, what would we hear? CNBC. You're true blue all the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have to say that, right? What's something about you, Marita, that few people would know? I rode motorcycles. That does not surprise me at all. That's the end of the lightning round. I got just three more questions here. I 'll let you off the hook here. What advice can you give to people to balance family and work based on your experience? Remember, we talked about the challenge of my calendar beforehand. I had every important appointment in my life that I had to be at that was family oriented and nothing could change that. It didn't matter what it was. That was cast in stone. That always came first. So the best piece of advice is get organized around those things because they do really, really, really matter to those people. It's important to you. What's one piece of advice, Marita, you 'd give to aspiring leaders? You had to pick just one thing. To have the courage to go after your dreams, to have the courage to speak up, to have the courage to share what's on your great brilliant mind with people in the room. Don't be afraid to have a minority position on something. What's important is to be heard. I think having the courage to take risk without risk and without failure , you'll never learn anything. I learned more from my failures and my successes. The important thing is not that you fail. The important thing is how you come back up and how you apply yourself to the future from that failure. I learned a lot more from failure than I did from anything else in life. So have the courage to fail. You'll learn a lot. You really are a subject matter expert on this. I keep coming back to this. I'm going to wrap it up with this last question. What's your vision for women in the workplace going forward? I think the top 20 companies in the fortune, the majority of them, will be women-led. I don't think that's too far in the distant future. I'm excited to see the level of women in the workplace today that are in the C-suite already. If you think about succession over the next 10 years, I think you'll see that materialized. What do you think women have that makes them exceptionally good CEOs that a man may not have? I think in general, women tend to be more empathetic than men, not always, but it's almost like a universal trait that we have. I think as a leader, you need those of empathy towards others to be successful. I agree. Marissa, let me tell you something. You are one empathetic leader. I see you in action, and you do put yourself in other people's shoes. You walk the talk on everything that we've talked about in this conversation, and you talked about having role models. The one thing I will tell you is I have my daughter, Ashley, and she runs our Family Foundation, and I am definitely going to have her list of this podcast because she can learn a lot from you. So thank you so much. I appreciate you. Thank you, David. Thank you so much. Well, I don't know about you, but talking to Marissa just inspires me so much. She obviously is not afraid of taking risks and speaking her mind. And I love what she said about being the CEO of your own career. You've got to have the vision to dream big for yourself, and then the courage to actually go for it. So I want you to apply that advice this week. Ask yourself the question that Marissa always asks her leaders during one-on- one sessions. Tell me what your dream is. Antering that question is going to force you to think about what's really possible for your life and career. It's time to take those big, audacious dreams that have been kind of floating around in your head and actually put them into use. And it's time for you to ask the people you lead that very same question so they can do that very same thing . It's going to take courage, but hey, listen to Marissa. Everybody's got courage within. They just need to summon it. And I know great things are going to happen when you tap into yours. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders know how to summon courage. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Jim Weber, CEO of Brooks Running, a feist y competitor that's taking on the likes of Nike in the world of shoes. I think if you're not the lead brand, the platform in the category, you're a niche brand. You know, focus is required . You know, I'd rather win at something and dominate it, be known for it, get credit for it , try to create a successful profitable business behind it, than be eight things to lots of different people and be an also ran in the category. 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 make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the very best leader you can be. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]