JP Morgan's Jimmy Lee On Hiring Jerks and Other Wall Street Problems

Nobody makes it in business - any business - without knowing how to manage and deal with people.

On Wall Street, Jimmy Lee, the Vice Chairman at JP Morgan, is an expert at it. Borrowing from a Jamie Dimon phrase, "the book" on Jimmy is he's succeeded this long on Wall Street - over 30 years at JPM - because he knows how to deal with people and he's excellent at it. That's why the big Masters of the Universe - the Rupert Murdochs, the Michael Dells, the Brian Roberts - call on Jimmy when they need some wartime advice. He knows how to go to battle, but he tries to keep the peace.

Jimmy is in my book, Work Smarts, which is why recently he hosted a panel with myself and his head of global equity capital markets, Liz Myers, to speak to 650-plus interns worldwide. If you thought every 20-year-old wanted to be like Mark Zuckerberg, you only had to look at this room and know, yeah, Wall Street's not dead - yet. Besides, who's going to take all those future Facebooks public?

Jimmy has a way of knowing what people want to hear, even if they don't want to hear it. He's also a pain about details. So before the panel, we talked for half an hour about what young people really want to hear. Forget the follow your passion advice (Katzenberg already told me that talk is stupid). Forget the "rah rah everything is going to be just great after college" advice. People want to hear the hard stuff. They want to know what to do when you screw up. Or when you fight with your colleague. Or when you realize suddenly at 35, you're not happy anymore. What do you do then?

Jimmy and Liz talked about all those things in the hour-long panel and here are the three big takeaways for me:

1. Dealing with Conflict: Somewhere early on, you're going to fight with your colleagues. The problem is people - mindful of the "teamwork" mentality - tend to bury any simmering conflicts that arise. How many times have you been in a meeting and someone pissed you off except rather than confront that person, you try to forget about it after because you don't want to make a mountain out of a molehill (Um, that would be me). As Jimmy noted, the initial affront is usually small, and if you actually talked about it, the problem would go away. The issue is that most people bury the assault, and then bury more assaults until one day, the smallest of infractions turns into a blowup disproportionate to the size of the matter at hand. And it's only the first time that the offender even knows you're upset with her. I've seen this play out too many times and so has Jimmy. Deal with the little fire first before it engulfs your being.

2. When You Screw Up: When you make multibillion dollar deals, your word is your credibility. If you lose your credibility, nobody will believe a word anymore. And when you screw up, you better be damn sure people hear the words - out of your own damn mouth. When Jimmy has to own up to a mistake, he tries to get to them as quick as possible in person and if that's not possible, then by phone. And if he's in person, he gets as close to them as possible, right next to them, looks them in the eye and says simply "I'm sorry." Email? Do not do it. Texting? Even worse. People write apologies to avoid the hard confrontation. What you say in a 300-word essay will never live up to a simple two spoken words, "I'm sorry."

3. The Derek Jeter Problem: If you're lucky enough to make it to a mid- or senior level on Wall Street, chances are you're pretty smart. The problem is, every other person on that floor in that same position as you is pretty smart too. The smart differential isn't going to be that big between Vice President A and Vice President Z. That's when you have to worry about two things.

First, if everyone is so good, then how do you rise to the top? You do so by developing the EQ part of your career - how do you relate and connect to people. What are your relationships like? Do people like working with and for you? Jimmy told the story about how he and Jamie almost hired one senior fellow until they asked each other: would I want my children working for him? The answer was an unequivocal no. The guy was a jerk. He was mean to an assistant. Case closed.

The second problem is the Derek Jeter issue. At this stage in your career, you might feel unappreciated. Recruiters are calling. Maybe your talents might be better expressed and appreciated elsewhere. You got passed over for a promotion, whatever. So you leave because you are THAT talented and THAT fantastic. Except when you get to the new company, instead of colleagues welcoming you with open arms, they resent you. So you're the new boss' pet? Who's this guy think he is? Derek Jeter? Not only do you deal with that, you realize the people who've been there longer know a heck of a lot more about the company, have a lot deeper relationships than you, and have allies already within the firm. You're up against a wall of resentment. And what if the boss leaves? Then you're in deep crap. It might all turn out great or it might all go to pot. The point is to think transitions like that honestly and unemotionally. If you're leaving just to show up the old firm, you're doing it all for the wrong reasons.

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Betty Liu is the anchor of Bloomberg TV's In the Loop (M-F 8-10 am ET) and author of Work Smarts: What CEOs Say You Need to Know to Get Ahead. You can buy it on Amazon.com or get a signed copy at www.betty-liu.com/books.