"Think Of Your Colleagues As Clients."

Lisa M. Shalett is the co-founder of Extraordinary Women On Boards. Extraordinary Women On Boards is a platform that connects women board directors with cutting-edge knowledge, resources and board opportunities. Lisa was a partner at Goldman Sachs, retiring after a 28 year career at the firm. After her career on Wall Street, she began serving on corporate boards and is currently on the boards of MPower Partners and PennyMac Financial Services. (This is Part 1 of my interview with Lisa.)

You had a long and successful career at Goldman. I know Goldman is a place where? internal relationships matter a lot. What role did internal relationships play in your success at Goldman and how did you develop them??

One of the wonderful things about Goldman Sachs was that it was very much a team-oriented culture. I learned very early in my career there, from truly incredible mentors, that you should think of your colleagues as clients, and that really resonated with me. Let me give you some examples:?

My initial job at Goldman Sachs was as a Japanese equity salesperson.?I speak Japanese. I know Japanese culture and business. And I lucked out to find this job at Goldman that would pay me to talk to smart people about Japan all day.

At Goldman, the trading floor is vast. The Japanese equities sales desk in NY was small.??Everybody around me was involved in the US markets, which were live markets, trading in real time. The small specialist team I was on spoke with mutual funds, pension funds, and hedge funds who were in the US, but when we would speak with them, it was nighttime in Japan, and the Japanese market was closed.

One day I had this realization of value I could uniquely add —?even though I was in a smaller product compared to most everything else on the trading floor and I was working in a “dead” time zone, I was one of the few experts in the room on Japan. As such, there were things I knew about companies and market trends, with this focus and expertise, that could help my US-focused colleagues develop differentiated insights that would make them more valuable to their own clients.?

So I started to put out an email to people I was starting to get to know on the trading floor, whom I thought my intel could be useful to, and just say, “Hey, heads up, I noticed this happening in Japan, and it may be relevant to your clients’ portfolios. If I can be helpful, let me know.” The feedback was terrific, and it started some valuable dialogues and collaborations that ultimately benefited Goldman.

Each time I met someone for the first time on the trading floor, I would always aim to understand, ‘How can I be helpful to them? What is it that I might be focused on that they would benefit from knowing about?’ I would offer to add them to this little email distribution list that I was creating. Inevitably, people would begin to come to me for information. People started to look at me as an expert in the room, or at least, as a colleague who is willing to be very helpful.

I was very selective about what I shared. I shared information and insights that I didn’t think anyone else in the room was focused on or would notice themselves, but were relevant to things that could help their clients. In addition to treating my colleagues as clients, the way I used to think about this whole dynamic at that time was ‘give to get’.?While I didn’t expect anything in return,?I was confident that somehow my small efforts to help others would come back to me. I’ve come to call it "relationship karma."?

And lo and behold, people said these small insights were valuable and differentiating, and started asking me to get on the phone with them when they called their clients. Unexpectedly, I built a network of people in all kinds of different roles on the trading floor and increasingly around the firm. I got a reputation for being someone who really was a great team player, who had smart insights, and who would be in your corner.

Upon reflection, I have no doubt those emails, and thinking of my colleagues as clients, helped my career progress at Goldman, where the promotion process was very much one where lots of your colleagues contributed their thoughts about you. I was seen as a culture carrier; a leader who was embodying team spirit.?From that experience and to this day,?I always encourage people to think about what unique perspective they can bring when building relationships. There are always insights one has, no matter what level or role, and sharing those can really make networking interesting and memorable. and build bonds.