Sean: I'm getting a lot of stuff that I already want to unpack from that. Let's rewind a little bit and go back to Morgan Stanley. You mentioned that you were in the tech world, you did programming, which is very interesting that you started that way because I'm a tech guy. What were some life lessons or leadership lessons that you use now that you got out of working with Morgan Stanley?

Yewande: Lots of stuff. So I like that question. I think it's always interesting because sometimes we assume and I loved your intro where you said something like, Oh, if you don't have a team and you're leading yourself because people often forget, right? It's like, Oh, I'm not a leader because I don't lead a team.

It's like, No, you're a leader because you lead every day, whether it's whether you have a team or not. You're leading other people, right? In some way. And often the first person you start with is yourself. So sometimes also say if you can't lead yourself, then you can't lead other people.

Like it's the same thing. It's just different, different audiences. Um, one of the things I learned a lot at Morgan Stanley. I was very fortunate with my team and the people who supported me. But two things immediately come to mind. One kind of stems from what I just said there around leadership is not about having a team because while I was at Morgan Stanley, I never actually technically had a team.

Towards the latter part of my career, there was a point where I had one person reporting to me, but the way that our department worked was that there were a lot of different departments that had to work together, especially in my role, because I wasn't the expert in anything. I wasn't an expert in legal, and I wasn't an expert in sales, but my hedge fund clients and the CEOs who I worked with expected that I would understand what they needed. I would come back to the firm and then work with and influence people too.

To get what? To create something and then deliver it to them. So I often had to work with people who were a lot more senior than me. 

So one of the biggest leadership lessons for me was really. Learning and understanding how to influence people irrespective of seniority and do it in a way that's not where either. I don't feel doubt in myself or I don't feel like I'm being combative, but bringing people along. 

And a lot of the lessons that I think about my leadership and my style now really stem from that. It's about the partnership with others and leading them towards the goal and the destination that we both agree on.

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Yewande Faloyin

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