Nail the basics, speak up, keep learning, and meet in person.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon and AT&T CEO John Stankey shared those four pieces of career advice during a recent, wide-ranging interview hosted by LinkedIn.
LinkedIn posted text and video highlights of the conversation between the two corporate titans on its platform.
Here are the four key takeaways from what the pair said:
1. Fundamentals matter
Dimon, who has led America’s biggest bank by assets for more than 20 years, said young people have different ambitions and goals than previous generations, and are likely to have more complex, varied, and faster-moving careers.
But he said the “basic principles” of getting ahead at work will stay the same: “Treat people fairly, work hard, earn your respect every day, be curious, learn a lot, have a little heart, have a little grit.”
Dimon said those core values will remain relevant even as AI and other technologies remap how the world works, because humans won’t fundamentally change.
2. Embrace conflict
“Get the dead cat on the table,” Dimon said.
The billionaire banker said he was describing “when people are conflict avoidants, they’re sitting around a room” and waiting for someone else to speak up, or worrying he won’t like to hear what they have to say.
“We fail when we avoid conflict,” Dimon said, adding that he views open discourse not as conflict, but as bringing up a problem and figuring out how to solve it.
3. Stay up to date
Stankey — who’s worked at AT&T for over 40 years and has been CEO for the past six — said that when he doesn’t know “what the heck” a colleague is talking about during a meeting, he’ll make a note on a card about what they spoke about.
“I pull the card out at night right before I go to sleep,” he said, “and I have a conversation with my chatbot to educate me a little bit about what the subject is.”
“Just being disciplined about how you learn is really, really critical,” Stankey added.
The telecoms veteran also said he spends time with a “reverse mentor” — someone in their 20s who helps him understand what people in that age group are doing, what’s important to them, and how they’re using technology.
4. Work alongside others
Stankey said he recognizes the value of remote-working tools such as Zoom, but the downside is they’ve “flattened relationships” and “made them a bit disposable or categorizable.”
The AT&T chief said the path to solving hard problems and having “deeper, richer, more constructive relationships” is to understand your coworkers, and working next to them helps greatly with that.
“You can understand if something’s going on in their life that you intuitively pick up at a table that you can’t get across a video screen,” he said.
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