I thought the part of the book that was for me the most important wasn't about Goldman Sachs actually. I had always known that your background was one of extraordinary accomplishment, but I felt tremendous empathy having come from a working-class background and had the opportunity to work at Goldman Sachs and be on the management committee, which you made me do if you remember because I said I didn't want to do it. But with the extraordinary accomplishments that you made from such a humble beginning, it really was inspiring. So someone said to me when I was talking about my life and moving forward and helping to create this business, said, 'How did you feel about impostor syndrome?' I think it would help our team understand how you manage that both internally as well as externally.
Yeah. Well, I'd like to give you all comfort, but I'm sure some of you really are imposters. No, seriously. I think, look, because this happened to me where I took a... I remember the first time, you know, we merged Jay Aaron into Goldman, that's how I got into Goldman, and we didn't have... which is a great story.
We had a different system and Goldman had these titles and when they did it, I said to my boss, who was then at Aaron and was then becoming a partner at Goldman as a result of that acquisition by Goldman, and I said, 'What's my title? What title do I have?' And he said, 'Title? Call yourself Contessa if you want to.' And then I was put in a business where I had no title, a business card with no title, and then there was like VP, President on the desk, and I kind of thought that was cool that I was earning something and it defied the title. I remember once when I became... after I ran a division, then we were making room for the next generation, other people moved to dinner, and they moved me up to a title, Vice Chairman, which usually meant that, you know, we expect you to leave soon because that's a kind of without portfolio. And as it turns out, I didn't leave and I acted like I was running stuff because I'm a Vice Chairman, whatever that was. And I remember going to one of the other division heads in a division that I hadn't previously... I had run a division, then I made room for someone else to run the division, became a Vice Chairman. So, one of the other divisions in the firm that I didn't run, I told the person to do, you know, X, Y, and Z. And he turned around, he looked at me and he said, 'Uh, do I have to listen to you?' And I said, you know, to be honest, I'm not sure, but it's your risk. And, you know, and it was his risk. So I always acted in accordance to who I was talking to. And I had my sense of self and I would say, you know, do it or don't do it, but I think you should do this. And eventually, I don't think I ever got ratified in any of the jobs I had other than that Vice Chairman job and after that. But I remember also various times acting like I was in charge of them. I never got a memo that said I was in charge. I just was in charge of stuff.
You know, the fact is that we're all strivers. We're all smart enough. You know, people toss around these words. They don't... it's, you know, everyone, somebody would always go to me, 'Is that person smart?' And I would always say, 'Smart enough,' because there's other things that matter. There's EQ, there's grit, and there's perseverance, curiosity to learn things. And I would say the kind of person that gets into these jobs where they're working really hard, defer gratification, you know, we're all suffering, we're all driven by something. And usually the commonality is wanting to succeed, wanting to overcome, chip on your shoulder, feeling like an impostor.
So, one of the things I found out in this book was, gee, in this respect, you know, you think you're one in a hundred and it turns out you're 97 in a hundred. It turns out more people think that way than you think. And then when you're the first person in the room to say it, everybody chimes in and says, 'I feel that way, too.'
You know, the bottom line, and I had to talk to myself because at various points when you're in leadership and you don't really... gosh, have I become like what Bob Rubin was in 1990? I mean, because I looked up at these people that I thought of, how could I be that way? And then you have to make decisions in one of these crises and they're critical and people... and you think to yourself, you know, something, no choice, no problem, I'm here, this is my job, I'm here, might as well be me. And you keep going through that. Who else is here? And if there was someone that you could imagine that's better, well, guess what? They're not here. You're here. So, you know, you just push that away. It can't convince you that you're not. In fact, generally, impostor syndrome, an insecurity or something like that, has gotten you to the dance.
So, with that, one of the things you were really good at was nurturing talent, spotting talent. You know, that's always something that all of us here, as each of them push through, or even me and trying to hire people, need to be in a position that, you know, I learn from the people that I work for. You were pretty good at picking people out and pushing them forward.
If you want to know what I look for, I wasn't particularly worried or nervous about somebody owning the content of their narrow job. You know, if you're very, very senior, you're very, very late in your career, you might be bringing in people because of who they know and what they... and they are relationships already because, to some extent, you're buying those relationships. But really, when you're dealing with what you think of as talent and who can be flexible enough to do the job that you... the first job they're in and five jobs later as the world evolves, you're really looking for stem cells in a lot of ways. You know, what can people turn into? And there, to me, obviously smart, but really the answer is smart enough. But if I had to identify characteristics, I think the two most important ones in my mind is curiosity.
Who wants to learn, who wants to know what's going on here, what's going on in my job, what's going on over there, how do you guys make money, what are they doing in Japan, I mean, where are you in all... just curiosity about the world, about this. And you could see that on people's... who's an interesting person and whose interests... and so those are the people that are going to learn and those are the people who at the coalface are going to innovate because they're always curious. So I love people who ask a lot of questions. I didn't love them if they asked the same question 11 times. But people who are just expansive... and so I love that. The other thing was resilience, like who overcame stuff. You know, sometimes, and we went through 15 crises of the century at Goldman, and it was always like you couldn't tell... you can't judge a book by its cover, you can't tell with people. There would be people in the organization that were like great athletes, cowboys on the weekends, tough, tough people, and when things got tough, they were hyperventilating in a corner. And there were other people who couldn't walk up a whole flight of stairs without stopping in the middle and resting, and who in a crisis were tremendous.
And so both in the book and in my experience with you working together, you were always very focused. You talk about it quite extensively on risk management, both physical risk, reputational risk.
Well, yeah. Career management risks, personal risk.
No, I'm a scaredy-cat, which is good in the business to be.
You got a lot less of it than anybody else, though.
Yes. I wouldn't say I managed by being afraid.
No. Well, you got a lot less of it because you were good. You were good at it. I mean, you were in a tough area, but you really... I'd walk by his office and there'd be lying outside, there'd be some poor soul in him with his sleeves rolled up with a pencil and an eye shade going like in detail. And every time I go by and look at that I say, 'Oh, I'm so happy that he's doing this stuff.' And I just kept on walking to somebody else who wasn't doing that. So, I was always happy before. If you were so relaxed, why was I getting phone calls and texts at 1:00 a.m. about some position in Japan that was almost nothing?
So, I mean, compared to how other people were...
