Jamie Dimon Leadership Style: James “Jamie” Dimon is the CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase. His company is the largest ban in the United States when it comes to assets. How has Jamie Dimon grown the iconic bank to such heights?
Dimon graduated Tufts University in 1978, and from there he completed a program at Harvard Business School in 1982. Following is academic endeavors, he joined American Express. Since then, he has held various executive positions, such as Primerica, Citigroup, and Bank One, where his current roles are at JPMorgan Chase.
According to Forbes, Dimon has a net worth of $1.3 billion. Dimon was born on March 13, 1956. He is currently 63 years old, and has been diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014.
The Jamie Dimon Leadership Style
Dimon has adopted the affiliative leadership style. An affiliative leader is considered a professional at creating and maintaining strong relationships.
The idea is that skilled employees become more loyal to their bosses. Affiliative leaders also direct positive words to employees to keep them productive and confident.
9 Jamie Dimon Leadership Qualities
In every great company, you need to establish a great culture for competent leaders. In Dimon’s letters to shareholders, he states that while not everyone can excel in the qualities below, they are a guide for employees.
Discipline
To practice discipline, leaders simply must hold talent reviews, business reviews, and team meetings on a consistent basis.
Dimon practices leadership that instills discipline and creates a virtuous cycle of improvement.
Fortitude
A leadership quality that not Dimon possess is fortitude.
Good leaders must have a strong willingness to act. Fortitude empowers them to drive and motivate change for the better, while also taking responsibility and ownership for results.
Adversity In The Truth
Criticism can be a hard pill to swallow for many employees.
Top performing leaders like Dimon confront subordinates with hard truths even if egos are hurt because the company comes first.
Open-Mindedness
Like Bezos at Amazon, Dimon knows that it is crucial to always share vital details with his team so they can learn and gather the right resources.
Rather than question cold-hard facts, leaders like Jamie know that leadership involves accepting facts as they stand and confronting issues directly.
The best leaders minimize bureaucracy because it can be a detriment to organizational structure and productivity. Good leaders encourage open discussion in meetings so that opinions and sentiments can be heard and understood.
A Plan To Success
Competent leaders like Dimon ensure that the right staff are groomed to help a company grow.
This includes human resources, operations, financing, and legal departments. The right structure must also be set up to ensure that milestones are met and JP Morgan can grow according to plan.
Morale-Building
Morale is a measure of employee happiness. It can be increased by simply fixing problems, coping with complaints respectfully, handing out respect, and achieving results.
Morale is something money or sugar-coating cannot buy, as these things will instead reinforce a passive-aggressive behavior.
Keeping morale high at JP Morgan involves more than a rising share price. It means keeping employees happy by developing a culture where they feel respected, work productively, and collaborate effectively.
Humility
Leaders are aware that they do not create everything from scratch. They know there are other leaders before them that have revolutionized industries and acknowledged how they became successful in their times. There is also a large element of luck factored into any success, and some humility is key, so that a company isn’t just successful, but a great one overall.
Impartiality
Dimon says that the best leaders treat every member of the team properly and with respect, regardless of position in the company.
Every employee shares a common goal, which is to serve customers. Thus, employees should assist one another in whatever ways that they can.
As strong leaders choose to hire and promote employees, they maintain respect regardless of organizational hierarchy.
Is Jamie Dimon A Good CEO?
Dimon is considered a very good and successful CEO.
He openly listens to his team and creates bonds with each employee. He also shows he works just as hard as any team member.
He also makes sure to keep his team nimble in order to not lose steam amid fierce competition from other companies.
3 Jamie Dimon Leadership Lessons
Dimon has three leadership lessons that he preaches to his followers:
Keep The Highest Standards Possible
To Jamie, “good enough” is never enough.
It’s only basic instinct for most people to only do “good enough”, but if you fail to keep up high standards even once, you may fail to keep them up on more occasions.
Not being able to keep up with standards that you consider high are detrimental to your business, so any business that claims to have high standards such as JPMorgan Chase must always keep the bar high, no matter how much success has come before.
Take Responsibility Of Your Own Actions
Nothing is more crucial in the business world than holding oneself accountable. If you do not, then the next time something happens to your business, you will lose trust and respect from your peers and employees.
Dimon owns up to his mistakes whenever they happen, but when he does, he prevents a more serious issue from happening by choosing to resolve the issue quickly instead of blaming somebody else.
By the same token, it is necessary to take accountability for all of your wins and successes.
Open Yourself Up To Change
Change is uncomfortable to most people, even when it is positive change. While we deal with stress, there is also a “good” kind of stress called “entrust”. This type of stress comes from situations that place you outside of your comfort zone.
When you feel entrust, it can often feel overwhelming like stress does, but it always comes with bigger and better things.
Dimon is renowned for viewing obstacles as opportunities, which in turn have led to a string of business successes. If you aren’t open to change, you don’t have a chance to adapt and build a stronger company.
Jamie Dimon Business Principles
Dimon also includes two successful business principles to live by:
Firstly, Dimon makes careful, yet effective decisions. Dimon states that a good decision-making process with the right people will ensure that the decisions you make are the most appropriate.
He encourages other leaders to not be complacent, and instead be urgent to make better decisions for optimal success. Companies never know when competition will steal business.
Secondly, Dimon recognizes others for their strengths. Recognition is a “secret weapon” that every leader has to use. Dimon stresses that then you demonstrate recognition, you are acknowledging that there are other people who are really good at what they do.
Recognition means that you are complimenting people for their skills and abilities, and are open to observing them and learning from them. Dimon states that recognizing others for their worth will open up new avenues of management as a leader.
Jamie Dimon Work Ethic
In spite of Dimon’s shortcomings throughout his career, the JP Morgan CEO continues to demonstrate a rigorous work ethic.
According to Dimon, true leaders don’t just show they care, but actually do care. As leaders demand employees to be productive, they also need to be part of that production too.
Dimon, like all good leaders, has empathy for his team members as they continue to work under his wing.
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