![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/goldman.png?w=2048\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
For many ambitious professionals, climbing the corporate ladder is the ultimate goal. But according to Rob Kaplan, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs, reaching the upper echelons of management comes with a dangerous, often unseen pitfall: a sudden lack of supervision.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re junior, you\u2019ve got senior people watching everything you do,\u201d he explained during a recent masterclass conversation with Meena Flynn, Goldman\u2019s chair of Global Private Wealth Management. <\/p>\n
Kaplan added that the dynamic shifts drastically later in an executive\u2019s career. \u201cAs you get more senior and you get promoted, pretty soon the bosses are no longer watching you. The only people watching you are your subordinates.\u201d<\/p>\n
This lack of upward oversight creates a pileup of people who find themselves suddenly failing after a track record of astounding success. \u201cI spent the last 20 years getting an avalanche of people coming at me who are highly successful for a period and then hit a wall,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Over his decades of experience\u2014which includes two separate stints at Goldman Sachs, separated by stints teaching at Harvard Business School, and serving as president of the Dallas Federal Reserve\u2014Kaplan has identified a toxic combination that brings down senior management: isolation, blind spots, an inability to learn, and a lack of relationships.<\/p>\n
When Goldman CEO David Solomon welcomed Kaplan back to the bank in 2024, he said that Kaplan brought \u201ca wealth of knowledge, deep relationships and significant global leadership expertise to his role as vice chairman.\u201d In addition to engaging with clients and with teams across Global Banking & Markets and Asset & Wealth Management, Kaplan\u2019s role includes a specific focus on mentoring, leadership development, and the firm\u2019s culture. He is the author of three books on leadership,\u00a0What You Really Need to Lead<\/em>,\u00a0What You\u2019re Really Meant To Do<\/em>, and\u00a0What to Ask the Person in the Mirror<\/em>.<\/p>\n Kaplan told Flynn that he stresses a holistic view as he mentors members of the bank\u2019s executive ranks. \u201cSo every one of us, no matter how great we are, have things that everyone can see about us, everybody knows about us except we\u2019re not aware of it. That\u2019s called a blind spot,\u201d Kaplan noted. If these blind spots go unchecked, leaders become increasingly isolated, and their teams become afraid to tell them when they are off course.<\/p>\n To survive the senior management trap, Kaplan advocated for an unconventional approach: \u201cYou have to learn to cultivate your subordinates as your coaches.\u201d While many executives fear this will make them look weak, he argued leaders should want to get advice from the people who observe them the most. \u201cYou want to encourage an atmosphere of debate, disagreement. You want to encourage people to tell you when you\u2019ve done something that they don\u2019t agree with.\u201d <\/p>\n Either leaders don\u2019t realize this or they only pay lip service to it, he said, asking for feedback, then rebutting it and shutting it down as soon as it arrives.<\/p>\n Kaplan recommended a highly practical step for executives managing large organizations: conduct three or four one-on-one \u201cskip level\u201d meetings every week. These 30-minute sessions should be used to share information, check on employees, and ask for their advice on what the company is doing wrong. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to always act on it, but the fact you listened makes people feel included and empowers them,\u201d he explained, shifting the employee mindset from \u201cI work for them\u201d to \u201cThis is our firm.\u201d<\/p>\n Another major stumbling block for newly minted senior leaders is an overreliance on past success. \u201cThe mistake many leaders make is, \u2018I was very successful at this\u2026 and so whatever got me here is what I\u2019m going to keep doing,’\u201d Kaplan warned. Instead, leaders must assess their new situation and adapt their style accordingly.<\/p>\n This includes being hyper-aware of the behavior they are modeling. Because subordinates can no longer interact with senior leaders one-on-one as often, they model themselves off the leader\u2019s actions rather than their words. \u201cIf you say you want teamwork but you keep promoting producers who have sharp elbows and are not teamwork oriented, [your team will respond] \u2018Okay, I get it. You don\u2019t really believe in teamwork; you believe in production,’\u201d he predicted.<\/p>\n Alongside blind spots, Kaplan noted that senior leaders often struggle privately with a \u201cfailure narrative\u201d\u2014a story in their head whispering \u201cI\u2019m not good enough\u201d or \u201cI can\u2019t\u201d when things go wrong. Overcoming this internal doubt requires processing insecurities with a trusted outside confidant. Furthermore, when setting the course for their teams, leaders must define their top three priorities, but should never do so in a vacuum. Getting buy-in and advice from the team helps leaders arrive at a stronger strategy and ensures that inevitable course corrections are minor rather than jarring.<\/p>\n Kaplan dispelled the myth that leadership is an innate trait driven by charm or charisma, saying \u201cMy best advice is leadership is something you have to work at.\u201d It requires continuous learning, curiosity, and the passion to push through tough days.<\/p>\n And when all else fails and the pressures of senior management become overwhelming? Kaplan offers a simple guiding light: \u201cGo help someone else. Help a colleague, a client, someone in the community, a child. And I think that\u2019ll get you back to center\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Goldman #Sachs #vice #chair #hidden #leadership #trap #pretty #bosses #longer #watching<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For many ambitious professiona… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[938,1339,2097,5132,3968,1055,6536,8660,2098,4489,14927,5998],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26291"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Everybody\u2019s got a blind spot<\/h2>\n