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Before he became the most powerful banking CEO in America, JPMorgan Chase\u2019s CEO Jamie Dimon set himself a simple career rule that sounds almost radical in the age of personal branding: keep your mouth shut.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a 28?year?old Harvard MBA working as an assistant to American Express president Sanford \u201cSandy\u201d Weill, Dimon wasn\u2019t focused on \u201cbeing visible\u201d or chiming in on every meeting\u2014he was focused on soaking everything in.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy first goal was to learn something and not say anything until I could add some value,\u201d he told Fortune<\/em> in an early-career profile which has resurfaced on social media.<\/p>\n \n<\/p>\n At the time of publication, the fresh-faced Harvard MBA had just been promoted to vice president\u2014climbing the ranks from Weill\u2019s assistant in as little as two years\u2014when he shared the career tip.<\/p>\n Before then, he\u2019d already helped analyse multi-million-dollar deals and negotiated major acquisitions. Yet his instinct was still to earn the right to speak.<\/p>\n And it paid off: One year later, he went on to follow his former boss Weill to Commercial Credit Company, where he became its CFO at just 30-years-old.<\/p>\n Now, Dimon has led JPMorgan as its CEO for 20 years\u2014and although in that time, the world of work has become louder, always on and increasingly online, he\u2019s still telling young people to listen more.<\/p>\n The billionaire banking boss told Gen Z that if they want to get ahead, they need to close their TikTok and Instagram apps and learn through osmosis.<\/p>\n \u201cYou only learn by reading and talking to other people. There\u2019s no other way yet,\u201d Dimon told a crowd of students at the Financial Markets Quality (FMQ) Conference at Georgetown University in 2024. \u201cPeople waste a tremendous amount of time\u2026 turn off TikTok, Facebook.\u201d<\/p>\n The simple advice may seem counterintuitive in an age when young workers are being coached to build personal brands from day one and contribute constantly.\u00a0<\/p>\n But actually, some experts echo that speaking less\u2014specifically by practicing active listening, pausing before speaking, and avoiding unnecessary details\u2014can make a person appear more senior.\u00a0<\/p>\n And Dimon\u2019s rule\u2014listen first; be loud later\u2014is one that many other leaders have recommended too.\u00a0<\/p>\n The CHRO of L\u2019Or\u00e9al U.S. advised Gen Z new hires to be that person who puts their hands up and volunteers to grab their manager\u2019s coffee or take notes in meetings.\u00a0<\/p>\n Instead of making you look junior, she noted it gets you access to rooms with senior leaders where you can watch and learn how they operate.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re the one that is going to capture the actions from the meeting and the next steps, and you\u2019re listening and you\u2019re observing that isn\u2019t necessarily a negative,\u201d the L\u2019Or\u00e9al exec Stephanie Kramer explained. \u201cYou are in the room and you are absorbing how those points are coming to be. You\u2019re developing the skills of inference.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Even after building the trillion-dollar tech giant, Apple\u2019s Steve Jobs never pretended to have all the answers. He stayed, as his former design chief put it, genuinely open to learning from other people right up to the end.<\/p>\n Jony Ive, worked alongside the late cofounder for nearly 15 years in designing iconic products like the iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.\u00a0<\/p>\n Reflecting on their partnership in a newly released letter, he wrote that they\u2019d spend most days eating lunch together and then brainstorming ideas in the afternoon.<\/p>\n \u201cFor Steve, wanting to learn was far more important than wanting to be right.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nJamie Dimon\u2019s mantra for Gen Z: \u201cLearn, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn.\u201d<\/h2>\n
Even after finding success, Apple\u2019s Steve Jobs still prioritised listening first<\/h2>\n