Mellody Hobson
speaker
238 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard May 2025
Mellody Hobson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
You know, I've done these things. And again, I'm back to questions versus statements. what do you think I could be doing better or more in order to advance myself in the ways that help me achieve my own long-term goals?
Then you have to have someone give it back to you of this, that be as concrete as possible so that you know what you're working towards, but then you have to be able to accept the feedback. And this is the part that gets really gnarly because some people, when you give them the feedback and you're like this, this, and this, they start arguing with you. It's not the time. It's not the time.
You might, or you might learn something in the process, but you don't react in the moment. I think that's when the negotiations break down very fast because you end up sounding very defensive. So if you can dispute the idea, not in a gotcha, because I've had those people 30 pages back. You're like, if you did your job this well.
That's not what drives me today. It drove me very much when I was 22. So things can evolve over time. That was the thing that I needed and wanted was financial security. Now, that I do believe financial security has been achieved, I want to make sure Ariel is successful. And so the way I talk to about my team is I always say, I want them to exceed their own expectations. That's my job.
I want our clients to feel that we've exceeded their expectations. That's my job. So I talk about money through that. I'm good. And I want them to feel that same way, the people who work with me. And so I always tell them I work for our clients and I work for each of them. I literally work for them. And I told them, you work for each other and you work for me.
And so we have to know that our job affects someone's kid going to college, their mortgage payment, all of those things. I take that very, very, very seriously. just as I take the fact that we're fiduciaries for our clients' money. And it's that pension fund, as I said, that college education and the like.
So I've always felt that I was on a quest to grow and learn and be better. And every day I'm trying to just eke out a little bit more that will make me better or learn something new. I told this story of when I first started working at Ariel, I was John's sidekick and I would just follow up on everything he wanted me to do. And I remember having this real moment of just like concern and
that I said, what if I'm just a great order taker? I'm really good at executing, but I have no vision. How do I get vision? And so I went through all of these exercises to try to force myself to have vision. It would take too long to explain it to you. I'm not going to ask you what you did. But it was a lot. And I started to say, I want to be able to try to have vision.
Then I realized vision means conquering fear. Because once you decide to go out on that limb and dangle, there's like nothing to help you. You're like gripping by your hands, by your fingernails. George always says to me, he says, you know, you are a person who when you are confronted by a brick wall, you look for loose bricks. He's like, you start looking, where's the brick loose?
So there's something about the fear and the willingness to confront hard that I think has made me uniquely me. But I talk to myself in my head and I get strength from others. I really use other people as my friends in my head to get me through. Do you think that's one of the keys to your success? Oh, they have no idea how close I am to them.
I said that about the Pope the other day. Did you? The Pope is a friend in my head. He was. And I kept thinking, like, in terms of people with global voices, he was one of the few people where a leader who could speak and globally had it break through. And it broke through around kindness and goodness. Never sharp, never disparaging. And I had, like, that meant something to me.
And I was like, wow, he does that in such an amazing way. He never seems petty. Wow. And I literally, in my head, I would read his headlines or read what he said. And I'm like, how do you aspire to that? How can you get a little bit of that? How does he get that kind of agency in the world? And his agency is not because he's Pope, because there are other Popes that weren't as significant.
But his comes through a very specific lens of caring about people. And so there are a lot of times where I use a person. Again, I don't know. I talk about Lewis Hamilton, who's like my little brother. He's the nicest man. Lewis never quits. So when I feel I'm on the edge, I want to stop, the pain is there, the tired, all those things, I literally just keep saying to myself, Lewis would not quit.
Michelle Obama in my head. I'm like, she's done hard things. And she is so studied. Someone told me a story about how when she was doing her book tour, every single night, every single night, she'd come back to her room and debrief with the entire team about what she could have done better. Every single time. Wow. Every single time. Do you invite that kind of criticism in your life? Yes.
Of course, I want it. But the thing is, you know, you get to a certain stage where people don't want to give it to you. Oh, yeah. And I have always surrounded myself with truth. George will give it to me. There is no chaser. There is nothing.
But yeah, there are a lot of people that I have in my life where they give it to me straight, which I also think has helped me. I remember being like 25 years old and I said, I want to be intellectually honest with myself. Oh, that's a big one. And I was like, that's going to take some work. That's going to take a lot of work.
Because we talk ourselves into believing and making excuses and having reasons. And I was like, I want to hold myself accountable.
You know, no excuses. literally no excuses. You either did or you didn't. And you can't, well, I was tired. I was this, I was that. You either did or you didn't. Do or do not, there is no try. You either did or you didn't. So intellectual honesty forced me to be really clear about when I was not great, when I was not treating someone well.
There were times I would be speaking the words and saying in my head, you're being such a In my head. Sounds like you're that person for yourself a hell of a lot. I would like, why are you speaking to this person like this? You're being such a jerk. Wow. Be intellectually honest or it wasn't your best job. Yeah. It wasn't your best work.
We didn't get the account because you just didn't do that well that day.
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