TD Ameritrade advisors got a double dose of leadership inspiration Tuesday at the firm’s Elite LINC conference in Laguna Niguel, Calif.
The invitation-only event for the firm’s top advisors, held at the seaside Ritz-Carlton resort, opened Tuesday afternoon with new TD Ameritrade president Tim Hockey and former NFL great Peyton Manning delivering lessons on leadership.
“Your leadership principles should remain clear and constant,” said Hockey, who became president of TD Ameritrade in January and will take over for retiring chief executive Fred Tomczyk in October.
“As stewards of your own organizations, do your people and clients clearly understand what you stand for?” Hockey asked.
Hockey offered up the top eight leadership principles he follows, counting down David Letterman style:
No. 8: "They don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care." In other words, it’s about knowing your people. Earlier in his career at TD Bank, Hockey studied leadership books, but Tomczyk told him to read biographies instead.
“That was the best piece of advice I ever got,” Hockey said about learning from history’s great generals, presidents and other world figures about how they overcame challenges and dealt with people.
No. 7: “Do things only you are uniquely qualified to do” and turn the rest over to associates. “If you don’t delegate, you don’t give your team a chance to learn.”
No. 6: “Culture eats strategy for lunch.” Hockey credits Peter Drucker for that dictum. Leaders need to take time to “understand deeply” an organization’s history and culture, he said, and understand what not to change.
No. 5: “Leaders rarely have the best ideas.” Encouraging employees to speak the truth “is the most valuable thing you can create” in a firm, he said. Bosses should “speak last and ask questions,” Hockey said.
No. 4: “Strategy is about making choices.” Great companies choose how they want to compete, he said. “They can do one of three things: Compete on price (like Wal-Mart); on product (like Apple); or on service (like Ritz-Carlton). If a company says it does all three, it’s rudderless.
No. 3: “Paranoid optimism is good.” The only way to combat complacency in a successful organization is to have a “management team that is constantly paranoid and looking for ways to improve.” And don’t denigrate a competitor’s strategies -- that’s “intellectually sinful,” Hockey said.
No. 2: “Measure and reward customer advocacy” within your organizations. Push decision-making power down to field staff, and question old ways of doing things, Hockey said.
No. 1: “Leave an organization better for your successors.” Improvement comes over the long term, he said. “You can’t do anything of substance in one quarter, but over 10 years, we can change the world.”
Manning, the two-time Super Bowl winning quarterback, reminded advisors that reaching a high level of success is painful, in his case physically as well as mentally.
He lost his starting job with the Denver Broncos due to a serious neck injury that cast doubts on his career.
“I had to learn how to throw again,” he said, while learning a new system with new teammates and coaches.
Despite those challenges, Manning returned to the field and won the Super Bowl this year.
“I had a lot of help,” he said. An important lesson: “Don’t ever stop being coached [and] learning.”
Creating a culture of teamwork “can raise everyone’s performance, but it has to start at the top,” Manning added. “I encourage you [to] cultivate that attitude.”