Early in my Goldman career, I got invited to John Thornton's office. John was the co COO of the firm, one of the top three people, the president, co-president, and he was bringing me in to basically give me positive feedback to thank me for some work that had been done in my unit. He was about five minutes in, and it occurred to me this is something that I had very little to do with, and I was feeling uncomfortable. He was getting quite lavish in his praise and it was just unearned. So I said, "Look, John, let me stop you for a minute." And I explained what I just said, that the work he was praising me for was really done by various members of my team. And I guess I didn't prevent it, so you could say I abetted as a leader, but basically some of that was en route, underway before I even took the job.

So I said, "John —" It was a 20 minute meeting; we had about 10 left. "What I'd like to do, if it's OK with you, at your convenience, let me schedule 10 minutes. Let me bring my team up here and tell them what you just told me, because they're the ones who should be hearing it, not me." So he agreed, and we came back at a time convenient to him, and the 10 minutes became 50 — 5-0 — minutes.

And he went through, he elaborated on what he liked and how important it was, went on to tell the team — my team was eight people, that's all I had working for me at the time, many junior people. Some had never been up to the 30th floor before. You sink their knees in the carpet and all this.

And he's telling them how much he valued what they've done, and that there's huge opportunities to remake the firm and what a valuable role they could play...and he went on to describe the barriers and things he'd be expecting.

I mean, they were on cloud nine when they left, and there's nothing I could have said or done that was as powerful as him just kind of selling it. But to an executive, words are easy. But giving your time, [that's something]. The 10 minutes became 50 minutes that he devoted, because he got so excited talking to the team.

The ancillary benefit is that he became a better friend to Pine Street and was more in tune with us afterward. But the motivation for the team of just getting a chance to listen to the boss say how it helped and to be given marching orders was invaluable.