I recently interviewed Northwestern Mutual CEO Tim Gerend on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:
Adam: Our guest today is the leader of one of America’s largest financial services companies. Tim Gerend is the CEO of Northwestern Mutual. Tim, thank you for joining us.
Tim: Adam, my pleasure. Thank you for the invitation.
Adam: You grew up across the upper Midwest in a number of different small towns, and you stayed in the Midwest for college and for grad school. You earned a full ride to Butler and a law degree from Notre Dame. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What early experiences and lessons shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?
Tim: I would say early lessons, there are a bunch of them. Family was a big part of it. My parents were both from a small town in Wisconsin, and so we grew up with big families and lots of cousins and aunts and uncles around, and would make an effort to prioritize family things. There was always a Midwestern sensibility. Faith was important. Work ethic was really important. And then there was an element of teamwork that was also important.
And then maybe last but not least, the first year of my life, I lived with my grandparents in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, which is one of those small towns that I have some roots in. It’s about an hour north of Milwaukee, right on Lake Michigan, about halfway between Milwaukee and Green Bay. My dad was over in Vietnam, and I was living with my mom and grandparents. Fortunately, my dad came home safe and sound when I was about a year old. But my grandfather was one of those World War Two Greatest Generation types. He was a doctor in the Pacific, and maybe because I lived with them the first year of my life, he had a significant influence on me.
One of the things that he told me, I remember him telling me often when I was a young kid, is to whom much is given, much is expected. There was this recognition that, first of all, you should be grateful for what you have. Because whatever circumstance you’re in, you might think you have a lot, or you don’t, but we all have things to be grateful for. But there’s a sense of responsibility, of service, of what you do matters, not just for yourself, but for other people and for another purpose.
If I pull on all of those threads, there was always a drive to make the most of what I had. I’ve always been really motivated around human potential, my own potential, making the most I could out of the life that I’ve got. But I’ve also wanted to have an impact on people around me in a positive way. I’ve loved being part of teams, whether that’s sports or family stuff or otherwise, certainly in business. I think those lessons of how you work hard and try to make an impact and keep getting better along the way are themes from growing up that are still important to me today.
Adam: What were the keys to rising in your career? And what can anyone do to rise in their career?
Tim: That’s a great question. If I think about my career at Northwestern Mutual, I’ve done a lot of different things over 23 years or so. If there are a couple of keys, one is it’s important, I think, to do a good job where you are.
I’ve had people ask me for career advice, and they say, how do you get to the next thing or the next thing or be considered for this? It’s really hard to get noticed if you’re not a top performer where you are, so taking care of what’s right in front of you. Actually, that’s a lesson that I’ve tried to hang on to even as I was going through the succession process here, thinking about what’s it going to be like if you get an opportunity to be the CEO? It’s like, well, hey, I better make sure I’m doing a great job where I am. That’s the first order of business.
The second thing I would say is curiosity and learning agility are really important. I started in the law department. I don’t know if there’s such a thing as a conventional career path, but if there is, I probably don’t have one. But I was given the opportunity to do things that were not in the four corners of my job description or capability set. Part of the reason is I proved I was capable where I was, but also by being curious and having learning agility, I showed that I had maybe broader capability or broader potential, or hey, if you put me over here, I might be able to do that too.
I’m very grateful that I had those kinds of opportunities at Northwestern Mutual. I appreciate it isn’t that way probably everywhere in corporate America, but my contribution to that success was I was doing a good job where I was, but I was also really curious and eager to learn about the business and find new ways to contribute.
Adam: I love that and the lesson that you shared right off the bat, the importance of focusing on today, focusing on the now. It’s very tempting to focus on tomorrow, and it’s very important to focus on tomorrow, but we can’t allow that to be our only focus. We can’t allow that to come to the detriment of doing the best that we can possibly do today, because, to your point, if you don’t do a good job today, you’re not going to have the opportunities that you want tomorrow.
Tim: That’s right on. I think what goes hand in hand with that is an ownership mindset as opposed to more of a victim mindset of, hey, I don’t have this or I don’t have this or I’m not getting to do this thing, but focusing on what are really the things that are within your control. Where can you make an impact and a contribution? If you do those things consistently, that’s more likely to be noticed and rewarded.
Adam: You also mentioned the importance of curiosity, which is one of the most important characteristics among the very best leaders. What do you believe are the key characteristics of the very best leaders, and what can anyone do to become a better leader?
Tim: There’s a lot in there. I think curiosity and learning agility are really important. The world around us is changing fast. The pace of change continues to accelerate, so it’s not going to be any slower than it is today. Your ability to learn new things is one of the enduring advantages that you can have.
I also think authenticity is critical for leaders. We’re in an era where trust is at a premium. People don’t trust big companies. They don’t trust big institutions. They might not trust people who are of a different generation or a different background or a different whatever. If you’re running any kind of organization or team, large, small, or in between, you have to be able to bring people together across differences. You have to be able to build trust and followership. As a leader, you have to be authentic. People have to trust what you’re all about. They have to believe that you’re going to do the things that you say you’re going to do. They have to believe that your interest is in the good of the organization, not just what’s best for you.
Ultimately, leadership is a responsibility. It’s not a title. It’s not a position. It’s a matter of serving the best interest of the organization you happen to be tasked with leading.
The other thing that’s been really important, a personal conviction point for me around leadership, is it’s not all about you. It has to be about the organization. It’s also not all about you in the sense that you have to be able to bring out the best in others.
I’ve been influenced by a lot of people through my career, great leaders I’ve had the opportunity to work with, books I’ve read, programs, and other things I’ve gone to. One of the books that made a real impression on me is Team of Teams by General Stanley McChrystal. In one of his books, there’s an analogy of a leader as a gardener instead of a chess master. The chess master is the person who has all the answers, who’s thinking three steps ahead. The gardener creates an environment for other people or organizations to be great.
When I talk about my own passion around human development and organizational development, how do we get as great as we can be as a team or an organization? As a leader, you’re helping create the environment. Obviously, you’re setting vision. You have a lot to say about the culture, which people are in which roles. But ultimately, you’re cultivating the soil where people can be really productive, and the organization can be successful. That’s about getting the best efforts of everybody toward a common cause.
Adam: I love that analogy, being a gardener versus being a chess master. As a leader, it’s not your job to have all the answers. It’s your job to surround yourself with people who have the answers. It’s your job to help surface the answers that are sitting there somewhere. If you have the right people and empower them to be at their best and to share what they have, that’s how you get the right answers.
Tim: Yeah, and I’ll say this is a hard thing to learn. As a leader, you think when you’re in charge, you should have the answers.
I was fortunate. I had an experience early in my career at Northwestern Mutual. I was promoted in the law department. I think I had 22 direct reports, 20 lawyers, and two paralegals. It quickly became apparent to me that all 22 of them knew more than I did about most of the things they were working on every day. There’s no way I was going to have the answer for people who were more experienced, particularly around their disciplines, the things they worked on every day.
You figure out, okay, my job as a leader is not to be smarter than these folks. It’s how are we going to be really effective as a team and deliver the company what it needs, and also help them be in a position where they’re having a rewarding professional experience and they want to keep building their careers here at Northwestern Mutual.
Adam: Tim, what you shared really illuminates a key difference between pursuing a career as an individual contributor versus pursuing a career as a leader. If you’re interested in being the smartest person in the room, there’s a role for you somewhere, and that role is as a subject matter expert. But if you want to be a leader, your job isn’t to be the smartest person in the room. Your job isn’t to have all the answers. Your job is to build a team consisting of the smartest people. Your job is to empower them to get the answers.
Tim: Absolutely, completely agree with that. By the way, we need subject matter experts. I need great investment people and great actuaries and great finance people and great technologists. They can lead from where they are. But leading teams, leading organizations, working through others, is a very different proposition.
Adam: Something that you mentioned as you were sharing what is most important to you among the very best leaders is trust, which is an essential currency among successful leaders. It’s also the essential currency in your business. How can anyone cultivate trust?
Tim: That’s a great question, and I appreciate you acknowledging that’s a huge part of what we do in our business. We’ve been in business almost 170 years, and we take great pride in the fact that we are making multi-generational promises to people that they can bank on us keeping.
When we talk about financial security, we want people to be able to sleep at night. Our relationship with them is intangible. Other than maybe the piece of paper you’re handing on a contract or an investment statement, the cultivation of trust is fundamental to us. If people don’t trust us, they’re not going to make the decisions that are right for their own financial lives and best for their businesses and families.
As a leader, it’s the most important currency of leadership. At the risk of oversimplifying it, the most important things you can do as a leader to build trust are say what you mean and do what you say you’re going to do.
There are a lot of talking points out there and a lot of spin. People are really hungry for authentic leaders who will say it like it is and talk straight. I try not to use notes. I try not to use PowerPoints. I try to just talk about the stuff that’s important to me in the plainest and clearest way possible.
The other thing that’s really important is you have to do what you say you’re going to do. That sounds basic, but that’s fundamentally true as a matter of integrity and to build trust. A repeated pattern of saying things that people know are true or how you really feel, and then following through with your actions, are the best ways to build trust over time.
As leaders, we’re also responsible for the environment we’re creating. There’s a hierarchy or a power dynamic that goes within any organization. Some may be more than others. You also have to cultivate an environment where people are comfortable telling you the truth. You’re always at risk, especially as you get higher up the org chart, that people are telling you what you want to hear.
Making sure you’re getting authentic feedback, letting people know they can tell you if they think you’re making a mistake or if something’s happening in the organization that could be problematic, is critical. When people experience how you handle bad news or how you handle mistakes, that’s another way you demonstrate that they can trust how you’re going to respond. There’s an element of predictability there. You don’t want to be volatile as a leader. You want people to know that if they bring bad news to you, you’re going to handle it in the right way.
Adam: That’s such important advice, and you brought up such a key pitfall for everyone to look out for, which is the temptation to surround yourself with people who say nice things about you, tell you what you want to hear, and make you feel good all the time. That is such an easy way to fail as a leader.
Tim: That is not a recipe for success. We all make mistakes. There are always things happening in our organization that need to be improved.
Stephen Covey wrote a great book called The Speed of Trust. If you have high trust, you’re just going to get better information faster, and then you can do something about it. As a business leader, that’s what you want. You want to know what’s going on.
Adam: You started your career not as a gardener but as a chess master. I don’t know about your actual chess skills, but you started off your career as an individual contributor, as a lawyer, and you ultimately developed this skill set that today allows you to run one of the largest companies in America. What were the key skills that you developed, and what are the most important skills that anyone can and should develop to excel as a leader?
Tim: By the way, my chess skills are not excellent, as my kids can attest.
There were some skills for me growing up as a lawyer. I started out as a litigator with a big firm in Chicago, and then I was in the law department here at Northwestern Mutual for about five years before I moved on to the business side. There are definitely some skills that were transferable to leadership.
Certainly, communication skills. Being able to write and speak clearly and persuasively is really important. Along the same line, influence is really important. As a lawyer, you’re an advocate and an influencer. I’m very much still in the influence business today. I want to influence my team to head in one direction. I want to influence my employees to follow where we’re going and deliver what we need for our clients and policy owners and field. Those influence and advocacy skills are really important.
Complex and strategic thinking are really important. You do a lot of that as a lawyer, breaking down something that’s complicated and figuring out how to tackle it and approach it.
Skills around organization and people are really important, especially as you’re getting into larger organizations and larger teams. How you think about culture and values matters. People will read into who you’re hiring, who you’re promoting, who you’re calling out as your superstars, who your role models are, who are getting the big assignments and projects. You have a lot of ways of influencing what good looks like in your organization. Those things send signals about what matters.
Maybe one of the biggest differences is the difference between advice and decisions. This is one of the things I’ve had to learn as I’ve progressed as a leader. We’re all works in progress, so we’re still getting better at this. One of the comforts you have as a lawyer is the decision isn’t yours. You provide advice, and your client can take it or leave it. At the end of the day, you’re doing your job if you’re giving the best advice.
When you put on the hat of leader, you’re assuming responsibility for decision-making in your organization. I’m very grateful that I had an opportunity to grow into those roles as I was working on projects and teams, starting out at leadership levels with lower responsibility. Those are places where you develop your intuition, instincts, and confidence about how you’re making decisions that matter for your organization.
When you end up in the corner office, there isn’t someone else to look at to say, hey, what do you do with this one? The proverbial buck stops here. You have to appreciate, as a leader at whatever level you’re at, what are the things you have to decide or do? Those are the non-delegable responsibilities. Then, where are the places where you’re empowering and leading your team? At any level of leadership, there’s a combination of those.
Adam: What is your approach to decision-making, and what advice do you have for anyone on how to make effective decisions?
Tim: My advice on decision-making is not all decisions are created equal. I believe it’s important in an organization for decisions to be made as much as possible close to the action by the people who have the facts.
In the gardener environment, if I’m making too many decisions, things aren’t working the way they should. We’re going to be too slow, and we’re going to get a lot of things wrong because there are a lot of things I don’t know.
The first thing is are you focused on the right decisions as a leader? I spend a lot of time thinking about my own goals for the year. What are the decisions at the top of the house that are most important for us to get right, where I need to spend my time and energy?
The second thing is I want a lot of information. I want information from the people in the organization who are working on it. I want information about what’s happening in the market with competition. I might talk to other CEOs or leaders in our industry about how they’ve handled similar challenges. Then we’ll work it through with the team.
Sometimes the decision will be consensus. Sometimes it will be unanimous. Sometimes it’s a split decision and it’s up to you. I’ve had to check myself and say if not making a decision is slowing the organization down, that’s a problem. The absence of a decision can bring things to a halt or create teams spending time on things they shouldn’t be.
You want to be thoughtful but not so thoughtful that you’re a bottleneck. You’re controlling the speed limit of the organization with how long decisions take. What we’re pushing on now as a team is how do we get faster? How do we think about the metabolic rate for us as we’re making decisions, so we can continue to pick up the pace?
Adam: Tim, when I asked you about the key skills that you developed that allowed you to become a Fortune 500 CEO and that have allowed you to excel as a Fortune 500 CEO, you spoke a lot about communication, influence, and persuasion. In my conversations with many of America’s top CEOs, that’s something that I’ve heard over and over again. Particularly in the age of AI, when so many technical skills are being automated, the single most important skill that anyone can and must develop is the ability to persuade. How can anyone become an effective communicator? How can anyone effectively influence and persuade others?
Tim: First, you really need to know your audience. We can get wrapped up in our own ways of thinking, but we have to put ourselves in the shoes of our audience. For me, that might be our advisors, our board, our employees, or industry groups. Understanding what’s important to them and what’s in it for them, why it matters, what’s going to make it relevant, is really important.
The other thing is authenticity. You don’t want it to sound like corporate spin or talking points. You want it to be authentic and in your own voice. I’ve found that I’m more comfortable and at my best when I’m talking about things the way that feels natural to me. You’ve got to find your own voice.
One of the things that was important for me to learn as a lawyer, which is very logic-driven, is that the best leaders are really good at head and heart. There’s the business case, the math, the analytics, the data. But there’s an emotional component too.
At Northwestern Mutual, people love this company. The emotions they have about it are very strong. The company stands for something. If you’re communicating about something that’s important to them but you don’t have any emotion to it, there’s a mismatch. When you’re asking for people’s best, when you’re asking them to operate in uncertainty, the appeal to head and heart matters. You’ve got to have both.
Adam: Tim, something that you brought up, which is really interesting, is you’re dealing with a number of different stakeholders. Something unique about Northwestern Mutual is that you have thousands of traditional employees, and then you have thousands of people who are technically not employees but are working under the Northwestern Mutual brand. How do you lead those different groups? What have you learned that is relevant to all leaders?
Tim: It’s part of what makes Northwestern Mutual special. The culture and sensibility we have around shared mission and alignment of values are really important.
Our relationship with our advisors is really unique. We have 23,000 advisors and team members around the country. They proudly represent Northwestern Mutual with their clients, and they are independent business owners. They’re entrepreneurs. It’s a huge advantage for us.
The relationship between our home office and our field is part of what makes the company special. We’re committed to each other. We have a long-term relationship and an aligned mission of serving our clients. We always want to do the right thing for our policy owners. As a mutual company, we’re owned by our policy owners. We don’t have shareholders or another constituency. We want to do right by them.
For our advisors building their businesses, the way they get more clients is by serving them really well and creating great outcomes. While we have aligned mission and values, we see the business from different places. Sitting in my office in Milwaukee is different from what an advisor sees in Chicago, LA, Tulsa, or New York.
One of the most important things for us is co-creation. When we think about building new products, launching technology, or serving the market, we work hand in hand with our advisors and field leaders to create solutions that will work. We bring the enterprise perspective of a Fortune 100 company, and they bring local market insight.
What makes that work is trust and respect for each other’s perspectives. You have to believe that working together over the long run, you’ll get it right more often than not. I’m very grateful to our advisors for their loyalty and partnership.
Adam: I love that word co-creation, and at the heart of it is humility. When you think you know everything, you’re going to go it alone. Another key theme is the importance of listening as a leader. If you walk into a room intent on speaking, all you’re going to do is talk. You’re not going to absorb, you’re not going to learn, and you’re not going to co-create.
Tim: That brings up another point about the keys to success for leaders. I think lifelong learning is critical.
I’ve been intentional about development, including formal feedback, executive coaching, and boards of review. As you get more experience, you become more self-aware. You understand your strengths and tendencies and where you have challenges.
Another characteristic of leaders is adaptability or situational leadership. You can’t just say this is how I lead. You have to start from what does my organization need from me right now? What are we trying to do? What kind of leader do I need to be to help us move forward?
A lot of leadership development is personal development. You develop more self-awareness and situational awareness. If you can flex based on the needs of the situation, you’ll be more successful in a wider range of circumstances.
Adam: Tim, something you shared early on is that leaders are evaluated based on who they’re hiring and promoting. Everyone in the organization looks at those decisions and understands who you are as a leader. Who do you look for in the people you hire? What are your best tips on hiring?
Tim: I want people who are smart. Part of that is intellectually smart, but part is situationally smart. I want people who are humble and want to be part of a team. I want people who are values-aligned and focused on the long term interest of the company.
There’s also a value set around how we treat people and operate as a team. We have to watch this carefully. I want a team that is professional and respectful. But you also have to have people willing to ask hard questions and engage in constructive conflict.
I want people who are humble but not afraid to mix it up, who are interested in getting it right for the organization and not being right personally.
We spend a lot of time at work. I also want people I like being around, people I trust and respect. I’m very grateful because that describes the leadership team I’ve put together.
Adam: Tim, what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful personally and professionally?
Tim: Start with what’s important to you and your own value set. We can do whatever we want, but we can’t do everything we want. You have to make choices.
A mentor once told me, you’re doing a great job, but you have to decide what kind of leader you want to be. What kind of impact do you want to have? How do you want to be perceived? Once you’re clear on that, you can ask, is that how I’m showing up?
Then you have to be willing to do the uncomfortable work of getting better. Nobody likes constructive feedback. It never feels good. But the people who grow the most lean into it. They care so much about getting better that they’re willing to work on it.
If you’re clear about your values and you’re willing to work on yourself, everybody has the opportunity to grow toward their potential.
Adam: Nowadays, medicine doesn’t have any taste. You just pop a pill and drink some water, and you don’t taste anything. But when you were growing up and when I was growing up, a lot of the medicine we had to consume tasted really bad. We consumed it because it was good for us. When you think about feedback, it might not taste good, but it will help you get better. If you’re willing to do something uncomfortable in the short run, in the long run it’s going to pay off.
Tim: Yeah, and maybe the other thing I would add is it matters where you are. I feel very grateful that I’ve spent most of my career at Northwestern Mutual. My personal values align with the values of the organization.
If that wasn’t the case, I’d be exhausted and miserable. There are a lot of great companies and professional opportunities. Finding somewhere that lines up with what’s important to you gives you a better opportunity to be successful.
If you’re feeling like you’re hitting your head against the wall, maybe it’s you, but maybe you haven’t found the right spot yet. There are lots of meandering paths in professional journeys. If you’re picking up learnings along the way and putting yourself in a spot where you can keep growing, good stuff will happen.
Adam: Tim, thank you for all the great advice, and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.
Tim: Adam, my pleasure. Thank you very much. I enjoyed the conversation, and thanks again for the opportunity.
