Banking & Finance
Reaching out
How Bob Graham creates a culture of advocates at Merrill Lynch
By Mike Cottrill
Smart Business Chicago | October 2008
Page 1 of 4
Bob Graham has never forgotten David Komansky or Linda
Marcelli.
The two leaders were at Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. when he first
arrived at the wealth management, capital market and advisory
company, and they helped him get his career straight.
While they both became well-known business leaders, the thing
Graham remembers most is the way they helped him in life.
“(Komansky) would see you and he’d come over and say, ‘Hey,
Graham, how are you doing?’” he says. “And I always thought,
‘Wow, here’s a guy who went on to be the chairman and he never
lost that consistent behavior and demeanor, even though jobs
changed and life changed and his wealth had changed. He could
still connect with people.’ And it’s something that people should
keep in mind; it impacts people more than you realize.”
And so, that became something that Graham kept in mind as he
advanced through the ranks at Merrill Lynch, which was recently acquired by Bank of America. Today, as regional managing
director for the Illinois-Wisconsin and Northern Indiana region, he
constantly thinks about what he can do to have that same motivating impact on his more than 1,000 people to help their careers
and to keep good people with the company.
“It’s very important that you find out what makes people tick,
what’s their motivation,” he says. “It’s not mandating what I want
to do, it’s really participating in supporting what their passion is. If
you do that, you come across genuine, sincere and as consistent.
You’ll create an environment and a culture where you recognize
people and support where they’re coming from, and that environment perpetuates.”
So while Graham may have plenty of conversations about the
roughly $71 billion in client assets in his region, he spends even
more time working on ways that he can use his culture to motivate
people. The process isn’t easy, but his system is fairly basic: He
knocks down walls by breaking the ice, gets some help from people who show they are willing to be advocates, and then he makes
it a point to be consistent every day.
