Surrounding yourself with a group of yes-men is not a recipe for success – at least not AT&T CEO John Stankey. Instead, he wants employees to be ready to come to meetings and share their ideas and perspectives—not just sit back and listen.
“I love the discourse,” Stankey said in a recent joint interview with JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon hosted by LinkedIn. The telecom executive added that one of the principles in his company’s cultural documents is not to show up to meetings without doing your homework.
“Don’t go in there and be just an observer,” Stankey said. “When you take a point of view, it shouldn’t just be an uninformed opinion. It should be a point of view based on facts, information and data. I crave that.”
According to Stankey, if employees aren’t willing to speak up — or don’t have a constructive point of view to offer — the right people may not be in the room.
Dimon also stressed the importance of ensuring Meetings are both necessary and productive. Leaders should create an environment where employees aren’t afraid to disagree or raise uncomfortable topics in meetings — even if that means leaving the proverbial “dead cat on the table,” he said.
“I never get upset when someone says I’m wrong about something,” Dimon added. “I just want to do my best for our customers, our country, our company.”
This leadership strategy had different results for the two companies. Shares of JPMorgan have risen more than 17% over the past year, while shares of AT&T have fallen about 12%.
Stankey and Dimon rethink meeting preparation—but Dimon had always thought about etiquette
The two Fortune 500 CEOs also discussed how they prepare for meetings in the age of AI. Both have long emphasized the importance of read-aloud materials, but Stankey and Dimon suspect the approach may be changing.
“I’m starting to wonder if reading is the best way,” Stankey said. “As I’ve studied more about the conversational dynamics with AI, I think I can now consume more quickly in a targeted conversation.”
“I do the same thing,” Dimon added. “I use Gemini or Google and Deep Dive to get information very quickly. I try to do all my previews before I go to meetings.”
Still, the underlying principle hasn’t changed: Dimon has long argued that it’s important to show up prepared.
“When I go to a meeting, I’ve done the lectures and you get 100% of my attention,” he says said at Fortune’s Conference of the Most Powerful Women last year. Otherwise, Dimon believes in it Eliminate meetings entirely if they do not serve to use employees’ time productively.
Dimon has thought about proper meeting etiquette throughout his career. In one early Assets Dimon’s profile as a then 28-year-old Harvard MBA worked as an assistant American Express Dimon, president of Sanford “Sandy” Weill, believed his best role was to often get out of the way and take it all in.
“My first goal was to learn something and not say anything until I could add value,” Dimon said at the time.
But that mantra may not work in Stankey’s conference room. A young Dimon may be approached disinterestedly – and expected to make a point.