Week 7: Leader/Follower Relationships

There is a clear structural hierarchy of positions within my team at New York Life Investments, but it doesn’t feel as rigid, daunting and scary as I first suspected. Seeing as I work for the Office of the CEO, the person at the top is of course the CEO herself, Yie-Hsin Hung. Then, there is Karen who serves as the Head of the Office of the CEO and also the NYLIM International Business Development Managing director. There are five people who report directly into Karen. The first is Yoshi who is the International Director. Next, Matt who is the Senior Associate of the OCEO. Then, Laura O’Brien who is the Head of Global Education. My personal favorite, my manager, Don Osmanski who is the Director of the OCEO. Lastly, there is Eunie who is the Head of US Sustainable Investing. Three out of these five people under Karen have people reporting up to them. This is all to say that there is a really large team within the Office of the CEO working together day in and day out to make the business stronger and better.

Every two weeks there is a large group call for everyone to provide updates and ask questions. During this call I noticed there were parts of this call where I could sense the deference to the leader, Karen. And other parts of the call were quite informal. If I had to guess, the OCEO team is one of the younger teams on average compared to other NYLIM teams. This allows for closer and more tight-knit leader follower relationships. It is also interesting to note who on the team has kids and is married vs the single folks on the team. While everyone seems to genuinely enjoy their work and the team, there are for sure members of the team who are more devoted to the other members of the team than others. Those who are younger or not married tend to want to have more team get togethers and social opportunities, whereas the older, married crowd tends to think family first. Both of these perspectives are totally justified and fair, but interesting nonetheless.

This dynamic has been very apparent when thinking about our work as it pertains to the return to the home office. Karen is single and Matt is the youngest member of the team and is also single. When we gather to plan events for the return it is clear that the two of them are aligned. It is good to have support on ideas, but it is also good to have other opinions in the mix. It is nice that the team is able to have healthy debate when conflicting opinions do arise. Everyone on the team seems to have a very close relationship with Karen on a professional and personal basis. More than that, they tend to all know each other well enough to know how people operate on a personality basis too. I think the team has done a really good job of working to achieve this dynamic. It is clear that everyone is valued and heard when it comes to leaders and followers. People really respect one another and take into account that they can learn from their teammates who are experts on their specific role or department.