Lecture Executive Series 7
Patricia Richards
She retired in 2009 as senior manager from Wells Fargo. She became the national
director of endowment and foundation markets. She also holds a bachelors of arts
degree in economics from Northwestern University in Chicago. She is currently on the
board of trustees for the symphony opera board of Utah. She was in the banks hall of
fame. She displays excellence in leadership and is an example to all. She was on the
cover of a bankers magazine. She enjoys skiing, hiking, and has a cat.
The reputation of banking has not a good press recently,but she will tried to shed some
good light on it. These are some important points that I took from her speech. The
classes she used the most from her studies in school is business
communications/writing, business law, and a sales and marketing class. You don't have
to go into marketing to know how to sell. Everything in business involves some kind of
selling. You have to take a risk to get ahead. I am not even sure what risk taking would
be in my position. I would like to have the opportunity do so. You will not be able to fulfill
your destiny unless you are able to take a risk. It is well worth it and you will be
surprised at how fast you can learn and keep up with everyone else. The most important
thing you can do for your career is volunteer, particularly in the field of government. You
get opportunities that are far more advanced than you will probably get within your own
business. It will jump start your career. Strategic planning is very important. you need to
learn how to do it because it is important to everything you do in business. She really
emphasized getting to know how to plan strategically. One of the most important things
she has learned from volunteering is that you can't manage volunteers the way you
think you can manage employees. You have to learn how to create a vision and create a
willingness to work on the behalf of the volunteers so they get some type of
psychological reward. When you are two number and looking ahead to number one, it is
really easy to promote yourself and demean the other person, but you are far better off
making them look good. It is a great way to advance your career. It also makes you the
logical successor and most importantly, it creates a powerful ally in the organization. We
as leaders need to give away thanks and credits. Its amazing what you can get done if
you don't know who gets the credit. If you had the opportunity to step out of your day-today assignment and do it well, you will expand your skills. The most import roles of
leadership is communication. I totally agree with this one. Repeat things over and over,
Constantly, and frequently. Executive levels of leadership requires an immense amount
of energy. It is stressful and requires physical strength. Patricia even said that she was
working out at the gym everyday because it was so trying on your body. The value of
courage stood out to her. Standing up for something you believe in gains you loyalty. Of
the duties of leaders, creating a vision is the most important. It make people want to
work towards it.
She said that everything started changing in her job. People who could not accept
change lost their jobs. You have to have a high level of positivity when merging or in a
situation of change.You have to be comfortable with ambiguity. There is not always a
template for a job. If you prepare your self as a learner, take opportunities for learning,
then you will succeed no matter what.
I really enjoyed her speech and I took a lot from it. She had interesting stories to tell and
held my interest especially because she is in the industry and job that I could potentially
have. I feel that I can relate more to her and that i should really learned from what she
went though. Listening to her speech feels like a preview of what my future career will
be like. I think that she could have used some visuals, hand gestures, or even ventured
from the podium. Those would definitely improve her performance.