For 231 years, investors have been trading on what is now known as Wall Street. The iconic New York Stock Exchange has survived through the Civil War and the September 11th attacks. The person who navigated the exchange through the most recent challenge, the Covid-19 pandemic is NYSE President Lynn Martin. In the latest episode of Yahoo Finance's Lead This Way, she conveys how communication and empowering customers is at the core of her leadership style.
Martin, who became the NYSE President in September of 2022 is the second woman to fill that role in the institution’s long history. Coming from a tech background, she says that she is a data driven person and relies on numbers to tell her story. Having led the NYSE through the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, she stresses that open communication is key to any successful enterprise.
NYSE and its parent organization Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), host 2400 listed companies. Martin sees her primary job as providing these companies the tools to grow their businesses, amplifying what she describes as the “tremendous power of our community.”
Martin gives Yahoo Finance Correspondent Diane King Hall an overview of how the 231 year old exchange functions behind the scenes and how her leadership skills are rooted in communication and challenging her employees to think “out of the box”. She iterates, “I like to throw ideas out there. A lot of times I throw them out there for reactions…I want people to push back.”
Beginning her career as a programmer at IBM, Martin did not envision herself as leading such a historic institution as the New York Stock Exchange. But now she seeks to encourage and inspire younger generations, saying, “I took a non-linear career path to this job. You could too.”
She goes on to say, “I'm not about just operating today's New York Stock Exchange. I wanna build the New York Stock Exchange for the next 10 years from now, for 25 years from now, for the next 231 years. And I challenge my management team to do that every day.”
Lead This Way is a new series that features big interviews with the business leaders shaping our world today. In these one-on-one conversations, we reveal how their approach to leadership helped them become Wall Street titans.
For more on our Lead This Way Series, click here, and tune in to Yahoo Finance every Thursday at 3 p.m. ET.
Video Transcript
LYNN MARTIN: The first thing that I always tell people to do is communicate. I'm very focused on continuing to build 11 Wall as the most iconic convening location for the business community globally.
DIANE KING HALL: Lynn Martin has big plans for innovating this historic institution. Numbers are her North Star, but soft skills are a big part of her leadership toolkit, with communication at the top of the list.
LYNN MARTIN: I think as a leader, the most important thing you can do is communicate with people. It's why we've made the deliberate decision over the last year and a half to be out there, to be telling stories, to be having conversations with people because people just want to convene and have conversations about what's going on in the macroeconomic environment, with companies, in markets, whatever the case may be.
So I'm a data-driven person, so I tend to rely on a lot of numbers when I'm telling stories. But I couldn't tell those stories to as many people as I can without the electronic forms of communication and the technology.
DIANE KING HALL: If you were describing what the president of the New York Stock Exchange does, how would you describe that?
LYNN MARTIN: We have to keep our markets open. That involves having an open, transparent marketplace that's highly resilient, highly scalable, and highly performant and efficient, particularly during the most volatile periods in markets. Mainly, I think with any job the most important thing is to stay close to your customers, develop services.
We like to offer our companies tools as opposed to telling them how they should really operate their businesses, tools that allow them to tell their stories. But importantly, if there are issues on their minds, we want to help them. We want to help amplify their voice.
DIANE KING HALL: What is your leadership style like?
LYNN MARTIN: I communicate a lot. That is one thing. I like to throw ideas out there. A lot of times, I throw them out there for reactions. A lot of times I'm told I'm wrong, which is good. Which is good because I want people to push back, because I want that debate.
I want to know why I'm thinking something that is not right. Or if I push hard enough, is it because that person isn't thinking outside the box? I don't think any question is a dumb question because it's just the question someone else hasn't had the courage to ask before.
DIANE KING HALL: Having led the exchange out of the pandemic, Martin has a new perspective on how to lead through change.
LYNN MARTIN: Leading through change is hard. You know why it's hard? Because people tend to view change as scary. I think that's human nature. So the first thing that I always tell people to do is communicate unsurprisingly. Communicate with peers, communicate with your manager, and communicate with the people that work for you because everyone craves communication during change.
The second thing is work hard, keep executing your job, don't fall a victim to water cooler talk. Particularly around change is where I've seen opportunity personally as well as for others. Raise your hand. If there's something that interests you if it is not in your current job description, raise your hand to volunteer to do it.
DIANE KING HALL: Right.
LYNN MARTIN: I took a non-linear career path to this job. You could too.
DIANE KING HALL: Did you ever think in your wildest dreams that you'd be president of the New York Stock Exchange?
LYNN MARTIN: I did not. Growing up as a girl, it wasn't a career path, right? And that's one of the things I'm also really focused on in being out there and having conversations with younger generations because if you see yourself in a position, it means you can do it.
When I was growing up, wasn't exactly a career path. I remember asking my mom how you got a seat on the Stock Exchange. Technology has really democratized access. And I think that has led to a lot more diversity in positions such as myself.
DIANE KING HALL: Martin believes it it's the personal interactions that help drive a company's success.
LYNN MARTIN: I personally am in five days a week. But I'm very intentional about that because I don't know how to mentor the next generation of leaders unless I can actually have a conversation with them. And it's not always a formal structured conversation. It's running into someone at the soda machine and saying, well, what do you like? And then that leads to, what would happened in markets today?
DIANE KING HALL: Martin says those conversations keep her focused on the future. How do you take a place that's steeped so much in history and innovate?
LYNN MARTIN: You know, it's one thing I always challenge our teams to do. You got to think outside the box. I'm not about just operating today's New York Stock Exchange. I want to build the New York Stock Exchange for the next 10 years from now, for 25 years from now, for the next 231 years. And I challenge my management team to do that every day.
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