Forty-three-year-old Teresa Ridge always had an intuition that she could blend her heart and her mind as a leader. She has proven her theory correct, ascending up the Wells Fargo ladder over a period of 18 years, based on this leadership style. Ridge worked her way up from a teller to her current position as Regional Manager of the Private Bank of Wells Fargo in San Diego County. Her team comprises 150 people who report into their respective managers of the business lines (e.g. trusts, brokerage, etc.) who in turn, report to Ridge. Ridge’s overall team focuses on the needs of high net worth individuals, or households with liquid income (excluding home assets) of $1 million or more, and the team has a client base of 1,500 across the county.
As a woman and a Hispanic-American, Ridge has had difficulty finding women in the highest levels of leadership in banking. “In traditional and private banking, it is very service-oriented so there tends to be more women in teller, store manager, or operations center manager positions,” says Ridge. “But you don’t really see that many women high up. Perhaps it’s the glass ceiling effect, but the result is that there are limited role models for women.”
This ceiling doesn’t make sense to Ridge since she happens to believe women have bountiful skills to offer in any industry, particularly in her field. “I happen to think that women are the best advisors because we are the best listeners,” she argues. Perhaps this is why Wells Fargo CEOs and presidents have created a culture that has been very supportive of women leaders.
Ridge attributes her own success in a field dominated by men to several factors. For one, she has always had an interest in and an intuition about “female leadership.” “I have always had an intuition about what things I shouldn’t do and what things I should do,” says Ridge. But despite her intuition, she has always felt the need to learn and educate herself on how to be a more effective leader.One factor that helped Ridge to learn and to achieve success as a leader is her experiences in MSEL, where she graduated in May 2006. The program’s emphasis on “Situational Leadership” really appealed to Ridge. Situational Leadership theories presume that different leadership styles are better in different situations and that leaders need to develop flexiblity and adapt their leadership styles to the changing contexts in which they lead. Paul Hersey, Ken Blanchard, and Dewey Johnson had originally created the Situational Leadership model in the late 1960s in their book, Management of Organizational Behavior.
"It sounds corny and it’s very hard to quantify, but in life, people are motivated differently,” emphasizes Ridge. “In order for me to help grow people, the business, and the office, as a leader, I need to help people with different styles and to be more adaptive to other people. I need to make the connection with people in order to understand what drives them, in order to exercise leadership in a way that is more akin and close to the individual.”
Focusing on the softer skills of listening and leading with your heart versus your head were key take-aways for Ridge in her master’s degree. “People in the financial services industry, whether it’s on Wall Street or in banking, seem to be tired of the superstar rock star CEO,” adds Ridge. “It used to be that as a CEO you had to command a big salary and be a charismatic leader. But in the last five years, I’ve noticed that there seems to be more awareness around what leadership is—look at Meg Whitman from eBay, for example. She’s bright but more unassuming. I think workers today are looking for something different or different ways to be motivated and the softer skills are a way to get there. I think Ken Blanchard and the MSEL program speak very well in that regard.”
But, Ridge is also quick to note that the soft skills need to be combined with execution in order to achieve results. On a general level, MSEL helped Ridge transition from a very focused task-oriented approach to a more visionary leadership approach. “At Wells Fargo, we use a lot of Ken Blanchard’s materials related to Situational Leadership II, so it was a natural transition for me to attend MSEL,” notes Ridge. Even more, MSEL provided Ridge with the opportunity to be in an environment where she met people at a similar level from a lot of different industries faced with some of the same business challenges.
MSEL also helped Ridge identify practical aspects of leadership. “Before the program, I knew that I needed to develop a different style of leadership, but the word is so mis-defined that I really didn’t know what I was looking for,” she says. “But when I finished, I realized that I really needed to motivate our people. The time at MSEL allowed me to practice a lot of things in a safe environment.” Ridge came away from the program with skills to be more collaborative, to build teams that could survive her tenure, and to grow people.
Ridge’s insatiable appetite for learning and self-improvement did not end with the MSEL program. After the program ended, she started a coaching effort where she works with her team members in a more customized fashion. “I’m trying to make my already talented team into an even higher performing team,” explains Ridge. “I’m spending my afternoon meeting with some of my best advisors to ask them what I can do to help them take their business to the next level,” she explains. “I just want to ask the question and hear what they have to say, versus just saying that we have to grow 15 percent this year, for example. I’m trying to communicate and reach out. If I could do anything successful today, my one win would be to have that connection with my people and then be able to assist them in any way possible.”Ridge also attributes her success to her work ethic and the “fire in her belly.” These personal attributes, Ridge feels, developed out of the impact of her mother’s divorce. At the age of 17, Ridge started working to help out her mother financially. “I was motivated by a financial need to look for work, but I was also motivated by a personal need because I did not want to find myself in a situation where I wasn’t empowered to take care of myself financially,” says Ridge. “That still drives me to stay in this job because there are a lot of women that don’t have access to financial information and advisors.”
Not only did Ridge’s personal drive and characteristics help her succeed, but it also helped her to find mentors at Wells Fargo, which ultimately continued to feed her success. One mentor in particular at Wells was really mindful to female demographics and diversity. She was not an ethnic minority herself, but she believed in diversity and practiced what she preached. The supportive culture she created provided a context in which Ridge was able to thrive.
As a result of Ridge’s personal success, she never forgets to mentor others. “Now that I’m in a position of leadership, I look for similar qualities of self-drive and motivation in other people and I help them to get recognized and develop a career path so that they never want to leave,” she says. “Coaching is something that Wells Fargo really believes in. I try to inculcate to my managers that they need to continuously develop talent and help coach talent. I think that’s very important and I feel like that’s my way to give back.”
Although Ridge’s days scrambling to help her mother make ends meet seem long ago, such memories always remain within Ridge’s psyche. In fact, her background motivates her to succeed continuously and to help others achieve the success that she has achieved. And despite Ridge’s successes, she still feels like she has much more to achieve. “I’m still in the early stages of my career, and I have a lot of different ways I can go,” she says. “There are so many different things I can do at Wells Fargo in the future.” But as a leader who believes her personal growth is intimately tied to the growth of her business, Ridge emphasizes results in both leadership and performance. "Over the next two to three years, I want to focus on growing my market. I want to showcase my leadership skills and everything that I’m about while helping to stay connected to my advisors and helping our clients succeed financially. Business results are of utmost importance in our industry, but our people are definitely our competitive edge. I truly believe we have the best people in the business and that drives me harder to be the leader that can inspire and model competence, integrity, and ethical behavior.”