Before he became the most powerful banking CEO in America, JPMorgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon set himself a simple career rule that sounds almost radical in the age of personal branding: keep your mouth shut.
As a 28‑year‑old Harvard MBA working as an assistant to American Express president Sanford “Sandy” Weill, Dimon wasn’t focused on “being visible” or chiming in on every meeting—he was focused on soaking everything in.
“My first goal was to learn something and not say anything until I could add some value,” he told Fortune in an early-career profile which has resurfaced on social media.
At the time of publication, the fresh-faced Harvard MBA had just been promoted to vice president—climbing the ranks from Weill’s assistant in as little as two years—when he shared the career tip.
Before then, he’d already helped analyse multi-million-dollar deals and negotiated major acquisitions. Yet his instinct was still to earn the right to speak.
And it paid off: One year later, he went on to follow his former boss Weill to Commercial Credit Company, where he became its CFO at just 30-years-old.
Jamie Dimon’s mantra for Gen Z: “Learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn.”
Now, Dimon has led JPMorgan as its CEO for 20 years—and although in that time, the world of work has become louder, always on and increasingly online, he’s still telling young people to listen more.
The billionaire banking boss told Gen Z that if they want to get ahead, they need to close their TikTok and Instagram apps and learn through osmosis.
“You only learn by reading and talking to other people. There’s no other way yet,” Dimon told a crowd of students at the Financial Markets Quality (FMQ) Conference at Georgetown University in 2024. “People waste a tremendous amount of time… turn off TikTok, Facebook.”
The simple advice may seem counterintuitive in an age when young workers are being coached to build personal brands from day one and contribute constantly.
But actually, some experts echo that speaking less—specifically by practicing active listening, pausing before speaking, and avoiding unnecessary details—can make a person appear more senior.
And Dimon’s rule—listen first; be loud later—is one that many other leaders have recommended too.
Even after finding success, Apple’s Steve Jobs still prioritised listening first
The CHRO of L’Oréal U.S. advised Gen Z new hires to be that person who puts their hands up and volunteers to grab their manager’s coffee or take notes in meetings.
Instead of making you look junior, she noted it gets you access to rooms with senior leaders where you can watch and learn how they operate.
“If you’re the one that is going to capture the actions from the meeting and the next steps, and you’re listening and you’re observing that isn’t necessarily a negative,” the L’Oréal exec Stephanie Kramer explained. “You are in the room and you are absorbing how those points are coming to be. You’re developing the skills of inference.”
Even after building the trillion-dollar tech giant, Apple’s Steve Jobs never pretended to have all the answers. He stayed, as his former design chief put it, genuinely open to learning from other people right up to the end.
Jony Ive, worked alongside the late cofounder for nearly 15 years in designing iconic products like the iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.
Reflecting on their partnership in a newly released letter, he wrote that they’d spend most days eating lunch together and then brainstorming ideas in the afternoon.
“For Steve, wanting to learn was far more important than wanting to be right.”