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BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has some words of wisdom for leaders navigating the age of populism and social media: Watch what you say.
“You have to be a lot more guarded,” Fink said on Thursday. “I can’t say everything I really want to say to all of you right now,” he joked to the audience attending Forbes’s Iconoclast Summit.
“The reality is you have to be a lot more systematic in what you say and how you say it internally or externally,” he said, adding, “I mean, we live in a terrarium today. We live in a glass bottle.”
The billionaire cofounder of the world’s largest asset manager is no stranger to backlash over the firm’s business decisions.
Fink’s embrace of “ESG” investing, for example, has been derided by Republicans as “woke capitalism,” while drawing criticism from climate groups for not going far enough. The state of Texas only recently removed the asset manager from its investment blacklist, allowing the state to reinvest with the firm, after BlackRock withdrew from climate-focused initiatives like the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative.
“You have to lead differently,” in this era, Frink said. “You have to be a lot more thoughtful in every word you say.”
He said this holds true when it comes to internal messaging as well.
“If you can’t get your messaging properly with your employee base, and we have 23,000 employees at BlackRock globally, how are you going to get those messages across to all your clients?” Fink said.
Fink told the audience gathered at the Cipriani’s restaurant in downtown Manhattan that leaders also need to be led. He gave the example of a trip to the firm’s European officers following President Trump’s “Liberation Day” trade tariffs were unveiled.
“The Europeans were quite frightened,” Fink said. They were frightened about the potential for dramatic changes to US policy and the implications this could have on the culture and direction of their US-based employer.
“Is BlackRock changing too?” Fink recalled them saying, before he reassured them that it would not.
“It was just a wake-up call,” Fink said. “Even for me, and I think I’m pretty well experienced in this stuff. Again, when there’s great moments of uncertainty, even your top leaders need to be led.”
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