My Meeting with Janet Yellen

Leadership Lessons from the World’s Most Powerful Woman

It’s not easy to get into a meeting with Janet Yellen, who heads the Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank. First, you have to get past a number of hurdles, as she is heavily guarded by men with thick arms, thicker body armor, and even thicker machine guns. Once you’ve made it into the polished corridors of the Fed’s headquarters in Washington, you’re still not on your own. If you’re a visitor, there is always someone to accompany you every step of the way.

The Building That Runs the World’s Money

Wearing a large yellow name tag on your jacket identifies you to everyone as a visitor from far away. In the Fed’s corridors visitors walk, actually you stride, through cavernous rooms that are dimly lit, giving it the feel of a French castle. The sound of my sneakers on the fancy floors of the Fed has somehow disappeared, automatically adapting to the atmosphere of the building, which seems to have a different center of gravity. It’s just hard to imagine any kind of squeak coming from my rubber soles on these majestic floors.

Then Janet Yellen Walks In

And then she is in front of me. She flashes a friendly smile and says:

“Hi, I’m Janet Yellen.”

It brings me back to reality in milliseconds.

The Most Powerful Woman You’ve Never Noticed

Janet Yellen exudes an improbable coziness. You might think she is a small woman, but in person she is larger than you would have thought. Her friendly face is full of laugh lines.

Why First Impressions Can Be Wrong

No, this is not the number-crunching economist that you might expect to see in the leadership of the world’s most important and powerful central bank. The label “dove” somehow doesn’t feel like the right description for Janet Yellen, even if it’s only a term used to describe her monetary policies.

“Doves” advocate loose monetary policy and believe that low interest rates and cheap central bank money stimulate economic growth and reduce unemployment.

Quiet Power Is Still Power

Today she is wearing a dark green suit with a plain gold chain. Her short white hair, seasoned with a touch of pixie, nicely accentuates her round face and warm smile. Her whole manner is anything but obtrusive. She wouldn’t stand out in a supermarket checkout line.

Yet at an age when many people are counting the days to retirement, or are already there, Janet Yellen is reaching the pinnacle of her career.

And she shows it.

She radiates an incredible sense of momentum and vitality.

The Art of Making Complexity Feel Simple

Janet Yellen’s manner in conversation goes beyond the professional. She is friendly, speaks softly and rather quickly. She covers a wide range of topics, from the Lehman collapse to the euro crisis, and explains her views on monetary policy.

Knowing that her counterpart in this discussion is from Berlin, she praises German politics while not shying away from a mild rebuke here and there.

A Mind That Never Stops Calculating

While talking, she effortlessly weaves numbers, strategies and schools of thought into the conversation.

Listening to her, I can immediately imagine how students must have felt back when she was teaching at Harvard.

Among those students was a certain Larry Summers, her main rival for the Fed chairmanship.

More Than an Economist

Janet Yellen is a professional politician in every sense.

She is definitely not your stereotypical academic economist who speaks only in numbers and statistics. She even manages to give you the feeling that you are an old acquaintance, even if this is the first time she has ever seen your face, regardless of how many other people are in the room. That ability turns out not to be accidental.

The Leadership Skill Nobody Talks About

At the same time, she seems to register every stirring and emotion coming from me.

Almost unconsciously my brain is trying to shift into a higher gear in her company. I start to imagine that I’m probably being scanned and observed the same way her students and fellow researchers once were at the Nobel Prize talent factories where she worked: the London School of Economics and UC Berkeley.

What Quiet Brilliance Looks Like

Janet Yellen has a special mixture of friendliness and competence as she packs facts and figures into her sentences.

And this sort of quiet brilliance was probably essential for a young woman with a Yale Ph.D. to successfully make the jump from academia into the male-dominated culture of the U.S. financial system.

Breaking Through Wall Street’s Glass Ceiling

Few environments have historically been more male-dominated than American finance.

Janet Yellen not only entered that world, she rose to the very top of it.

From the Bronx to the Pinnacle of Power

And perhaps part of that resilience was forged much earlier. New Yorkers who come from the Bronx sometimes have something edgy and a little tough about them.

Janet Yellen, who grew up in the Bronx, has left much of that behind. She may still sound like a New Yorker, but her voice now carries the relaxed cadence of California.

The Bay Area lifestyle and her years at Berkeley seem to have softened her edges.

When History Calls

During her career, Janet Yellen made many journeys through the various branches of the Federal Reserve.

The call to the Valhalla of American policymaking came from President Bill Clinton, who appointed her in 1997 as chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

The New Face of Power

She has absolutely mastered a new form of power, one that is becoming increasingly common today.

Substance Is the New Status Symbol

Presence is the new black. Substance increasingly outweighs style, and modern power often avoids visible displays of wealth or authority.

If someone wanted to attack her based on her appearance, as happened so often to Hillary Clinton, they would quickly find themselves running out of ammunition.
She understands politics.
She understands PR.
And she clearly knows how to navigate the dangers of the Washington snake pit.

The Woman Behind Trillions

Janet Yellen served as vice chair of the Fed for about four years and was a co-architect of Ben Bernanke’s policy of ultra-low interest rates, the Fed’s primary weapon in combating the aftermath of the financial crisis.

One Decision Can Move the World

So, what will she do?

Will she continue the cautious departure from those policies?

Many in the financial world wonder whether she is tough enough for the job. Others worry that she may one day open the monetary taps even further. Those questions are not merely academic.

The Weight of the Global Economy

Because Janet Yellen is known for supporting economic stimulus measures, many believe she may be the ideal person to explain rising interest rates to the world.

Whatever direction she takes, not only stock prices and banks depend on it; entire economies do.

If she chooses the wrong path, she could even trigger an international financial crisis.

Why Janet Yellen Matters

That is why she can accurately be described as the most powerful woman in the world.

The Last Lesson

When Janet Yellen rises after 45 minutes, she smiles mischievously.
“Give my greetings to Berlin. I hear it’s great these days!”

Her gaze drops for a split second to my oversized yellow visitor badge.
“Cherno, this was fun.”

“A picture?” A staffer materializes seemingly out of nowhere.
Janet Yellen says quietly: “Smile.”
When I fail to do so quickly enough, she gives me a playful thump.
My phone clicks softly.
And then she disappears.

A Natural

A political animal. A natural. In Washington, there is no higher compliment.

She has left the room.

The spell lingers a little longer.