Letter #158: Betsy Battle (2021)
Soros Fund Management Director and Lone Peak Founder and CIO | Leading Through Life
Hi there! Welcome to A Letter a Day. If you want to know more about this newsletter, see "The Archive.” At a high level, you can expect to receive a memo/essay or speech/presentation transcript from an investor, founder, or entrepreneur (IFO) each edition. More here. If you find yourself interested in any of these IFOs and wanting to learn more, shoot me a DM or email and I’m happy to point you to more or similar resources.
If you like this piece, please consider tapping the ❤️ above or subscribing below! It helps me understand which types of letters you like best and helps me choose which ones to share in the future. Thank you!
Today’s letter is the transcript of an interview with Betsy Battle. In this conversation, Betsy talks about what has made her so successful, her leadership style, why her leadership style has been successful, different styles of leadership, how she broke into the world of finance, how and where she learned to be a leader, whether she had any important mentors or teachers in her life that had a great impact on her, challenges of leadership that she faced, where her leadership has had the greatest impact, and advice for others.
Betsy Battle is the Chief Investment Officer and Foundering Partner of Lone Peak Partners. Prior to founding Lone Peak, Betsy was Director of Manager Selection and a member of the Management Committee at Soros Fund Management LLC. Over her eight years there, she not only managed multibillion dollar portfolios of external hedge funds for the Quantum group of funds and George Soros, but also built the manager selection and due diligence processes as well as the multi-manager portfolio construction and monitoring methodologies. Prior to Soros Fund Management, she held positions at Bankers Trust, Citicorp and JP Morgan, primarily as a manager in Global Sales and Trading.
I hope you enjoy this transcript as much as I do!
Related Resources
Soros Ecosystem
Transcript
Host: Welcome to Leading Through Life. I'm your host today, Ellie Clifford. And today on the podcast, we have Betsy Battle, the current Chief Investment Officer and Founding Partner of Lone Peak Partners. Thank you so much for taking the time to get together today, Miss Battle.
Betsy Battle: You're welcome. Thank you for having me.
Host: For our listeners at home, here's a little background on Miss Battle. She grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has had an impressive career working in the financial services industry, including at Bankers Trust, Citicorp, and JP Morgan in the sales and trading area and for the prominent investor George Soros for eight years. She then founded her own company, Lone Peak Partners, which is an investment management business. She also serves on a number of boards, including on the Foundation Board of the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School and on the board of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. In her free time, she enjoys horseback riding tennis and relaxing on the beach. Is there anything you'd like to add?
Betsy Battle: Nope, that's pretty much everything.
Host: So today, we're here to talk about leadership. Looking at your life and career, it seems that you've always had leadership skills. For example, you were the president of your sorority in college. And then you've been very successful in the financial world, including starting your own company. What has made you so successful, and how would you describe your leadership style?
Betsy Battle: Well, I think leadership has always been and will always be leading by example. And it... depending upon where you are in your life, you sort of need to make those examples more prominent or more visible or less visible. But I do think in order to be a successful leader, you have to work harder, study harder. You just have to be better--or attempt to be better--than everybody you're trying to lead.
Host: Yeah. So is there a specific way you would describe your leadership style and why you think it's so successful, specifically?
Betsy Battle: I was... when I got your questions, I was thinking about this a lot. And I think... one of the things, whether I go back to college days or before college days, or, certainly now, and through my financial career, I think, one of the reasons, hopefully I've been successful, is I've never ever lost a sense of humor. And also, another aspect, I think of leading is, there are times to really get frosted with situations, and there are times to not get frosted with situations. And I think, particularly in the stress of the financial world, or the world of markets, a lot of tension and a lot of stress can be relieved with a sense of humor. And I think people lose that. And it is my belief that every great leader has to have a sense of humor about basically everything, but most importantly, perhaps about himself or herself.
Host: Yeah, that's a great answer. Being an important female leader, do you think that women and men have different ways of leading, or do you think that's pretty similar?
Betsy Battle: No, I think they have terribly different ways of leading. I think... Yeah, it's... and some of it depends on the career that you're in. There are certain careers that if you look at the number of female CEOs, there are certain careers that that is more accepted than others. I happen to have spent now, since 1976, all those years in the financial services business, either on Wall Street or hedge fund community, or now my own firm. And yeah, in that community, women tend to lead in a very different way. It's my hope that they will continue to lead as women, not as women behaving or feeling like they need to behave like men.
Host: Yeah, so similar to that question is, how did you feel--Or I mean, if you felt like you did--but how did you break through and find the opportunity to lead in a field that tends to have so many men in leadership roles?
Betsy Battle: It's interesting, because I remember in a trading floor environment when I was very young--I mean, I was in my 20s. And I went to management on the trading floor, and asked for a leadership role. And it was interesting, because to this day, I remember the reaction of the trading floor manager I was having this discussion with. And he said to me, Wow, I'm very surprised you're asking for this. But that was in the early 80s. So I think, back then, the reason I got those roles, because I asked for them.
Host: Yeah. So how and where do you think you learned to be leader? If there was one specific point, or, when was the most influential point that you felt there was a turning point somewhere in your life?
Betsy Battle: That's an interesting question. I can't think of one specific point or time when I thought, Oh, wow, you can be a good leader. I just... I think that honestly, a lot of this comes from our parents and how we grow up. And I think it has to do with confidence. And if you believe that... and this is not about--what I'm about to say is not about success. It's just about confidence, to try things that you think would be exciting and interesting to do. And I think at a very young age, I think, probably my parents inspired confidence in me to ask to do and pursue the things that I felt I would be good at. But it was not so much about being as successful as it was... it was more about the journey than the destination. And if I had applied myself and tried my best, then that journey made it all worthwhile. So I guess that's a long way of saying it probably goes back to my parents instilling that confidence in me.
Host: Yeah, that's a great answer. So kind of similar to that one, I mean obviously you mentioned your parents, but did you have any other important teachers or mentors in your life that you felt had a big impact on you?
Betsy Battle: Less than you might think. I do think, and I've taken a lot of grief for saying this in professional circles, but I happen to agree with this statement, but I think women in the financial world, at least the world that I'm in, are learning to mentor. They have not mentored very well, in my view, in the past. And the reason is, I think it's not because there's a lack of desire, but I think they've been so busy sort of trying to preserve their own skins, so to speak, that there are only a finite number of hours in a day to be able to do anything you want to do. Now, I will tell you that, thankfully, I think that is changing a great deal. I think women are learning to be better mentors, making the time for it, even in their own sort of stressful professional situations. And I'd say over the past, I don't know, let's call it 5-10 years, I think women have gotten a lot better at mentoring. But I came along at a time that... I don't... there really weren't that many mentors. There certainly were not female mentors, because there weren't many of them in the profession that I was in. But there weren't mentors. I once said to a very high profile person I worked with for a number of years in the financial world--I ran into him in a social situation--and I said, You taught me so much about XYZ, and I can't remember what X, Y and Z were, but I said, You taught me. And he looked at me and said, I didn't teach you anything. You learned. And I walked away from that conversation and I thought, Wow, he's absolutely right. He's absolutely right. This was not about being taught. It was about observing and learning. And there's a huge difference and reason.
Host: 100%. So what do you think were some of the challenges of leadership that you faced, or... having these high roles, and these are very broad, so just feel free to apply them however you'd like.
Betsy Battle: Oh, gosh, there's so many of them I'm not sure I could... I think... there's a really fine balance between, as a leader, you need to be challenged. You need to be challenged by the people you have responsibility for leading. And sometimes, those challengings can be very challenging. But I can't think of one of them that has occurred that all the parties coming out of it had not been better off than they were before you went into it. And so I guess... it works... leadership works the best when the people you're leading, and when you, are very, very, very open to learning from each other. And adapting. Because when you're leading people, there are all sorts of different shapes and sizes and different talent. And I'm a big believer that if you let people express their talent, what they really, really... a leader's job is not to mold somebody, a leader's job is to create an environment in which they can succeed. And we all don't succeed with the same skill set. And I think that as I matured as a leader, I think that that was probably a huge learning experience to let people be the best at the things that they wanted to be the best at. Not what I wanted, but what they wanted.
Host: Because then then that would benefit everyone the most. So where do you think leadership has had the greatest impact? And where do you think you've used your leadership skills in other aspects of your life rather than just the business...
Betsy Battle: Oh, wow. Well, I think... the way I think of leadership, honestly, I can't think of an aspect of my life where I haven't used it. I mean... one of the things that I've... I've ridden a lot, and been involved with training and riding young horses, and when something weighs 1200 to 1500 pounds, and you get in a disagreement about anything, I promise you, the horse is going to win, and you're not. And horses have taught me an awful lot about leadership. I mean, you don't muscle a horse, you cajole, you sort of bargain with them, you make it very apparent what you'd like and what you would not like. And so I think... it might sound odd, but I don't think leadership in business is really any different than that.
Host: Yeah. And finally, what advice do you have for young people who want to become leaders, some things may have told your younger self.
Betsy Battle: To sort of take the conversation full circle, I think, if I had to say something to my younger self regarding leadership, I would say, Just keep a sense of humor and don't ever, ever, ever take yourself too seriously. Because there are typically, whether it's leadership, all sorts of different aspects of your life, nothing is typically... typically, nothing is a life or death situation. And keeping a sense of humor, keeping an open mind, and a very, very, very strong moral compass, I think is crucial. And all those things I just said are not really... we're not talking about things that require extraordinary amounts of intelligence. They just require a lot of common sense. And a lot of honesty. So those were the things I'd say. I mean, I never... leaders are successful, like I said, when they create situations in which the people that they're trying to lead can be really, really successful.
Host: Yeah. Okay, perfect. This has been so fascinating. That's all the time we have today. Thank you so much for joining us today, Miss Battle. It was really a pleasure to have you. For our listeners at home, keep your eyes open for the next episode of Leading Through Life. And thank you all so much for listening, and we'll see you next time.
If you got this far and you liked this piece, please consider tapping the ❤️ above or sharing this letter! It helps me understand which types of letters you like best and helps me choose which ones to share in the future. Thank you!
Wrap-up
If you’ve got any thoughts, questions, or feedback, please drop me a line - I would love to chat! You can find me on twitter at @kevg1412 or my email at kevin@12mv2.com.
If you're a fan of business or technology in general, please check out some of my other projects!
Speedwell Research — Comprehensive research on great public companies including Constellation Software, Floor & Decor, Meta, new frameworks like the Consumer’s Hierarchy of Preferences (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), and much more.
Cloud Valley — Easy to read, in-depth biographies that explore the defining moments, investments, and life decisions of investing, business, and tech legends like Dan Loeb, Bob Iger, Steve Jurvetson, and Cyan Banister.
DJY Research — Comprehensive research on publicly-traded Asian companies like Alibaba, Tencent, Nintendo, Sea Limited (FREE), and more.
Compilations — “A national treasure — for every country.”
Memos — A selection of some of my favorite investor memos.
Bookshelves — Your favorite investors’/operators’ favorite books.