As you might expect from the CEO of a quant investing firm, Linda Gibson has no shortage of hard skills.
In addition to her undergraduate degree in math, Ms. Gibson is a trained lawyer, a graduate of the Harvard Advanced Management Program, and, after three decades in the asset management industry, now serves as the CEO and chair of PGIM Quantitative Solutions, which has $96.7 billion in assets under management.
But, as critical as her hard skills and cumulative career experience have been to her success, Ms. Gibson attributes a larger share of the credit to her soft skills, or her "EQ" — her emotional intelligence.
"EQ is huge," Ms. Gibson said. "People think it's about IQ. You have to have the experience and you have to be smart enough, but I think EQ is a sneaky, silent advantage."
Ms. Gibson said she believes women have a leg up when it comes to using people skills to advance in the business world: "They are very, very good at communicating and connecting and adapting, and understanding how people take information in."
In her current role as CEO, as well as in previous roles, Ms. Gibson said she's used her EQ to help negotiate deals and "get to yes with a carrot vs. the stick."
"It happens daily in my job, I am constantly negotiating with people that can often be much smarter than I am," Ms. Gibson said. "But it's listening, it's understanding what they need and understanding what the business needs and figuring out how to pull the two together. And it can be problem-solving."
It's also about having self-confidence, she added.
"It's having that confidence in yourself to feel as though you can do it, and you can. You don't have to be someone you're not. You don't have to push down those feminine characteristics in order to succeed," she said.
