Why the Mastercard CEO tells young leaders to stop following their passion

When Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach talks about the path to leading his $513 billion-in-market-cap company, he points to an unlikely starting place: stacking shelves at Gary's Corner Store in Big Rapids, Mich.

It was the early '80s and Michael was a German exchange student, following in the footsteps of his father, who had done the same thing in the 1960s. What Michael experienced upon arriving at the then-14,000-person Big Rapids was vastly different from his comfortable, middle-class life in Germany. His host family was struggling financially and didn't have much experience with anyone from outside the area; they weren't travelers, didn't have passports, and had never hosted an exchange student before.

Both hosts and student would have to learn fast.

Michael did exactly that, trying to acclimate as quickly and as deeply as possible, including taking a local job. The lessons learned would become the foundation of his leadership philosophy: Never take anything for granted, and always understand the different contexts people are coming from.

In Part I of our This is Working conversation, Michael explained how Mastercard processes $9.8 trillion in transactions across 210 countries by orchestrating a complex ecosystem of 27,000 banks, merchants, and fintechs. But his ability to lead at that scale was forged in much smaller moments of cultural adaptation and relentless curiosity.

The reset button mentality

That lesson in context-switching proved crucial when Michael faced his biggest leadership test. In 2007, while working for a British bank, he got a call asking if he wanted to run a large business across Africa.

The challenge was daunting: build payment systems in a region where, "Western ways of payments and banking wasn't visible there and nobody wrote the book about how to do this," he told me. "Technology wasn't there. Infrastructure wasn't there." People dealt in cash and kept money at home.

"Nobody wrote the book about how to do this."

"If we would've gone with our existing blueprint, we would've gone absolutely nowhere," he told me. "Even if you adapted it, it had to be actually the reset button."

The breakthrough came from abandoning Western assumptions entirely and building something completely new. Through asking questions and partnering with local governments and telecom providers, they developed mobile-based financial services that worked on basic feature phones — allowing people to save, pay, transfer money, and receive remittances all from devices they already owned.

The approach worked. Today, Africa is leapfrogging other regions technologically, and Mastercard exports innovations developed there to the rest of the world. The company recently invested $200 million in MTN, Africa's largest mobile provider, to expand these mobile financial services across the continent.

His three leadership non-negotiables

Michael believes every leader needs urgency, curiosity, and competitiveness — but it's curiosity that drives everything else.

"Being curious, don't leave questions unanswered in a very complex, fast changing world like ours," he advised recent summer interns. "That gives you that additional insight that you otherwise wouldn't [have] to come up with the kind of solutions that we talk about."

Michael said that just that morning he had put the rule to the test. Just back from a red-eye from China, his leadership team had to tackle a complex topic. Rather than just trying to reach a decision and move on (and get some coffee), Michael kept asking question after question for 45 minutes. "[Through] every angle of the conversation, it was another question asking 'Shit, we didn't think about that,'" he said.

"Urgency" played a critical role from the first days of his time as CEO. Michael took over from Ajay Banga, now president of the World Bank, in February 2020, just weeks before COVID lockdowns sent his revenue falling off a cliff as people stopped going to stores.

Decisions couldn't wait for perfect information. But there was no playbook for a pandemic, which meant the other two principles had to evolve. Curiosity meant asking questions even when there were no clear answers. And competitiveness meant winning not just against rivals, but against the crisis itself.

His response? Radical honesty with his team.

"I felt this was important to really put that down with the employees, to step forward with humbleness and say to our employees, 'We don't know, but we'll figure it out together,'" he reflected. "Admitting that you don't have all of the answers... a larger portion of humility."

Passion isn't enough

When young leaders ask Michael for advice, he pushes them beyond the typical "follow your passion" guidance.

"I love the fact that you're following your passion, but you should also just look at what are you really good at? What differentiates you?" he told recent interns. "Figure out, where's the intersection point of what is your passion, what actually matters, and what could you be good at? Bring that together."

"Figure out, where's the intersection point of what is your passion, what actually matters, and what could you be good at."

He also emphasizes the power of his favorite subject: asking questions: "If you leave here and you left questions unanswered, what a waste. It's your opportunity. Now you have permission to ask any question."

Now, as Michael guides Mastercard through rapid transformation — including contactless payments and AI-powered fraud detection — those same principles apply. His vision for where payments are headed in the next three years will surprise you, but you'll have to watch our full conversation to hear it.

His leadership approach remains grounded in those early lessons from Big Rapids: Understand different contexts, ask the next question, and never assume your existing blueprint will work in a new environment.

Read Part I to understand how Mastercard built this vast global ecosystem, then watch our full conversation to hear Michael's complete leadership philosophy.

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On LinkedIn’s video series, This is Working, I sit down with top figures from the world of business and beyond to surface what they've learned about solving difficult problems. See more from Ralph Lauren CEO Patrice Louvet, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Savannah Bananas owner Jesse Cole, Google CMO Lorraine Twohill, Taco Bell CEO Sean Tresvant, Slutty Vegan founder Pinky Cole, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins, Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz, former US President Barack Obama, filmmaker Spike Lee, Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson, IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva, cosmetics legend Bobbi Brown, F1’s Toto Wolff, and many more.