Morgan Stanley exec Lindsey Coleman shares her coffee-meeting request to tell who is serious about a Wall Street career

Lindsey Coleman is the head of fixed income client coverage for the Americas at Morgan Stanley.

Morgan Stanley Lindsey Coleman has spent decades rising up at Morgan Stanley, partly because of her relationships.

She said "networking" gets the calculus wrong and shared what she thinks works instead.

Coleman, who was one of BI's inaugural rising stars, said AI raises the bar for interpersonal skills.

When someone asks Lindsey Coleman to get coffee with their kid, a simple ask will tell her a lot about the young person's level of interest in her job: read three articles or studies that we can talk about.

"People want to take the free coffee.

They want some advice.

There are only some people who actually want to do the work to understand someone's role, background, and business," said Coleman, the head of fixed income client coverage for the Americas at Morgan Stanley.

Coleman, who was one of Business Insider's inaugural Rising Stars of Wall Street in 2017, has risen over more than two decades at the firm partly because of her relationships, which she said weren't cultivated over one coffee.

She now manages around 250 people from an office dotted with photos of her three kids and is responsible for bringing Morgan Stanley's fixed-income business to institutional clients.

"The word that gets thrown out here on Wall Street is networking .

I hate that word," Coleman said.

"It sounds very transactional.

Relationships aren't built through networking.