Leadership is Evolving: Connections Matter

Mitch: Well, welcome to today's episode of Lending Made Easy today. We're going to be talking about a fun topic, really talking about how leadership has changed. We can call out some elephants in the room, the pandemic that we all experienced. I would say together, but really apart from one another, right. Has really shifted the dynamics and workplaces across the country, but especially, For banks and credit unions.

And today I'm really excited. We've got a special guest. If you've been tuning in to Lending Made Easy for a long time, you might recognize the voice here, but we're joined by Ashley Garrison. So Ashley, welcome back to the show.

Ashley: Thank you so much, Mitch. Happy to be here.

Mitch: Great. Ashley, let's just start off, share a little bit about your career and your experience at, as a leader.

Ashley: That is a really open ended question, Mitch, and I could go many different directions. It's funny, I always introduce myself when I meet people as I'm a daughter of teachers, and I think my first leaders were really both my parents, who dedicated all of their 40 plus years of their lives to kids. I think as a teacher, you are an unsung hero a lot. You're a leader in disguise, but you literally are leading and helping shape leaders of the future. So for me, that, that leadership journey really started a long time ago with my dad. He imparted this wisdom around the role of a leader. Is to be a first and foremost, a servant.

So there is a great guy by the name of Robert Greenleaf.He's actually from Terre Haute, Indiana. And I talk about him a lot because he worked at the height of the industrial revolution, definitely was revolutionary at the time because he pinned the words, servant leader. He had a publication back in the seventies and it was after he. Analyzed a lot of different workplaces.

He saw that the best leaders were servants first, and they used their powers of listening and persuasion to really drive business outcomes. And I think that went against the grain. So back in the seventies, it was all about, very top down managerial styles, very top down leadership styles. 

So my dad as a teacher, he saw his role in the classroom, not to necessarily lead his students, but to help his students lead him where they wanted to go. I'll use a really good example. On his door, he had this sign. It said, Stop. You have the right to remain silent, but the responsibility to speak out. And so when kids entered his classroom, he said, What you get out of this year of learning is as much about what you put in.

As anything that I'm going to offer you. And he looked at every child that came in his class, as an opportunity to grow and become a leader. So I know I went way back there, Mitch, before career, I've spent like time at Sylvania lighting was probably the biggest, opportunity for me. I started managing people in my early twenties and I will tell you the manager I am today.

I won't tell you my age, but 20 years later. It's a lot different. And I think it's because. A, I've learned to be more patient and more thoughtful, but B, I've learned not to take everything on myself. I, think as leaders, the easiest thing is to be the hero and jump in and save the day and show people what good looks like.

It's much harder to help people fail and then quickly recover and quickly pivot and find success for themselves. And I would say that is a really important part of a leader's journey is learning to let go, learning to let others grow, sometimes painfully grow. Hopefully that helps a little bit.

Mitch: Yeah, I think that's great. And I can, feel some of that pain, right? Sometimes the stakes feel too high to let someone fail maybe. But as a leader, your dad's philosophy there really does ring true, right? Like they're not going to get anything out of it. If you're always the hero, they have to learn how to be the hero themselves too.

So I think that's just a great mindset. As we start off this episode, Bryan, were you going to add something there too?

Bryan: Great to have Ashley back. We've missed you on here, Ashley. It's always fun to talk with you about these kinds of topics. And I would agree, right? the hardest thing about that leadership through servitude is meeting people where they are. So that gets to, you got to first figure out where they are in order to meet them there and, figure out how you, bring them up to their fullest potential. 

Takes lots of different forms, depending on the person, depending on the time, all kinds of things, finding those ways to let them fail while ushering them towards success. And I always come back to the balance of you can't treat everybody the same. But you have to treat them all equally and fairly and balancing that again with meeting them where they're at, because that's going to take on a very different persona of the manager, very different actions, very different demeanors to do that with all of the individual personalities on a team made up by all kinds of different demographics that play into who the individual contributors are.

Ashley: I'm really glad you said that because I think knowing a person's why is so important to managing. Again, anyone that's worked with me closely, I apologize, but I love Simon Sinek and his famous book, Start With Why. I know it's aging, at this point, but I think it's still so simply stated, but so relevant that knowing why we do what we do, both in our work and in our home lives, what motivates us is such a, an important thing for a manager to understand. One of the exercises that I do a lot of times with the new teams is a value exercise where I ask them like, All right, here's a bunch of words.

Talk to me about if you had to pick one of these words, pick five to say who you are and why you chose those. And it's such a great exercise for any leader to do across any, business or organization, because even though the words may be different, those nuanced choices that someone makes of like, Hey, family is important to me.

Community is important to me. They're slightly different. Why did you choose community over family? Why did you choose purpose over success? Those are really important things to understand when leading teams. And I think for leaders who are evolving, it's getting down to that individual level, figuring out the person's why and then how to connect and that why and help that person's why resonate with your company's why. So you know at Baker Hill, I would say the work that we do is so important because we're literally helping banks and credit unions across the United States serve their communities, which in turn helps us all to live these great amazing lives.

And When you feel that deeply to your core, and then you can connect that why with Gosh I code. But the code that I build every single day impacts a bank's ability to do things more efficiently and succinctly and with more consistency. And that then in turn gives me purpose and value. So connecting the dots, if you will, between a person's motives and a company's motives, that's when you know you're really rowing in the right direction.

Bryan: To piggyback on that, Ashley, one trait that I think isn't talked about enough when it comes to leadership, and it's one that also isn't talked about enough in the world of selling that I live in all day, every day. Is the to be really successful, whether it's as a salesperson and engaging with prospects, or as a leader engaging with your people, is you got to find a way to get comfortable living in the uncomfortable.

Because what you're talking about, trying to draw the why out of somebody is going to lead to some very uncomfortable conversations. A lot of sitting and pausing in silence and trying not to put words in mouth or guide somebody, but really allowing them the space and the time to think and react and to then probe at the responses you get, which can again be very uncomfortable because you're getting into individual psyche and forcing them to look at things that they might not even be comfortable looking into.

And that just takes repetition and time, right? Of making yourself comfortable going there. That people tend to steer away from. That's why a lot of leading through servitude is difficult as those are just uncomfortable places to be. And unless you force yourself to get there, your people won't get there with you.

Ashley: The very first stop in Greenleaf's servant leadership is self awareness. So it's so interesting that you said that. You have to have such a good sense of yourself and knowing your strengths, your weaknesses, being vulnerable and willing to admit, Hey, maybe I'm not so good at this, but you have a skill that I don't have.

Can you help me? Actually committing and saying, I want to serve. So I'm making a choice. I think people forget to leadership is a choice. It is not a role. It is a choice that you make every single day of whether or not to take the baton and say, I see a problem and I want to do something about it. Or you say, Hey, I'm going to let somebody else handle that.

And I think it's okay sometimes if you see someone doing something good, there's another famous TED talk about 20 years old. Now, again, I'm dating myself, but it talks about how to start a movement. And the whole principle behind the how to start a movement video is this idea of being a first follower.

And when you see someone doing something really great, like having the courage to say, I want to follow you because you're doing something great, because then at the end of the day, it's reciprocity, right? You follow them when they're doing something great. And then when you're doing something great, they're more likely to get on your bandwagon and champion you.

and I think that's when work really gets fun is when you see other people doing great, you jump on their boat. They see you doing something great. They jump on your boat. It's what keeps life interesting and fun, but it is a choice every single day. So it's not a position given to someone. It's not, Hey, I'm a VP now, and therefore I am a leader.

It is much more. I've always been a leader regardless of the roles, because I've chosen to show up every day and I've chosen to give the best of myself. And I've chosen when I'm not the best person for the job to advocate for others that can do that better than I can.

Bryan: Yeah. And it's creating those communities, right? Ashley, we talk about all the time here at Baker Hill. It's a whole lot easier to be that fast follower if you're in a safe and comfortable community. And that's another very difficult piece of leadership that is defining that community, defining what.

Good looks like, or great looks like in that community, getting past the surface level, going back to my world of sales, were you a high performer before? Do you have the answers to the basic selling one on one questions? That's all well and good, but what makes a good salesperson at Baker Hill is a different animal altogether, right?

And defining what we believe, not just successful salespeople look like, but ones that do it the way we want to do it, the way we want to be perceived in the market, the way that aligns with our why in building that overall community is hard work. It takes time to sit and reflect and build that out so that you're hiring against the right things.

You're leading against the right things as opposed to just guessing.

Mitch: Kind of changing gears here a little bit, but I think what you're alluding to there, Bryan is like culture creation, right? That goes beyond just leadership. It's setting the tone for culture for a company. And I think this is something that I think most of our listeners right out there are working at banks and credit unions.

So I think this is super applicable for them because we're seeing this with talent in the banking industry right now is this. Thanks. New generation coming into the workforce, and we're seeing that not just in banking, but in every industry, right? But actually, you've said you've been leading people for 20 years in an official sense, right?

And now we have this generational shift coming into the workforce. What are some challenges that you've seen with that shift? And the follow up question that is like, how have you been addressing those challenges? Or what are some things that you've picked up on that you think would be helpful for someone listening?

Ashley: Going back to something Bryan said, I think it is this idea of a growth versus a fixed mindset. I think in technology and in business and in life, survival comes down to a sense of evolution, a sense of continuous progress, not necessarily like an end goal, Hey, I, I put my goal out there and I've achieved it. And now I'm successful.

I don't think the work ever ends, but it is a mindset of I, as an individual, I, as a leader, I can continue to grow, I'm going to have setbacks. I'm going to have challenges, but I can get better every day. And if I think that way, and if I tell my team, Hey, I believe that I can grow. I think you have the power to grow.

I think there's more buy in to bringing in people from different generations or different backgrounds and experiences. I look at the world today and here we are sitting, in 2024, I would challenge that the world is different. The last four years managing both in a completely remote environment during COVID, and then now in this more hybrid world that most of us are accustomed to, I think people are different too, right?

Because they have new challenges. So it's less, hey, I've got this long commute to work and my car is broken down, and I'm sorry I'm late for work. But it's more, Hey, I don't know how to find balance between work and life because I don't know how to shut off my computer at night. So I think there are new challenges to managing today and leading people through this.

I also talking to some of my, younger employees and reality check, community has changed, back in the day, like where people would go to meet other people, get to know people that's different. In 2024 than it was prior to 2020. So how do we as leaders create communities? And it can be everything as simple as one of our leaders here, Christine McCormick, got her team together and did like a scavenger hunt around Noblesville over the holidays.

And I'm going to say out loud, it was brilliant. Because she forced people that maybe work together, but don't know each other to do really ridiculous things. And in having fun together in being ridiculous, they found commonalities, they found humor, they found connection and community. So, so I think for leaders in this post pandemic world that we're still living in, how do we, and it's a question, cause I don't have all the answers, but it's a question of how do we continue to foster this Connections and communities digitally, in person, remote environments, hybrid, which I actually, I would challenge hybrid is the number one challenge to leaders in today's working world, because you've got a community of people that are in the office.

You've got a community of people working from home. How do you connect those two to have shared experiences? I'm coining it inorganic organic, which is you have to create spaces that are structured for people to find commonality. So there is a structure to it. But then you have to allow people to be people and go beyond just the day in day out grind of a job.

And I would say for bankers, for credit unions, the ones that are really doing well in this post pandemic world are the ones that have a growth mindset that are taking the time to say, How can I change? We've always done it this way, but now I need to change how I've always done it because I need to attract younger people who want to do things with speed and efficiency and through technology, maybe another elephant.

I'll go there. But like everything with AI right now, there's a camp that's really afraid of what AI is and what it's capable of doing. And then there's another camp that's really excited by the possibility. And I think As leaders, we need to listen to both camps and really empathize with both camps, but find a way to bridge that gap and present use cases for things like AI so that they're less scary for the people that maybe are afraid and more accessible.

And then also the people that are gung ho, maybe it's slowing down and explaining some of the risk And finding that middle ground, Bryan, you said something else that I want to touch on, cause I think it's really, important and interesting, but as a leader, you're going to have a players and you're going to have people that struggle your job.

Isn't to make everybody on your team and a player that's actually not fair. I would challenge that sometimes a players become B players because they have life experiences and things going on in the outside that impact their ability to perform at that amazing percent. And that's okay. I think as leaders, our job is really to say, let's assess where my holistic team is and look at that bell curve and say, how can I build up the middle?

So that every day I'm moving my team up into the right, every day I'm progressing where we are and every day we're as a team collectively, we're growing and changing. It doesn't mean you have a whole team of eight players and it doesn't mean you have a whole team that's underperforming. It means that.

At any given point, you're going to have the bell curve and you're just, your job is to guide it up the ladder.

Bryan: I agree, Ashley. It's that constant effort of bringing all of our people up and to the right. Like you said, even that a player concept is outdated, right? I, don't sit there and say, do I have a team full of a players? I sit there and say, am I getting a performance out of the people I have? Am I getting their best?

And if I'm not, why not? that gets to what you're talking about. There may be things going on outside of work, but how, do I get them performing at their best and then hopefully having the, structures in place, I To identify either as they start or early on, is there best going to get me the overall performances that I need from the team so that the team as a whole performs.

Ashley: Have you ever heard of the compliment sandwich? Like that's the oldest worst thing to do in the world. There are so many studies that say, if you have feedback to give someone, you need to give it, but also understand that most people understand their strengths and most people understand their weaknesses.

So when you do give critique or negative feedback, it actually takes seven pieces of positive feedback to bring a person back to normal. So I really try in my day to take a step back and say, is this worth fighting? Or. Is it just, can I assess that this person that's not their strength? Let me find a way for them to be successful for them to reach their A.

And who else do I have on my team? What other talents do I have that can do that work or move it around? I think that's part of it too, is being really creative around putting people where their strengths are, not necessarily challenging everyone to hit the same bar. Cause it's not realistic. People are people they're human.

They're different. They think differently and you're not going to get the best out of them if you manage that way.

Mitch: Well, Ashley, I just want to say thanks again for joining us and Bryan, thanks for the conversation today. I really do think there are some great takeaways for anyone and, really this idea, this mindset of growth and connection, I think is so important for a leader today, especially at a bank or credit union where things are constantly changing.

Thank you for joining us and, we can tell that you're really passionate about this and thanks everyone out there for listening to today's episode of Lending Made Easy.