Leadership & Culture If You Dread Sunday Night, Your Job Ain’t Right I hated my first ‘real’ job because it was counter to how I’m wired. A little background information…I worked in loss prevention for a large regional bank. As you can probably imagine, my days were filled with deception, confrontation and a continuous flow of details. Aside from the
Leadership & Culture Leading from Within: The Role of Self-Awareness in Leadership When it comes to leadership, there are a lot of challenges and external forces that you may have to deal with that can affect your leadership — compensation, performance reviews, disciplinary actions, just to name a few. However, there are also internal forces that can affect your leadership, and often times,
Leadership & Culture The Most Important Decision a Credit Union Can Make There is one decision most credit unions make on a regular basis that can determine the success or sub-optimization of the credit union’s performance. It has nothing directly to do with which product to offer or which system to implement. It isn’t about what strategy to create or
Leadership & Culture The One Trait That Can Make or Break Your Team Do people on your team feel safe? I’m not talking about physical safety (which, of course, is supremely important). No, I’m talking about psychological safety. This term was coined and popularized in 1999 by Amy Edmondson, a Harvard Business School professor, when she was researching and working with
Leadership & Culture Be Careful Where You Spend Your Leadership Energy A few Sundays ago, I was sitting in church and, a couple of pews in front of me was a family of four. The family consisted of a mom and dad, a little boy who was about four years old and a little girl who was about six years old.
Leadership & Culture How Do You Engage in a Virtual Workplace? As time rolls on, many credit unions are trying to figure out how to handle the new world of remote work. These days, most employees prefer at least a hybrid work arrangement, and many want to work remotely full-time. In fact, Gallup research shows that 30 percent of U.S.
Leadership & Culture 3 Strategies for Managing Weaknesses in the Workplace Whether we want to admit it or not, when it comes to work, most of us have weaknesses. These are the things that get in the way of our performance or the performance of someone else. Weaknesses can come in various forms such as not being able to complete a
Leadership & Culture Handling Change with a “We Will Triumph” Attitude Change happens in our credit unions for a variety of reasons and in a variety of ways. Some of those changes are small, like a policy change, while other are significant, like a core conversion. When it comes to dealing with change and the uncertainty surrounding it, a good rule
Leadership & Culture A Fundamental Secret of Successful Leaders There’s a lot of information available on leadership. A quick Amazon search reveals over 60,000 books on the topic. Type the word leadership into Google and you find “about 2,570,000,000 results.” It can be beyond overwhelming. So, if you want to be a better leader,
Leadership & Culture So, You Want to be Part of a Great Team? The answer to that question, while not easy, is simple: If you want to be on a great team, be a great teammate! There are many ways to do that, and they can help you set the tone for your team. Here are a few key behaviors to set you
Leadership & Culture Confidence Rules In case nobody said this already, welcome to National Mentoring Month! This is the time where we celebrate the power of building relationships among leaders and their teams through mentorship. And one of the best things mentors can do is to cultivate a sense of confidence in each and every
Leadership & Culture Leaders - Coach Strong Performance Too Most leadership training these days will discuss the importance of coaching. In day-to-day practice, coaching is typically carried out by the manager who offers advice to the employee about ways to complete a task more effectively or efficiently. It usually centers on where the employee can improve performance. While this
Leadership & Culture Make Your Values Valuable If yours is like most credit unions, you have a set of core values. Unfortunately, if you’re like most companies (credit unions and otherwise) these core values eventually devolve to not much more than words on a website. Typically introduced with great fanfare, core values are eventually forgotten and
Leadership & Culture The Conventional Wisdom of Development Plans is All Wrong Many years ago, when I first became a manager, I was responsible for my department’s budget. I had never completed a budget, so my boss sent me to a training course. I didn’t learn much at that course, not because of the trainer or the content, but because
Leadership & Culture Great Cultures Follow This Equation Culture has dominated the corporate conversation in recent years. The importance of diversity, equity and inclusion (or DEI) has become more evident than ever. Many credit unions are looking for a recipe to make their workplaces more respectful and inclusive while also getting the highest level of performance from each
