A leader worth following
Community banks are spending a tremendous amount of time, energy and money developing a strategic plan for the coming year. Some are doing it because they have a vision for their bank and others are doing it because they were told to. Unfortunately for most banks, next year’s strategic planning meetings will be partly spent wondering why none of last year’s plans quite got off the ground. If you’re one of those wondering why, the answer is leadership or a lack thereof.
Try doing a google search on “How to be a great leader”. You’ll see pages of results from top 10’s of what great leaders do and of what poor leaders do. You’ll find information on the best traits and qualities of great leaders. Do you want a book on leadership? Search Amazon and be prepared to pay a small fortune if you plan to buy all of the books on leadership. Here’s the next problem, while spending hundreds of hours reading about about being a great leader, you’ll quickly find that you have no time to actually lead. Think about it, with all of the information that is readily available, why is it that so many people are still searching for that one thing that will finally make them an effective leader?
Where do we go from here? We’re not so arrogant or stupid to seriously think this article will have some type of new information that hasn’t already been written about hundreds or even thousands of times. The problem with a lack of leadership isn’t information and knowledge, it’s action and implementation. Do you want to take your community bank’s ROA above 1.0 for the first time? Do you want to grow deposits and loans? Whatever the vision or the goal is, you must understand that your people are watching and deciding on whether they will follow based on what they see. Seeing is believing and once they believe in your leadership, they will follow. Here are three things you can do right now to demonstrate your leadership ability.
Follow the leader
If you don’t know how to follow then you can’t lead and you certainly can’t be part of leading your team toward implementing the vision of your organization. If you yourself are not following leadership, then you are more than likely leading the protectors of the status quo and are part of the problem. Assuming all is good with your leadership, let your people see you following and communicate your complete support of the bank’s leadership. If you’re not willing to follow, why should anyone follow you?
NOTE: For those of you who find yourselves in the position of working for a leader that has no clue or one that may just be a little crazy, then either make a decision to join “team crazy” or get out of there! Keep in mind that once you join that team, there’s almost no coming back.
Be consistent
Either you believe in something or you don’t. Once the strategic plan is communicated and decisions have been made on the processes to implement the plan, stick with it. Far too often, leaders will have a fox mentality as described by Jim Collins in his book Good to Great. Whether it’s that call program you once had or the incentive plan that didn’t quite work out, shifting from one idea to the next every 90 days will give none of your potential followers confidence in where you’re leading them. If they can’t count on some form of consistency from their leader then they shouldn’t be expected to offer consistency in their following. We’re not saying processes can’t be adjusted or that some incentive plans and call programs don’t deserve to be ended. However, if you have or want a relationship based culture (which all community banks should) then make sure the actions you’re taking are consistent with the culture. Is a cold-calling program, an activity based incentive program, or a pitching based sales process consistent with a relationship based culture? The answer is no. Insure that your actions and your message are consistent with your culture.
Show the future
Your strategic plans calls for new branches, deposit growth, loan growth, etc. Regardless of what the plan is, you must show your followers what it looks like not only for the bank but for them. If your bank grows by $500 million in assets over the next 3 years, that’s great but what does that look like and mean for your tellers, loan processors, and others? In their mind it may mean nothing more than extra work for the same pay. That vision will be perceived as very pessimistic and will be destroyed by the status quo protectors. It’s up to the leader to be very clear in painting an optimistic vision of the future and what it will look like and how it impacts your followers. Until you do that, your leadership will rely on someone else’s vision and that’s contrary to anything that’s ever been published about leadership. You must show a vision that gives a clear and optimistic view of the future. One that inspires the team and is clear on how things are going to get better for the customers, the employees and the shareholders. The clearer the better.
Invention to Innovation
Invention is worthless until it becomes implemented and once properly implemented it becomes innovation. The strategic plan is the invention and most of those plans only deal with invention or the ideas. Anyone can know it’s a great idea. But what good is the idea unless it’s implemented? Once you see the implementation process through, we now get to innovation and this is when the plan moves from the board room to the customer and ultimately impacting the bottom line. When this occurs, the bank, it’s shareholders, and it’s employees will see innovation and experience the results of the vision and will now follow your lead.
