Leading with Courage and Grace

Leadership is difficult; it requires courage, empathy, and gracefully handling difficult situations. Leading with courage and grace means leading confidently while remaining empathetic and understanding toward others. This leadership style benefits the leader and their team, promoting trust and creating a positive work environment. This article will explore what it means to lead with courage…

Read More

Emotional Intelligence

EQ – A Journey to Personal and Professional Success “The capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.” Emotional Intelligence (EQ) refers to the ability to identify and manage one’s own emotions, as well as the feelings of others. Having Emotional Intelligence requires us to understand how emotions…

Read More

5 Steps to Making your Culture Real

We’ve all heard the nightmare stories of a business’s reputation being damaged by significant cultural attributes failures. Maybe the failure is with their values. Significant companies have faced huge fines, and executives have gone to jail for not living up to their published values. These companies include Wells Fargo, Volkswagen, General Motors, Purdue Pharmaceuticals, and…

Read More

Words Matter in Leadership

“Words Matter,” I did not create this phrase, the first time I heard it was from a great CEO I worked for, Gerry Agnes, at Elevations Credit Union. He used this short statement often. However, these two words take on a lot of nuanced meanings. When used in grammar and spelling, words say a lot…

Read More

Culture = Rules of Engagement

It seems companies either overcomplicate or ignore their Culture. The reality is, your company’s Culture can, and should be, a way you can differentiate yourself from your competition, especially in the financial services world. Think of Culture as a pathway to creating a “competition of one.” A “competition of one” means you have no other…

Read More

A Career Transition Essential – Staying Relevant

Navigating a career is never easy. There will be obstacles and disappointments. There will be joys and celebrations. At times, even new opportunities come to you from “out of the blue.” It is when those obstacles, disappointment, and “out of the blue” situations happen is when the true grit of a leader comes to the…

Read More

Great Endings yield Great Beginnings

Change is in my DNA. We don’t need to face change; we also need to embrace change. If you feel your credit union or CUSO needs to look at change differently and would like the steps to implement change,  my core competencies include the following:Digital transformation – building a digital strategy, the tactics, the organizational…

Read More

Pandemic – Marketing Needs to Talk!

Like you, I have received several emails, seen numerous Facebook and Twitter posts on how banks and credit unions are handling the Coronavirus. Typically these posts and emails start with something like, “We care about your safety…” and then they talk about how they are making banking safe by cleaning their branches and protecting their…

Read More

How Passion Impacts your Presence

When people watch you day to day, they get a pretty good idea of how you feel about your life, your choices, and your job.  It doesn’t take long for someone to figure out if you LOVE what you are doing.  Recently I had distinct experiences where I could tell who loved what they were…

Read More