Leadership In Action /
A Whitepaper on Executive Coaching /
Tyler Valentine /
1/25/2016 /
This paper provides an example of how the Leadership in action grants support credit unions that aim for growth, leadership development, and commitment to community /
Executive Coaching:
A Case Study?
Leading the way for Professional Development and Credit Union Growth?
By Tyler Valentine
Executive Summary
Laramie Plains Federal Credit Union is located in Laramie, Wyoming with approximately $44 million in assets and 12 full-time employees. The credit union’s leadership structure changed in September, 2008 when I was hired as President/CEO. Several staff changes followed, including turnover in the other key leadership positions. Since that time, the credit union has grown more than 32% in assets. We weathered the financial crisis well, completing construction on a new main office in 2010. Over the past several years we have invested heavily in technology including multiple upgrades to our data processing system, a loan aggregation software to streamline indirect lending, mobile banking with remote deposit capture, enhanced online banking tools including an integrated Personal Financial Management tool and integrated BillPay platform. We are currently building our first branch office and will convert to Teller Cash Recyclers in 2016.
The above services and additional products including in-house credit cards, Home Equity Lines of Credit and secondary market mortgage lending has created tremendous change for all employees. Several staff members have attended workshops, webinars and conferences to increase their technical and leadership skills, but we were struggling to implement what we had learned in the course of our everyday, busy lives.
Through my work with the Mountain West Credit Union Foundation, I learned executive coaching is a component of the Executive Leadership Program, a program designed to prepare the next generation of credit union leaders. In my conversations with BridgePoint Coaching and Strategy Group, it became apparent that ongoing, one-on-one executive coaching could give myself and my team the tools to better implement the learning we had already completed and achieve greater success for the credit union. While at the same time, developing our professional and leadership skills.
Executive Coaching was a means for Laramie Plains FCU to invest in our people, much the way we have invested in buildings, infrastructure and technology to position the credit union for long-term success. It created a framework to achieve personal and professional goals and grow the credit union with greater velocity and clarity.
The employees that participated were the President/CEO, Executive Vice President, Vice President Operations, three Loan Officers and the Member Service Representative Supervisor.
The following pages more fully explain what executive coaching is, our success and what we learned throughout the process.
What is Executive Coaching?
Just as serious athletes utilize coaches’ guide, push and hold them accountable to the goals they want to achieve, business leaders can benefit from a trusted confidant - someone who is objective, with the training to listen intently and provide constructive feedback. The coach is not a consultant or an adviser but someone that works collaboratively with each individual to determine the goals they want to achieve and then works with those individuals to celebrate areas of strength, overcome obstacles, bright to light blind spots all to achieve their own goals and in the process those of the credit union.
Why We Chose Executive Coaching
Laramie Plains FCU has been through a tremendous amount of change over the past seven years. We are a relatively young team, with leaders and officers in positions of leadership for the first time. These factors, combined with an ever changing regulatory environment and competitive pressures from traditional and non-traditional financial service providers, contributed to an environment of frustration. Our smaller asset size doesn’t allow for increasing staff numbers but our employees were asked to do more and more to meet the needs of our members. We needed a way to eliminate, or vastly reduce, that frustration and achieve growth goals with greater velocity.
We chose to work with an executive coach as a true people investment. The one-on-one, ongoing coaching, customized to the needs of each staff member was the best way for all leaders in our credit union to enhance their professional development and work toward the common goals of the credit union.
The Process
Executive Coaching began with a one day staff workshop that we held on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In this workshop, we interacted with topics such as listening, what it takes to be a good listener and a self-reflection on our individual abilities to listen intently. We talked about approachability and, again, self-assessed how approachable we are to our other team-members. We worked with communication styles to identify and change the way we communicate with each other based on each team-member’s style. Finally, we discussed the importance and need to have critical conversations,when and how to have these conversations in a way that maintains the relationship with the team-member.
All staff members were encouraged to ask questions to gain greater clarity for themselves and others. We then roleplayed and worked with these topics in a very practical sense. The coaches were there to remind us, as most of this we knew the content we covered, but didn’t practice it well or consistently in our daily interactions.
We also began brainstorming about the Wildly Important Goal we wanted to achieve as an organization. Team-members generated several ideas and then were asked why they wanted to achieve those goals and what difference it would make for them personally if we, as a credit union, achieved that goal. Through this question of Why, we were able to narrow the list to a few goals. Employees were asked to continue thinking about it and we would come back together soon to determine the WIG we wanted to achieve for the credit union.
Following the workshop, we began an 11 month journey of one-on-one, face-to-face executive coaching. About three weeks after the workshop, our first one-on-one coaching sessions were held. The coach scheduled an hour with each staff member on that date. We completed Leadership Assessments of each team-member that gave a baseline in our current leadership abilities and the perceptions that other team-members had about us. We used this to identify areas we wanted to improve and worked with the coach to set a plan.
Our Executive Vice President, Vice President Operations and I also began reading “The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals” by Chris McChesney and Sean Covey. The book outlined a proven, successful framework for setting goals, developing leading indicators, tracking results through visible scorecards and holding each other accountable.
In the development of our WIG,our coach reminded us that it needed to be specific and over a stated timeframe, giving the example of John F. Kennedy’s speech in which he declares “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” We were reminded by our coach, the same as President Kennedy inspired a nation to achieve the goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960’s, our goal should have those same elements:What to Where by When.
The first several coaching sessions focused on professional development, while continuing to establish our WIG. In March,we finalized our WIG: $50 Million in Assets with 10% Net Worth by December 31, 2015. This would represent nearly $7 million growth in assets and $600 thousand in Net Income, roughly double the growth and earningsof 2014. Once our WIG was set, we worked to establish individual goals for each team-member that would help achieve the WIG. We collaborated to create leading indicators, setup scorecards to track effort and developed an accountability structure of weekly department meetings and monthly full staff meetings for staff to report whether they were devoting the time and energy to accomplishing the WIG.
Throughout this process, the coach was there to remind us of what we wanted to achieve, why we thought it was important and held usaccountable to those goals in a way that changed behavior. Team-members put focus and emphasis on achieving their goals, found value in being part of a team that was working toward a common goal.
As the CEO, my process was slightly different from that of the other staff members. The coach spent time with me on the overall picture of the credit union as to what changes I was seeing, how my efforts could enhance or diminish those changes and how to push all team-members toward success. The coach and I also spent time discussing my professional development, what I wanted my brand as a leader to be and how I wanted to be perceived by my staff, the Board of Directors and the community. Through the Leadership Assessment, we identified those areas I wanted to improve, set some specific goals and changes in my behavior that would begin to change perceptions of me and lead to long-term growth in my leadership abilities. I also had a phone call with the coach every two weeks to be reminded of what we talked about, what I was working on and how I could readily effect change. We worked closely on what we called the 3 C’s: Clarity, Consistency and Capacity. Clarity in communication, consistency in approach and consequences and capacity in workload and expectations.
Our Results
Aclear victory for us was learning how to give and receive healthy feedback. Most of us are not great at giving or receiving feedback. Our staff members often took feedback or lack thereof, very personally. Our coach reminded us that we are normal, that most teams struggle with this. Now, I am noticing our staff is much more intent to personally grow and be the best professional they can be through giving and receiving feedback. Staff understand that managers are working to the betterment of the credit union and misunderstandings or hurt feelings rarely occur now. They’re not so afraid to take on new ideas and even fail. They’re motivated to achieve great goals as individuals and as a team. We have more robust and more often debate. We understand each other’s listening and communication styles and are better at tailoring our messages to create greater clarity.
We learned to limit the focus. People are not successful at achieving many goals at once but can achieve fewer goals with far greater success. We drilled down three to fice areas, what we called Crystal Clear Areas of Focus and collaboratively established goals in those areas. This removed any lack of clarity and improved capacity while driving success.
While we did not achieve our WIG of $50 million in assets with 10% Net Worth by December 31, 2015, we had very clear success that impacted the credit union’s growth and profitability.
- Loan growth exceeded 12%
- Income from Loan Protection Products surged by nearly 29% to a credit union record
- Debit Card interchange income grew by 13.90%, the most in 5 years
- Net new Checking Accounts grew by 7.75%, more than double our 5 year average
- Credit Card cross-sales increase more than 30%, achieving our 1 year growth goal
- Font-line staff increased cross-sales by more than50%
These results led to a one year Return on our Executive Coaching Investment of 144%!
What We Learned
This process is very personal.It is asking you to look inward, have your blind spots and areas of weakness pointed out to you and then be vulnerable with your coach to acknowledge and work on a plan to address them. In the beginning of this process, I think it would be best to have more frequent contact with the coach. Specifically, in our case, if the coach would have been in the office the week following the workshop, it would have allowed us to get to know the coach better and establish some of the needed trust. It also would have immediately given us a better sense of this process and created a higher comfort level from the beginning.
I also feel meeting with the coach once a month for one hour, was not enough. More frequent reminders from the coach could have driven greater success. That second contact could have been by phone or through web-conferencing, not face-to-face, but still allowed the staff to work with the coach to achieve their goals.
Lastly, I think this is at least an 18 month journey. With my relatively young team, we needed six months of professional development, working solely on our hang-ups, improving our communication, listening and building a stronger team. Also, using this six months to read the book, formulate the WIG, create leading indicators, and create weekly goals. Then, being able to practice implementing the WIG before we were working within our timeline to achieving the WIG.
Summary
As stated earlier, we did not achieve our WIG in 2015.Because of that something profound occurred. We, as team,recognized that we would not meet our goal. We faced it head-on, regrouped and recommitted ourselves to still achieving our goal, just on a longer time-frame.
We reminded each other why we wanted to achieve that goal in the first place and debated as to whether those reasons were still valid, and if it was still a valid goal. Together, we determined this is still where we want to go as a credit union for the same reasons that existed before, but now we can tackle the goal with a better sense of what it will take.
It was important for us to achieve our goal, but so much more important for the long term success of the credit union and our people, is that we confronted what most would see as a failure as an opportunity. Our entire understood what it would take to still achieving the WIG, and made a commitment to each other to see it to fruition. That perseverance and positive attitude in the face of a failure, will be what drives Laramie Plains Federal Credit Union forward in the years to come.
1