Jennifer Stangl, director of professional development at the Credit Union Executive Society, joins us to discuss talent acquisition in a tight labor market and how to use motivation to increase innovation within your workplace. Listen today on Money, I’m Home!

 

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00:06 Lynne Jarman-Johnson: Money, I’m Home. Welcome on in. I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson, with Consumers Credit Union, and we are on location in Detroit for the CUES Future Summit 2020 Conference. And we are learning so much about money and money management, but also about people. And joining us today is Jennifer Stangl, she’s the director of professional development at CUES. Tell us what CUES is first off, and then a little bit about yourself, how you got started.

00:31 Jennifer Stangl: Yeah, yeah well, thanks for having me. I appreciate it; it’s been a pleasure. So CUES is an association that’s really designed to provide support to credit unions in talent development. So we’ve actually expanded over the last couple of years and really started to focus on not just the executive level and board level, but really looking at how we can help drive that leadership pipeline. So we’re not just supporting current leaders, but we’re supporting that future leadership population, as well. So we’ve got resources that really help individuals succeed in their roles.

01:00 LJ: How did you get involved in professional development? It’s really inspiring.

01:04 JS: It’s kind of something that I fell into to be honest with you. So when I graduated from college, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do, like majority of people in this world today, and I ended up working for the American Cancer Society with volunteers raising money for Relay For Life events all around the area. And I found that I wasn’t, I didn’t really enjoy the fundraising side of it, but I really loved the people side of it and figuring out how I can give them resources to help the … Help them succeed, but also help the event succeed. And then I started working with volunteers in more areas and then fell into the staff side of it, and I’ve truly enjoyed it. It really connects to who I am as a person, and my goal of being able to help give people what it is they need to be able to succeed, whether it’s professionally or personally.

01:47 LJ: Well, I think you just hit the nail on the head, because you said exactly what it is that people need to succeed and that’s passion for their work.

01:55 JS: Yeah, it really is.

01:56 LJ: What have you found, especially now [as] you look at the climate of talent, and it’s just, it just seems very hard to find the right person for the right fit?

02:07 JS: I think what’s so interesting about that is we’re so focused these days on finding the right person for the right fit, but we’ve put such tight parameters around all of those jobs. We’re looking for the unicorn; unicorn is such a popular thing these days, but we’re looking for the unicorn. And I think it’s remembering that what are the skills and what are the criteria that are too hard for us to teach. We need someone to be able to come in with this base skill set. But what’s all the other stuff that we can teach and educate them and we can get them up to speed on and I can train you on? We need to start making some differentiations between the skill sets that we’re looking for, because it’s going make it easier to find the individuals to fill those roles.

02:44 LJ: Well, isn’t technology changing so fast anyway, that … How would you say that you have to be good at only this?

02:50 JS: Exactly, exactly. And when you look at a lot of the different resources that we have out there these days, you can’t expect everyone to be 100% up to speed at every moment, but does that individual, especially when you’re looking at technology positions where they need to be able to evolve, do they have the skills and talents to be able to re-train themselves and have that mindset? Do they have the desire to learn or are they happy in one space? You wanna make sure that you’ve got that differentiation with people.

03:17 LJ: In the conference, you really spoke to something I think near and dear to people’s hearts and that is, as a leader, and many of the individuals who are attending today’s conference are leadership roles, but there are others that are what we’re calling the crashers that are young and they’re new and up and coming. And the conversation that was held regarding immediately saying no to an idea and how that can totally cut people at the knees.

03:46 JS: It hurts, regardless of where you are in an organization, it’s painful for those that are new in their work because they’re so excited, and they wanna really be able to demonstrate their competence, and their ability to be able to participate in what’s happening. And you say no to something, and it just, it shoots them down. But it happens to people who are higher up in the organization as well, because I’ve put all of this energy and effort and I’ve put my soul into the work that I’ve done for so many years, and I think this is gonna be really great. And now we can’t do it. And so, it’s figuring out how we can have those conversations that acknowledge this is a good idea, and I so appreciate you thinking of this, but now just might not be the right time for this.

04:26 LJ: Give us other examples of the way that conversation can take place, instead of, “Yeah, great idea not doing it.”

04:32 JS: Right. So one of the things I always recommend is I ask individuals if they come to me with an idea and say, “I’d really like to do this.” I say, “Talk to me about why you think that’s important for the organization. Okay, talk to me about how that helps us meet our mission. Now, let’s look at it from the strategic perspective. You know what our strategy is for the next three years, how does this align to our strategy?” And I force them to start to make those connections and if sometimes they recognize themselves that, “Okay, this might not be … as the idea sits right now, this might not be the best way to go, but let me think about it because I think there’s still an opportunity here.” And sometimes we have to have a little bit more of a deep conversation around it of recognizing that I’m struggling to see the connection here. I just don’t know if this is where we can put resources, but let’s really … Let’s not lose this, and let’s see if there’s other opportunities here. So I want you to think through this a little bit more.

05:22 LJ: And that deep conversation about looking at strategy. How does it connect and how does it fit? Do you find sometimes that that really sometimes is the only roadblock there is, is that we just haven’t really connected the strategy?

05:36 JS: It can be, and I think the big reason for that is because when we don’t … We can only put resources into so many things, and strategy is the easiest thing to make that connection with and if it’s, ties to the strategy and we say, “Okay it does have a connection, but… ” And I hate saying but, yes and.

05:54 LJ: Yes and.

05:54 JS: If you wanna go with the improv. This connects to the strategy, yes, and I think there’s opportunity for us to do it, but we haven’t budgeted for it this year. And that also can be a little bit of a barrier, but if we blame it so to speak on the budget or lack of funds or resources at the time, we’re not shooting down the idea. We recognize the idea’s there, and that still keeps that person connected and motivated and helps them to see, “Alright, so what might we need to do?” or are there small pieces of that idea that we can start to do now, even if we can’t meet this big goal? So even if that big one’s not achievable, are there little components in it that might work?

06:30 LJ: So, who are you working with? And when you walk into an organization who usually do you work … What office are you going into? Is it normally HR or is it across the board now?

06:41 JS: It really depends. So we … CUES has a new branch called CUES Consulting that we started about 16 months ago now, 18 months ago. And a lot of the work that I’ve been doing is directly with HR, so VPs of HR, chief HR officers, directors of HR. But there’s also a lot of conversations with CEOs. Especially when we talk about organizational climate, the CEOS are the ones that are really interested in, “We either need to turn the ship around, or we’ve made a lot of changes and we need to get a baseline, and we need to really understand how all these changes have impacted our staff and where we sit now because I think these changes have truly disrupted our culture for good and bad ways.”

07:16 LJ: And when someone is listening and they’re thinking to themselves, “What is the culture that I’m in? What is my company culture like?” You mentioned on stage. Look at it. It’s not, oh, one day I’m going to just make this culture.

07:32 JS: Right, it’s… And culture can be really hard to articulate, and that’s what makes climate so great as well. If you ask me what my culture is, I might really have to think about it and I might go, “Well, I think it’s like this, and I get the sense it’s like this,” but someone else might have a different sense. Because when we think about culture, we think about it in the perception of how we feel about our everyday work. So when you asked me to think about culture, I’m really reflecting on it from a climate perspective. And so it can be really hard to articulate that piece. But the climate, and understanding that, really helps us create those actions and behaviors that will eventually get us to the point that we want to be in a culture perspective.

08:10 LJ: And the focus on actions and behaviors that a leader can continually bring up, is it almost like rules? “Look at this is how we act here; this is how we are.” And then you have to demonstrate it.

08:26 JS: That’s the key. You don’t necessarily want to have that, you know, the board that you have when you’re in kindergarten, “These are the rules of the classroom.” We don’t need to go that far, but what we need to do is we need to see our leaders demonstrating the behaviors that are going to help us succeed as an organization. So we need to see our leaders giving trust to other people and also providing trust to other … or receiving trust from other people. We need to make sure our leaders are demonstrating as we just talked about, the ability to fail forward and to recognize when something didn’t work. So it’s that demonstration and not just the words. It’s what your parents always say as a kid when I say, “Well, why don’t you have to do that?” “We’ll do as I say not as I do.” It doesn’t work in the organizational world; it just doesn’t work.

09:07 LJ: And really, then that culture, that climate those can … Sometimes those can be hard discussions.

09:13 JS: They are, they are. And I think a piece of it is because a culture is so big; it’s like the word innovation that we talked about in the session. Culture can be so big that you go, “I don’t know where to start with this. I think this is what we are. I think this is what we want to be.” You can put those culture values out there and go, “Are we actually living those though?” The climate brings it down to an opportunity to be able to say, especially if you break it down into different dimensions you can say, “Well, here’s our climate, but it’s really debate that we’re struggling with because we talk so much. We have the idea so often but we don’t come to action.” Or “We’ve got a lot of conflict that people aren’t listening to each other.” So you can break it down and you can start to have more manageable conversation when you think about it in the context of climate.

10:00 LJ: So what’s your favorite part of the day? You get to visit people all over the country, right?

10:07 JS: Yeah, honestly one of the really cool things is the first time you get a chance to meet someone. So a lot of the work that I do is virtual and then I might go on site and have one day with a credit union where we debrief, we talk through action planning and then we do virtual follow-ups again later. So it’s that moment of, I’ve been talking to you for two months, three months and now I actually get to see your face and have a conversation, have lunch with you, which is really exciting cause I truly enjoy meeting people and getting a chance to interact. But the other piece that I really enjoy is when you sit down and you share information and you watch the conversation evolve. The object of a facilitator is to not always share my opinions; it’s really to get you talking and engaging. And the moments that I step back and I just watch people discuss and debate with each other and say, “No, I really … I think this is the direction that we should go.” It’s so wonderful to see because it opens up communication. It demonstrates the trust that people have, and you can see the success that they’re going to have moving forward based on how that conversation goes usually.

11:06 LJ: When you travel and you visit all of the different credit unions, I think there’s a perception sometimes about a credit union being maybe, “Well, I can’t join that or … ” Is there like a thread of consistency that you say that makes a credit union, a credit union?

11:27 JS: Oh, that’s a really good question. I feel like it’s staying connected to that mission and that ability to be able to connect your staff to that as well. It goes back to finding that right person for the right position. I might need someone with these certain skills, but I also need someone who’s going to be able to feel inspired by the work that we do here and really want to have that passion behind it, and that’s always going to be that thread I feel like.

11:54 LJ: We hear the word servant leadership. What does that mean to you?

12:00 JS: Oh, to me it’s being supportive of other people. It’s recognizing that my job here is to make sure that everyone else can do their job well, regardless of whether it’s someone who reports directly to me or it’s someone who’s above me if we actually look at the corporate ladder so to speak. But what can I do to really provide that support and guidance and to make sure that I’m honest and truthful and respectful in all of our interactions?

12:24 LJ: How do you feel … transparency? How important is transparency when you’re talking about talent and building someone up in the organization?

12:36 JS: Are you thinking in the context of how honest am I with what I think your potential might be in the organization?

12:39 LJ: Yeah, right.

12:43 JS: I think it’s really important, and I think it’s completely underutilized. Those potential conversations. And the reason for that is there are so many individuals now who when they understand that someone feels that they have potential that gives them that much more motivation and excitement and encouragement. But I think the fear in having that potential conversation is that people think it’s an automatic indicator of the fact that you’re going to grow and succeed here in this organization. There’s no guarantees with anything. We can’t do that. But what we can do is we can recognize that you have skills and talents that are important here. Those skills and talents might be important at this level, and that might be where they stay. And that might be great for you. You might be wonderfully happy there.

13:26 JS: But there also might be individuals that have potential that can go above and beyond where they currently are. One of the biggest conversations I have with people is recognizing that when you grow and develop as a person, professionally or personally, you don’t always have to grow up, you can grow out. You expand that skill set outward and you build new skills that help you lead upward. And I think those are two really important things that we miss a lot. We think more about up and not out.

13:51 LJ: Well, you are helping all of us really think deep about the passion and purpose that we bring to work every day.

13:58 JS: Yeah, I hope so.

14:00 LJ: So thank you so much.

14:00 JS: Yeah.

14:00 LJ: On our podcast we really like to find out, what … Personally, there’s finances and finances are something that a lot of people just don’t like to talk about. Has there ever been a time where you had an aha moment? The most inspiring financial tip someone gave you?

14:19 JS: To be honest with you, it was probably one of the simplest things anyone could ever tell me. I have, I’ve always been a very frugal individual and so I had a conversation with someone one day and I was talking to my financial advisor, and I was talking about how I’m saving for retirement, and one day he just looked at me and he said, “If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’re going to be fine.” And to me it was kind of this relief moment where I can keep doing what I’m doing and still enjoy life now, and not wait to enjoy things until I hopefully some day get to retire. That was a big piece for me. Kind of helped me live my life and move the handcuffs off of what I feel I need to do today.

14:55 LJ: See that big picture.

14:57 JS: Yeah, yeah.

14:58 LJ: Well, we’re so glad that you’re with us today. Thank you so much Jennifer.

15:01 JS: Thank you. It was fantastic. I appreciate it.

15:02 LJ: Thank you. I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson and Money, I’m Home, From finance to fitness is coming your way next week. This is a leadership conference that is just fabulous. And we are located in Detroit taping this week, so we are sure appreciate your listening in. So listen in next week as well cause we’ve got more coming of the same to help you lead a better financial wellness life. Thank you, Aaron, for your production skills. You’re always just great, and Jake as well who is here with us. And I hope you all enjoy the week, and we’ll see you next week.

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