Tune into this week’s edition of Money, I’m Home as Lynne is joined by Dr. Troy Hall to discuss the importance of workplace cohesion.

 

[music]

 

0:00:06.9 Lynne Jarman-Johnson (LJJ): Money, I’m Home! Welcome in. I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson with Consumers Credit Union. Thanks so much for listening this week. I’ll tell you what, we are at the CUES Conference, which is something that is so exciting for credit unions because it really focuses on executive leadership. And I’ll tell you what, we have got the expert in leadership. And you know what I love, you’re the expert in helping employees feel belonging in their credit unions. Dr. Troy Hall, thanks for being with us today.

0:00:35.3 Dr. Troy Hall (TH): Well, thanks, Lynne. Thanks for having me.

0:00:37.2 LJJ: You just got off stage.

0:00:38.7 TH: I did. [laughter]

0:00:39.3 LJJ: And wow, what a great A reception. But then afterwards, you were flooded with such great individual questions. What is it about leadership and cohesiveness that brings you into the credit union space?

0:00:53.8 TH: Well, let me first just level-set what cohesion is so that everyone thinks about it in the same way. So cohesive activities involve a state of belonging, value and shared mutual commitment, and that sense of belonging is about inclusion. It’s about making sure that the individual isn’t just, “Oh, I’m inviting you, but I’m actually now including you.” So I like to think of as an example for belonging is, I get invited to a party, and when we get there, imagine how we feel when the host greets us and hugs us or gives us a high five or a fist bump or whatever it is, the appropriate greeting, and then says, “Hey, I want to make sure the food is laid out over here, and I want to introduce you to some folks. And by the way, when the music is playing, feel free to get up and dance.” You see, I’ve gone from just that invitation to now inclusion. So you want… Belonging has to go from invitation to inclusion, and that gets us started.

0:01:53.7 TH: Then we move to this concept of value, and value is, “Do people respect me? And do I have honesty and integrity?” And those types of things, and those values are all important. But in cohesion, the value is, “Is it purposeful and meaningful work? Do I know that what I do makes a difference?” And I will feel like I’m making a difference and I will be able to contribute more once I know I’m belonged and I’m included, because those then become the foundation for my value of purpose and meaning. And then all of that comes together where I want to be with more people, so I want to have a shared mutual commitment, and I do that through my collaboration because in collaboration, you need to understand that everybody is needed and everyone should be trusted to do their job. And when you do that, then now you’ve created this cohesive environment within an organization.

0:02:48.8 LJJ: Now, doesn’t it seem to you that it should just be common sense? But truly what you’re doing is reminding and teaching us that we all need to constantly be working at bringing people in, not just saying, “Here’s your job.”

0:03:05.4 TH: Right. And it’s more than common sense, because what happens is common sense is acquired by you observing what’s going on into your environment, making sense of it. That’s a long process. Common sense takes a long time. It’s unfair to think that a two-year-old should have common sense. They don’t have a frame of reference, right? So imagine you have an employee who starts and they’ve been there for a year and you think they should have common sense. Well, they may not have common sense about what you’re doing because there’s not been enough time to develop the common sense. So, I have a cohesion culture trademark program that involves leadership development, because we need to sustain what the individual is doing. We have to give them a path for growth and the path to move on, because we know that 71% of employees in an organization expect growth development and advancement. They’re not trying to be the CEO, but they want to be ready for the next event. I want to be ready for the next opportunity when it happens, they want to know I have a future.

0:04:03.7 LJJ: One of the things that you first spoke about when you got on stage, which I found fascinating, was the words, “I am a leader,” not, “I want to be a leader.” Tell us a little bit about that.

0:04:15.4 TH: Well, my philosophy is that the truth is in the I am, not that someday I will be. And we are all a work in progress. Everything we do is a work in progress. Rarely do we ever get to the end. When we do, we find that when individuals celebrate only the activities that they’ve already achieved or acknowledged or have already done, then their mind isn’t set for growth and development. So, when you claim the I am and you take that position, not that someday I will be, then that mindset also triggers, “Oh, I am a leader. I am this,” in the present tense, because to get to the future, you have to be in the present to get to the future. You can’t get to the future from the past. The past only serves as a reference point, as some recognition for what you’ve done. But you can imagine that if an individual had a very successful 30-year career and rested on their 30 years and expected to have another 30 years of a great future. The reality is that wouldn’t happen because they didn’t rest on 30 years to get to the 30 years, they learned, grew and developed, so they have to continue to learn, grow, develop to have another 30 years to make that work. So that’s why I want people to claim that, but I do understand in different cultures, that may not happen. They may not want to claim it. So, if so, I work with them to find the language that’s appropriate for that culture to be able to claim the present tense of what they’re doing.

0:05:42.2 LJJ: So, it’s all about being teachable, you said teachable, which I absolutely love. It’s like you don’t stop learning because you grow up or become the CEO or the chief marketing officer or whatever it might be. And how then do you build up to bring others along? I think you mentioned mentorship, which is so important.

0:06:03.5 TH: Yeah. So, you first start with the mindset of being teachable. So, it’s one of the first of the seven attributes of an effective leader, and that teachability now sets the stage for everything else it follows. Can I accept people’s viewpoints that differ from mine? Not unless I’m teachable. Otherwise, I don’t want to hear it. Will I try things that may have been done in the past, or will I stop myself by saying, “Oh, we’ve already done that before,” or, “We’ve already tried that.” And I’m like, “Yeah, you may have tried it, but when did you try to go.” “10, 15 years ago.” “Okay, do you not realize that things have changed?” So, I could make a mistake by saying, common sense would tell me that you should be open to it, but common sense isn’t playing into this. It’s my bias. It’s the opinion that I have. So that’s what you want to do. So, if you can create a teachable mindset and set that as a foundation and say, “Okay, I’m going to practice that. I’m going to learn something new every day, and not only am I going to learn it, but I’m going to apply it,” because that’s how you get wisdom with knowledge, is when you apply it. “I’m now going to apply it,” you can start to feel for do I need to tweak what I’ve learned? Can I apply what I’ve actually learned?” What is that going to look like?

0:07:14.0 TH: Peter Senge’s work talks about a learning organization. And one of the first elements of a learning organization is to be generative in their search for knowledge, and that concept says that I will think about information that I can apply, not only today, but in the future, so it has a very broad perspective. There are some individuals who might be teachable for the moment, and that’s what we refer to as single-loop thinking. So, it only solves what I need to do right now and I didn’t think much more about it beyond that. If you want them to truly expand beyond the teachability and really get to double-loop thinking, then they have to think about how does it apply tomorrow, not just today. And I also give leaders a break in this because I say sometimes you do have to solve it for today. I know the listeners are probably going, “Yeah, but sometimes it’s immediate, I got to solve it today. Yeah, like I’m in a boat, the boat’s sinking because there’s a hole and I’m going to get the water out. Yeah, that’s single-loop thinking. I’m fixing the hole. But when I’m done with that crisis, I now have to investigate what else would I do to keep that hole from not only appearing again today, but how do I keep it from appearing again tomorrow. What would that look like?

0:08:27.7 LJJ: Love that.

0:08:28.5 TH: And then it’s just… And the mentoring is the work in progress. And the mentoring is really about asking open-ended, non-leading questions to the mentee. It’s not about giving them a lecture, and you have to be careful to make sure that the mentor understands their role. Their role is not to shape the mentee into a replica of them, it is to encourage them to be their best self.

0:08:54.8 LJJ: You mentioned that currently in the workforce, we have five generations working. When you’re looking at mentors and mentees, I think sometimes you might assume, well, an older person needs to be the mentor, but in reality, it truly isn’t about age, is it?

0:09:12.5 TH: No, it’s not, because it’s about experience, and it’s about the who. So, in achieving a goal or a dream or an aspiration, you achieve it by creating a system, but the concept is you’re going to create a system to make that goal achievable, and so those activities that you do help you achieve that outcome and that result.

0:09:37.0 LJJ: So, you have three books and you’re really focused on the whole cohesion aspect of it, but I hope you don’t mind.

0:09:44.4 TH: No.

0:09:45.9 LJJ: I loved at the end that you mentioned Fanny Rules, and I love the fact that you are donating to Alzheimer’s. Tell us about that.

0:09:52.7 TH: So, the book is a leadership legacy that my mother left me, and I wanted the world to have it. It started out very 411 version. When I was 12 years old, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, and we lived in a poor town in West Virginia, economic conditions that really weren’t the best, limited education, we were 30-45 minutes from the nearest manufacturer or big employer or even hospital system, and 50-some years ago when people were diagnosed with cancer, we thought they would die. And so, my job in the family at 12 years old was to take care of my mom so that my dad could go to work. So, I was at my mom’s bedside. I changed her bandages, I took her to the restroom, I fed her. In addition to that, leading up to that event, she taught me how to write my first check, she taught me how to shop for groceries, how to follow recipes and cook, how to clean, how to make sure that my dad was taken care of so that he could focus on what he needed to do. He was the protector and provider, and mom was the caregiver and the nurturer. And so, I think a lot of me is a result of that.

0:11:06.9 TH: So, when I wrote the first book on cohesion culture, it was to establish a certain level of information that I thought would be helpful to people in the business world, and what I recognize as leaders, is people want to see the person behind the name. And so, the book Fanny Rules gives me an opportunity to showcase what I learned and who I was as a person and the experiences of growing up. So, the good news is mom lived 43 years beyond that awful summer, but she later passed away due to dementia and Alzheimer’s. And so, because she lost her memories for those last five years of the life that we spent together, I wanted to do something. I wanted to give back. So I thought of the rules that she basically guided me by and I created 31 teachable moments that are wrapped around those nine rules so that my children and my grandchildren would get to see this extraordinary woman who had a high school education, lived in a poor situation, who could have let circumstance dictate that she wasn’t worth anything, but chose to rise above because of the choices she made by character that says, “I need to teach, I need to develop, I need to make sure this young man has everything he needs to be successful in life.”

0:12:26.6 TH: So, she really epitomized all the stuff I talk about today, and Mom didn’t even have a clue. She didn’t even know the theories and the things behind it, it’s just that through her, what I would refer to as Biblical wisdom, she was then able to guide me and knew that she needed to do these things. And so, I wanted people to be able to see that, and then I wanted to make sure that our proceeds of the book, and when I talk about it, and maybe people think I’m just trying to sell the book, but the proceeds are going to the Alzheimer’s Association. It ended up being number one in business and professional humor, and to date, we have donated over $25,000 to the Alzheimer’s Association of South Carolina.

0:13:03.8 LJJ: You are a speaker all over the globe and have touched so many lives, and I’m so honored to have you today. Thank you.

0:13:10.6 TH: I’m happy to be here, and it’s really great. And I’ll leave you with my mantra, and this is what I tell leaders all the time who think they have to do everything, they have to answer all the questions, is, you don’t have to know everything, you just need to be teachable.

[chuckle]

0:13:23.5 LJJ: I love it. Well, I’ll tell you what, you have been extremely teachable and everyone around you has… It has been really fun to watch. I mean, people come up with such great questions right to you individually and you’re just a joy, so thank you.

0:13:37.5 TH: Thank you.

0:13:38.4 LJJ: Listen up everyone. That is amazing. You can grab Dr. Hall’s book. What’s your website?

0:13:45.0 TH: Oh, the website is drtroyhall.com, so it’s D-R, troyhall dot com. And you can interact with me on social media @drtroyhall. LinkedIn is my primary social media platform. And I have a bi-weekly publication that comes out, and you can subscribe to that and a lot of the information that I have within my research or practical applications, tips, suggestions, ideas, principles, practices are all being infused to the newsletter, and it’s called Cohesion Corner.

0:14:16.1 LJJ: Oh, I love it. Well, thank you. And thank you for inviting us all to subscribe. We sure will. Hey, thank you for listening. And if you would like any type of information or you’d like a topic chair, just send me a note and I’ll be glad to do a podcast with you as well. Hey, Jake Esselink, thank you so much for your production skills. We are from the CUES Future & Economic Summit here in Michigan. Everybody have a wonderful week.

[music]