STOCKHOLM, Sweden—Every credit union has asked itself questions as it fights to attract and retain the right talent. But according to one person, they’re very likely asking the wrong question. Asking the right one, he said, can change everything.
In remarks to the World Credit Union Conference, Eric Termuende, a workplace culture and leadership expert and a best-selling author, offered his insights on the “Blueprint to the Future: Leading in a new Age of Work,” sharing recommendations with CU leaders on what they can do to find the right people, and then keep them. It was an issue other sessions during the conference made clear that is a global concern.
It’s also a concern that is only going to become and event tougher challenge, according to Termuende.
‘Significant Headwind’
“This is a significant headwind. Really, there’s no other way to put it. We’re dealing with a talent shortage,” said Termuende.
When he asked for a show of hands in an audience drawn from people around the world over who was feeling the “lack of talent coming through the doors,” nearly all hands were raised.
“We are starving for talent. We love to say that the pandemic is really the reason for the cause of this talent shortage but I think there are other factors at play that we’re not talking about enough,” Termuende said. “The number-one thing that I’m seeing is that retirement is happening at rates that we’ve never seen before.”
In the United States, he noted the “silver tsunami” means more people than ever before are turning 65 each year, a scenario he said will only increase in the coming years.
And he offered another reason that is less-discussed for the dearth of good applicants: he Internet and mobile technology have led many people, especially younger people, to start new businesses rather than seek a job with an established organization.
Combine those factors with a lower birth rate in most developed countries, and the result is the shortage of talent for all the job openings.
Knowledge Doubles Every 12 Hours
After offering several examples of just how fasts the world and information are evolving and changing, Termuende shared that from 1800 to 1900, information doubled. With artificial intelligence, it is being estimated there will be a doubling of knowledge roughly every 12 hours.
“This puts us in a bit of a tough spot, doesn’t it?” Termuende asked the meeting. “If the future is impossible to predict, if the talent shortage is here and the world keeps moving faster, how can we possibly build an incredible team that will navigate this future of work? How do we possibly not just keep up but even stay ahead?”
Asking a New Question
Termuende posits that that the answer to answering questions about the future requires asking a new question.
“The question that we’ve been asking is, what does the future look like? I actually don’t think that’s right,” he said. “The question we should be asking is, ‘How do we build a team that is so good it doesn’t matter what the future look like?’ Those who try to predict the future are wrong. Those that build teams to prepare for the future are the ones who get it right.”
How to Build Teams
Termuende urged credit unions to do two things to build teams that can adjust to whatever the future brings:
- Build a deep sense of trust
- Isolate and remove friction
Build a Deep Sense of Trust
To illustrate an organization that built a sense of trust where there had been little, Termuende pointed to Kevin Stefanski, who was a first-time head coach when the NFL’s Cleveland Browns tapped him to lead the organization just as the pandemic was taking hold.
Unable to hold an in-person event, Stefanski held a Zoom meeting with all of the players and rather than talking X’s and O’s, instead conducted the “4H Drill” in which he shared his personal perspectives and experiences around four H’s: Heroes, Heartbreak, Hopes and History. Coach talked about these four with the team.
Termuende shared his own vulnerabilities, and then asked if anyone else wanted to do so, as well. It proved to be so popular a second day’s Zoom session was added.
When asked how he had managed in his rookie year as coach to turn around a perennially losing Browns franchise with a winning record, Stefanski answered, “When my team trusts each other off the field, they play better on the field?”
Do You Know Your Team?
Added Termuende, “My question for you is. ‘Do you know who your team is off the field so you can play better on the field?’ The same thing happens with our teams when we bring people in with skills and education and they look great , but do we trust them? No, because we don’t know enough about them. I’m not saying we have to skip the trust-building phase. I’m just saying the faster we get to know more about people outside of work, the faster we’re going to be able to do great work, innovate and make sure that our credit unions are doing as well as they possibly can.”
To reinforce his point, Termuende cited research around the five dysfunctions of a team that found the foundation of the highest-performing teams is trust, and the common trait among the poorest-performing teams was the lack thereof.
“If we have this foundation of trust, that’s when there can be conflict. We’ve always thought that conflict in the workplace is a bad thing. No, social conflict is a bad thing. Intellectual conflict is a requirement.”
Why Some People So Like Their Jobs
In the latter scenario, according to Termuende, employees can put forth ideas safely. He cited examples drawn from a number of successful companies that had something in common: People liked their jobs because they liked the people.
Among the examples shared was that of a Best Buy store manager who spend 30 seconds per employee every morning asking the same question: What is your dream and how can we at Best Buy help you make that true? The store had some of the highest sales among all Best Buys, and the CEO would end up taking that idea company-wide.
For credit union leaders looking to spark a similar discussion, he shared the Seven Windows exercise, below.
“It’s a really cool way for your team to get to know each other,” Termuende said. (A copy of the exercise can be found at erictermuende.com.)
A Bad Engagement
A second issue around employment that is misunderstood, Termuende believes, has to do with oft-discussed “engagement.”
“We look at engagement as if it’s something that we fix,” Termuende stated. “Engagement is what happens when we fix what is broken. When people are seen and heard, engagement happens.”
The 31-Hour Day
Being seen and heard today isn’t easy. Termuende shared a graphic based on findings from Pew Research that suggest people now have “31 and a half hour-long days” due to multitasking.
“I think that we can agree that when we’re trying to do two things at once we’re not doing anything all that well, especially when it comes to building relationships,” Termuende told the meeting. “So, if there’s no other takeaway, I would invite you to consider that the fastest way to speed up human connection is actually just slow down.”
Building those connections, he said, keeps employees from looking for grass-is-always-greener jobs elsewhere because they see the grass is plenty green at their workplace.
Don’t Check On, Check In
Describing that another way, he urged managers not to spend some much time checking “on” workers as checking “in” with them, which can be down by asking simple, basic questions, such as:
- What did you learn about it last week?
- What can we improve on?
- What mistakes did we make?
“Thios is where innovation happens. This is where conflict is encouraged. This is how we thrive in the future of work. This is how we build trust,” he said. “The fastest way to get trust is to give it first.”
Isolate & Remove Friction
With that trust established, Termuende said an organization can then start to isolate and remove friction.
“It’s not going anywhere. The world is only going to be moving faster. Friction points are going to come up when we least expect them and we’re going to have to be able to remove that friction,” Termuende told the World CU Conference.
Two Things Everyone Hates
Termuende wryly observed his research has found people really hate two things:
- “The first is change.”
- “The second is the way things are.”
“We don’t want to rock the boat too much, but we know that we can’t stand still either,” Termuende said. “So, my recommendation for you is to make what I like to call a ‘1° shift.’ The 1° shift is the smallest viable change. It allows us to remove friction and get a little bit further from where we’ve been to a little bit closer to where we want to be.
When it comes to removing friction, he offered these questions to ask below.
When it comes to those one-degree shifts, credit unions might want to borrow an idea from one company with which Termuende worked, which said succinctly, “We fix what bugs us.”
A Credit Union Example
Offering up as an example from credit unions, Termuende pointed to Servus Credit Union in Alberta which dedicated the last two minutes of every meeting to the question, “What can we fix?” Over next 18 months, the credit union found engagement had improved 18% and SCU’s time-to-market improved by 30%.
Friction & Leadership
Fifteen to 20 years ago, Termuende said leaders could get away with saying “Here’s where we are, here’s where we’re going, and here’s what you need to do.”
But no more, because the pace of change has quickened so, he said. Today, a leader can still set a goal, but he or she can’t dictate to the team how to get to the goal or what technology to use. Instead, a leader must trust the team to get there.
He cited a Harvard Business Review study that concluded “when everyone on the team is allowed to solve meaningful problems, engagement and motivation go through the roof.”
“My question to you is, what happens if everyone on the team has a voice and they’re asked to make a small 1° shift?”
Some Homework
Termuende recommended that when credit union leaders returned home from the meeting that they review practices and policies that don’t serve the credit union as well as they used to and which could use some one-degree shifts.
It’s an exercise that should be limited to 15 minutes and perhaps take place once a month, he said.
“Two things are going to happen. Number one, you’re going to generate some pretty incredible ideas, and number two, you’re going to create a psychologically safe place where anyone can share an idea,” he said. “You never know what incredible ideas are going to come up.”