WASHINGTON–Credit union leaders here were offered “Eight Pearls of Leadership” when it comes to leading people and organizations.

Speaking to America’s Credit Unions’ GAC, Carla Harris, a senior client advisor at and vice chairman atMorgan Stanley who has more than 30 years experience as an investment advisor, and who has also had an acclaimed career as a gospel singer who has had sold-out concerts at Carnegie Hall, shared with credit unions what helped drive her career and what she has learned. 

She summed all of that up with her “Eight Pearls of Wisdom.”

“We are in a very different environment than the one that I had built my career in,” said Harris. “I also realized that because I was in finance I had built my career in a producer culture. If you were a great producer you were not only compensated well, but you were promoted and given titles and leadership without any thought as to whether or not you could be a powerful leader and effectively lead others.”

In the fourth quarter of 2018, however, Harris said she realized the dominant population in the workforce was increasingly Millennials and Gen Z’ers and “they demanded as table stakes transparency inclusivity and feedback.”

The New World

“That is not the leadership backdrop that I had built my career in. When I walked out of the Harvard Business School in 1987, the leadership backdrop was…when the boss says ‘jump,’ your answer is, ‘How high?’ Now, you say ‘Jump’ to Millennials and they say, ‘Why?’”

What that realization led to was thinking about leadership in a “new context,” according to Harris.

“Most people lead the way they were led, but the tablestakes now are transparency inclusivity and feedback,” Harris explained. “Many leaders who were sitting in the leadership seat at that point really were not down with that. We were told, ‘Keep your head down, work hard and if you don’t get fired then you know you’re doing OK.’ But that kind of leadership style will not prevail in today’s environment.

“Now, layer on top of that a global pandemic  and on top of that the kind of unrest we’ve had on the streets of our communities and our country and, frankly around the world, and in the last few years there have been two powerful shifts,” Harris added.

Two Shifts

According to Harris, the two shifts are 1) amplification of voice and choice, and 2) the change in the employer and the employee contract.

“We are now in an environment where employers are soliciting employee voices,” Harris said. “’How are we thinking about what happened in our community? What are you going to tell me about my career trajectory? I only started two years but what I’m going to happen over the next you know three or four years? What’s going to happen in my career?’ I don’t know one organization that I do business with that is not in some way (doing surveys) to understand how they feel about walking into an environment what can…change the culture.

“With the employer/employee contract, COVID changed all of that. “It used to be that I could tell you what to do, how to do it, when to do it where to do it, and how to show up to do it,” Harris continued. “But in the COVID environment I really couldn’t tell you exactly what to do and how to do it because I didn’t have the ability to stand over your shoulder to make sure that you did it just so. So, the question is if you want to retain and attract the best talent in the marketplace, how do you show up as a powerful impactful, influential leader. That’s what the pearls of intentional leadership are about.”

The Eight Pearls

Harris eight pearls are:

• Authenticity. “This is your distinct competitive advantage. Nobody can be you the way you can be you. More people are not comfortable and confident in their own skin. When people see someone who is, they gravitate to them.” Harris called on credit union leaders to be visible, be transparent and be empathetic.”
• Building trust. “We are all competing around innovation. If you are competing around innovation, you will go into unknown territory and you cannot do it alone. The way to build trust is to simply deliver over and over and over again.”
• Create clarity. “You must create clarity when you cannot see. Everybody is trying to figure out what the future will look like on the other side of the pandemic. Fear has no place in the success equation.”
• Create other leaders. “Those who choose to sit in a leadership seat today must be focused on creating other leaders. The way to grow your power is to give it away. The more you can invest in other leaders, the more you can grow your market share.”
• Diversity. “We are in an environment where the marketplace values diversity. Millennials and Generation Z are quickly becoming the dominant population, and they grew up in an environment that values diversity.”
• Innovation. “Teach your teams how to innovate by teaching them how to fail. When someone on your team takes a risk, you must celebrate the fact that they took the risk. Teach the team what they learn from the person taking the risk and then go on and make the next try.”
• Inclusion. “If you want to be seen as a powerful inclusive leader, solicit other people’s voices. Say, ‘I see you’ by virtue of soliciting their voice. When you say, ‘I hear you.’ – you solicit their voice around a specific topic. Put everybody’s fingerprints on the blueprint.”
• Your voice. “You must be comfortable calling a thing a thing, no matter how bad that thing might be.”