Boost Your Leadership Skills This Fall: 5 Strategies for Success

In Autumn’s cloak of colors, like a pirate in disguise, It sneaks upon us, robbing focus from our eyes. We chart our course for New Year’s goals, so clear, But fall’s distractions hijack, causing us to veer. The fall season is typically reserved by credit unions to set clear objectives and strategies for the New Year. Only, let’s talk about something that always seems to bubble up: leadership fatigue. During these holiday months your focus must contend with heighten member demand, employee leave and time off, financial reporting, annual performance evaluations and employee reviews, party planning, gift buying and, oh yeah… family needs. Before the holiday hustle, let’s take a timeout right now to sharpen our leadership skills. Here are five strategies to help credit union leaders like yourself elevate your leadership game. Mindset A strong mindset allows you to steer your team through the end-of-year distractions with confidence. Analyze the story in your head. Are you being closed-off and self-centered? Perhaps you have self-doubt or a pessimistic inner dialogue about yourself or your team. Or maybe you have unrealistic expectations and are setting yourself up for disappointment. One way to develop a stronger mindset is to examine the routine within your routine. Look beyond the surface of everyday challenges and examining the deeper, often hidden, elements that could be eroding your outlook. Inspect Inspect how your strategies are implemented by the frontline team at your credit union. Are your team members’ behaviors aligned with your vision? It’s this time of year where you’ll find those who become less engaged with the credit union and those who are truly team players. Regular check-ins and feedback loops can ensure everyone is on the same page. Attitude Are you having a bad day or a bad attitude? Identify what’s impacting your attitude and address it. And understand this: How you experience outside factors is 100% within you. Be a driving force that inspires and motivates your credit union. Limits Time is your most precious resource as a leader. Recognize that you can’t do it all. Set limits on tasks that don’t contribute significantly to your goals and block out time so you can think strategically. Be wary of distractions, delegate effectively and concentrate on what truly matters. Take it to the next level and encourage your entire credit union to do the same. By eliminating non-essential distractions and focusing on high-impact activities, you can maximize your productivity. What tasks are your team doing that could be eliminated or automated? Collaboration It’s amazing that at a time when we should come together, we often feel the most apart. Everyone seems on edge as their time is limited. Do you ever find there’s forced cheerfulness? Reflect on how you can create a more inclusive and enjoyable experience for all involved. When you establish purposeful relationships, you’ll drive and sustain more desirable outcomes. As credit union leaders, these practices will not only enhance your leadership skills but also drive success for your organization. With holidays and festivities, our path does sway, Like treasure-seeking pirates, we lose our way. Yet as the leave fall, remember, we can reclaim, Our goals and dreams, to steer our ship again. Embrace the season of change and growth. As Vice President of Brand Experience for Your Marketing Co., Frank Allgood works with credit unions to develop strong leaders, create effective training programs, and build powerful brands. Want to connect? Call 864.326.8740 or email frank@yourmarketingco.com.

The Magic Formula to Credit Union Marketing

I love interacting with people who make me think. Recently, a fellow credit union marketing person, who remembered my background as a radio broadcaster, and I were conversing, and he said something like this to me: “Now that targeting is all but dead on Facebook and Instagram, I believe that the rules of reach and frequency that have always applied to traditional media like television and radio will also apply to social media platforms as they shift away from micro-targeting and toward looking more like mass media.” It reminded me of an old formula developed by a wise radio fella that we used to help make sure clients buying advertising on our station got results. It was called APE (Advertising Performance Equation). Share of Voice x Impact Quotient = Share of Mind Share of Mind x Personal Experience Factor = Share of Market Share of Market x Market Potential = Sales Volume When I was selling radio, our goal was for a client’s ad to enter declarative memory. Declarative memory is the audience’s mid-term memory. Longer than Working Memory but not yet Procedural Memory, which is involuntary, automatic recall. Now for a message to enter Declarative Memory, the same message should be repeated to the same individual at least 3 times within 7 night’s sleep. I’ve seen more recent research that has lowered this number to as little as 2.5 repetitions per week. This is why we implore clients to not ask for a creative refresh too soon, because just as they are getting sick of seeing or hearing their own ad, the credit union’s potential member is just starting to remember it! If your creative is good, you are in luck because the more memorable the message, the less repetition is required. To tie this traditional media discussion back to digital marketing, the only way to beat the system (Google) and save money is to create marketing messages that are highly memorable. Any limited time offer with a call-to-action (think a promotional share certificate rate) is erased from declarative memory when the limited time window has closed. This is why it is near impossible to build a brand with Direct Response calls-to-action and constant promotional messaging. What is old is new again. As the algorithms continue to change and evolve, so must our strategies. Sometimes looking back to tried and true marketing strategies and giving them a facelift for new media can yield interestingly great results. Want to build a great brand with strategic marketing for dazzling success? Let’s (give a listen and) Talk!

Why Great Things Aren’t Happening At Your Credit Union

Try, try, try again. You’re working your credit union’s strategic plan; you’re spending money marketing, but nothing seems to generate the growth you’re looking for at your credit union. Why? Things don’t happen when you stand still, or even worse, when you try half-heartedly. I write from experience. Let me share my story and see if this sounds familiar. For the last three years I’ve had a vision about what next level looks like for YMC. I dreamed and started taking steps, but they were half-hearted steps. I tweaked instead of re-imagined. I applied band-aids instead of amputating dead limbs. I remained paralyzed in fear about “what if” and didn’t take the steps I needed to take and do the work that needed to be done because of FEAR. OUCH. My mentor pointed out that I was not taking my own advice. The same advice I share with my clients. “You can’t build your credit union for future growth with younger members by trying to please everyone.” Last year we were entering year 15 of YMC’s existence and I knew we had some legacy processes and services that needed to go away to be relevant and successful for another 15 years. I kept imagining the worst about legacy clients and how they might react to the changes. They had been so used to “the way we’ve always done it.” What in the world would they say if we made these changes? We’ve been super successful, why rock the boat? So, I took my mentor’s advice, and I rocked the boat. We put together a strategic plan that would be executed over the next 18 months that would set YMC up as if we were a new strategic credit union marketing firm opening up today. I chose three of our closest clients that, if they had fired us over the changes, I knew we had done something wrong. These are progressive, entrepreneurial and passionate credit union leaders and clients. After sharing the vision and proposed changes, their feedback was positive. We pressed on. I shared the news with all of our clients. No one fired us. The feedback has been amazing. “This is going to be great.” “I wish you would have done this sooner.” Wait, what? I think back to a CUinsight article I penned several years ago in which I wrote about fear, and I realized that I was continuing to allow Dedebe to limit me and, in turn, YMC. If things aren’t working out as you had hoped, perhaps your strategy and your decisions aren’t bold enough. You’re walking the line of the old and new, trying to please everybody and instead pleasing no one. And it’s showing up in your numbers with declines in membership and loans. Things don’t happen when you stand still, or even worse, when you try half-heartedly. Are you ready to take bold steps? If so, then let’s talk!