72 - Transforming the Organization Through a Member-Centric Approach with Sharonview Federal Credit Union's Herb White

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional, and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Herb White, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the president and CEO of Sharonville Federal Credit Union, which is located in South Carolina. But really, you're so close to North Carolina, buddy, you might as well be in North Carolina, right?

Correct. Yeah. We're literally about a 5-minute walk. I cross back over into the North Carolina, Charlotte proper area.

All right. Well, now we know where you are. Yeah. So you have been in banking and finance for a long, long time. Tell us, tell us a little bit about your backstory.

You know, backstory, you— it started back when I was in college with a small, younger, small blip. You know, they always tell you, you got to learn what you like I like to do, and numbers have always came easy to me. So my first job out of college, I worked in one of the big corporate banks, commercial banks, and I worked in their investment division. And, you know, had several jobs which I really think helped my career, um, you know, from branches— I, I was a teller all the way to a commercial banker, um, and a lot of levels in between there. So had that vast experience to see things, learn things, and do things, uh, around you just around the whole process from the retail side, commercial side, back office side of the things. I just think that really helped because it gives me a different perspective of looking at everything.

So, so you— I mean, you started from the ground up then, correct?

Yeah, I was—

I was going to say starting in the mailroom, so to speak.

Almost. Yes, I, I do have a friend of mine that was a mailroom clerk, is now a CFO of another organization. But yes, I started off as an assistant in the investment division. But, you know, our commercial bank friends, they call the folks their bankers, did that for consumer loans, mortgages, business loans, and then through success through that area, got into different jobs in the higher levels, and then the leadership journey started. And that's really where the, I would say, the fun began, because that's where I could take that perspective and felt like I actually had a chance to impact customers. And now that I'm at a credit union, members as we call them, I really had a chance to impact and change the way we do things. And the various different roles that I had taught me great things and in both ways, things I wanted to do and things I didn't want to carry with me. So, you know, you learn some of those things along the way of what I don't want to become and what I do want to become. And I've made errors along the way. I think the first thing I will tell everybody is I've bombed it and then I've had good days and I've had bad days. But as long as you keep moving forward and you learn from those mistakes. I think a lot of leaders will say you learn your best from the mistakes and then you go forward from that. So I just think that we've got to keep trying, reach for the pinnacle, but know we'll probably never get there.

Absolutely. How did you move from commercial banking into the credit union world?

That was interesting. Back when I first joined the credit union space, you know, a funny anecdote about it is, is I'm in the commercial banking space and the credit union called to recruit me. And my first response to my wife was, well, I think they've called the wrong person. I'm a commercial banker and, you know, proud of that fact. But what was happening is they were looking out to create the division, and so that they were looking for someone with the live experience. And so after they called a second time, I followed through with it, and I had the greatest opportunity, I think, in my career so far, was come into the credit union space and then build the business banking division for them, teach them how to do it, bring the skill set that I'd learned working for the big banks along that side, and be able to really transform an organization and And that part taught me a lot, not just about how to do things, but how to lead across in an organization that I had no command or what we'd say no control of, no direct reporting for. So I had to learn what we would call now, as I've learned over time, that we call it our influential leadership skills. And, you know, I had to learn that skill. It was different, but that's what happened. And then with the credit union space in having some success in that throughout my career, been able to then catapult with different skill sets. Now fortunate enough to start at the first of this year, get the nod to run Sharonview.

How big is the credit union that you run now?

Right now, our total assets are about $1.8 billion in assets and about 102,000 members that we serve.

That's big. Yes. They all come from in the Charlotte area, basically?

The majority of them are between the two states. Our current branch network expands between both states and from, I would say, all the way down to Hilton Head, up to the Spartanburg area, and then up the coast of Wilmington, up through the heart of North Carolina into the Charlotte metro area.

This is a big operation.

Then we do, you know, one of the things we would talk about is when I like to go visit and, you know, hopefully we'll be able to talk more about that. But when I go visit my branches and I like to go see the staff and the team, to drive from the farthest branch and on each end is about a 5-hour drive. So but again, that's a different leadership perspective as well, moving from As we went from my team being in front of me all the time when I'm sitting in a corporate office to what we faced during COVID to now having people, you know, a 5-hour drive away if I want to see them face to face. So it changes. And it was another learning opportunity and just a different way to look. And how am I going to lead people that I don't get to interact with? They get to see me through a Teams call, Zoom calls. And then how do I impact that differently? What do I have to change to be more specific? What do I have to change to be able to impact that person now that I'm on a computer screen instead of live face-to-face?

Because I love that inquiry. Yeah, let's start off. I want to unpack that a little bit because I think there's real value. First of all, you talk about influential leadership. What were the skills that you did not have that you needed to acquire to become a leader by influence rather than command and control?

I had to learn to— and the base to the, the way to break it down to the easiest way is I had to learn to teach everybody. And it's not that they didn't know, but I was hired as a resource to bring a specific knowledge. Well, the organization didn't. So I can't just walk into an organization and act like, hey, I'm the smartest guy in the room, so you're going to do what I said. So that relationship building, that building of trust that I say what I say, but I do what I'm saying as well, and that build that relationship that the other people know that I am— I can do what I say I do. I'll back up what I say I'm going to do, but I'm also going to take the time to spend whatever knowledge or time I need to make sure that they understand the knowledge. And then I sit back and have to hear their concerns too. What are they afraid of? Really, at the end of the day, when you're building that relationship with someone, they're putting their namesake with you as well, and they want to make sure at the end of the day it doesn't look bad on them. So you've got to build that relationship and let them know that, that you've got them, you're going to support them, and that we're in this together. And but it was a skill set I never had to have because coming from a commercial bank, Everybody knew how to do commercial banking. And, you know, it was— we could talk in lingo, we can talk in, in, you know, just common terms or acronyms as we call it. We get acronym crazy. And it was learning to really break it down but not treat people like just because you don't know this doesn't mean you're not very good at your job. Because I had to learn about a lot about their job as well.

Sounds to me like listening became a really important skill for you.

Yes, I had to listen to them in a great way to put— I had to listen to what they were saying. I had to understand what they were saying. And then find a way to respond back to them on an equal level.

And you had to make sure that when you were teaching and coaching this new way of being, that they were listening to you.

Correct. And that comes with trust. And, you know, one of the things, my pivotal point was, is I know, you know, the critical part is listening, but that listening skill builds trust. And when you cross that line, that's when you can really start having an impact on organizations.

That's right. I teach leaders all the time that Listening builds trust and loyalty. It's the most important skill you have as a leader, is knowing how to listen. And not just listening to the words, you listen for meaning and emotions as well. How are people— where are their emotional experiences? And when you can touch that, that's when the magic happens.

Right. And that's— for me, it's always been the relationship part of that, building a true relationship. And one of the things that, you know, I, I'd like to expand on that if you don't mind. One of the things I've always learned with that, and I learned it early in, in my day, and when I I was younger, probably my college days, my dad owned a small business. And I've talked about the story before, but he owned a small business, and these, uh, a lot of the gentlemen that worked for him were young college kids. A couple of them played for the college football team. And I didn't— you know, I'd always ask them, why are you guys so loyal? And one of the things is like, Herb, we don't look— we don't work this hard for your dad just because he's our boss. We work for him because of who he is and how he treats us. And to me, that was the critical point— how he treated them and how he listened to them, and he was there for him, and he worked around and was able to help them do different things. And he had that relationship with them. They built that trust. As we talked about, he could listen to their concerns. He knew that these guys were college kids. Sometimes school got in the way and he'd have to be very flexible with the schedule. I've taken that with me throughout my entire career, and I need to listen to their concerns, their wants, their needs, and learn to be flexible. I have a business to run, but I need to be flexible enough that I can get that buy-in from them. We're on the same page and then we can go forward from there.

Earlier you talked about that when we had to pivot to Zoom and now you're dealing with people who are 5 hours away from you by a car drive, that you had to figure out a new way of being with them.

Yes.

Tell us about that journey.

It's different because when you're on Teams calls, Zoom calls, or as we call them, or just video chatting systems, you have to be a little bit more specific. It's harder to read body language. I can see myself on the screen right now. I'm probably just shoulders up as with everybody else. Body language is a key. You know, I think it's a listening skill, but being able to read the body language and I didn't have that anymore. Tone interpretation, that one-off question, you miss some of that. When my team at the credit union was just outside of my office, I could hear all the other conversations. I knew what was going on. You know, I had 20 daily interactions with somebody. Now it was a scheduled, preemptive, scripted time frame where I had an agenda, something to do. And an objective. And sometimes the listening comes from not ever having an objective, but just listening to your team chat and talk and what you picked up. And I didn't have that opportunity anymore. So then when I was being specific, I had to be specific about getting that information out. And that's the questions came into play. I'm asking better questions and then hear from them, you know, back to listening, how they responded to the questions became much more critical than just that open dialogue we used to have.

How often do you just get in the car and drive to a— drive to a branch?

One of our branches. My goal has been to do it once every quarter. I'm a little bit behind in this quarter knowing that we're near the end of June. A lot of things have been going on, but my goal for myself has been to make it to every branch once a quarter. And I like that because I really spend time at the branch. The one thing I think in my commercial banking days, not to pick on them, but we go branch visits and they all knew I was coming. Everybody made the branch look pretty and I'd spend 15, 20 minutes there, shake hands, say hi to everybody, and then we went on. What I have found that if I'll plan to spend 4 hours at a certain location and I'll sit down and I'll go into a conference room, I'll catch up on email and things like that. But now I have the ability to listen. I get to hear the conversations with our members. I get to hear the interaction between the staff and you really get to learn because I, by giving that time and that commitment, I've learned to allow everybody to relax and let them be who they really are when the CEO is not sitting in their branch.

Right.

And, you know, and you learn again, it goes back to listening and what you're hearing. You hear their questions, you get a better opportunity to hear members come in the door. How is the team prepped to answer questions? This year has been fascinating with how fast things have changed and how you know, all the external financial things are impacting our team and our operation. Are they understanding? Are they part of it? Are they being helpful? Am I giving them the right tools to handle that, those conversations? And I've learned so much from that part because I just get to hear how the day-to-day flow goes. Because at the end of the day, our mission is to serve our members. And when I get to hear how those interactions go, I know what I have to focus on.

What gets you excited in the morning to get up and go for it?

Right now, I'd say I just really love the impact I'm having on the organization. I loved our old CEO, so I want to always caveat the gentleman that retired before me. We got along great, but now it's my vision, and it's the, you know, I come from a little bit more of a service standpoint where I look at our team and say, If you don't think we have the best products, you own the Word document and everything we own. I'll give you the Word document. I'm going to delegate the authority, you know, because I can give somebody a task that just creates followers. But when I delegate the authority, that's when I create real leaders. So I'm going to give them the authority to edit the Word document. Now we're having an impact and now I'm letting the team really thrive and change the focus. And that's really what I— and I love that in the wake of everything that's happened this year financially, I think credit unions are staying strong, but we get member survey scores back, customer surveys. But as again, to reiterate, we call them members and our member scores are higher than they were last year.

Wow.

In the wake of all the negative attitude. So it's showing that we're having the right conversations with our members. So we're teaching our teams now to listen. And to me, I think that's really exciting just to see the transformation of what we're going through and how we're facing adversity, you know, that we're facing in the economic cycle in 2023.

So what makes you really excited is creating new leaders, right?

Great way to put it. Yes. And by— and I guess I touched on that a little bit. So is giving that authority for them to, to make the decision that I'm making leaders instead of followers. And, you know, we all love followers. But I, you know, my job is to make the leaders and I'm seeing the change, I'm seeing the impact, even with my direct reports, I'm seeing them making decisions now instead of coming to, you know, we're making decisions where I think in our past we would talk about it a lot and then, you know, we'd all get together. But now we're empowering people to make the right decisions and pushing that all the way down. So I'm not just having that impact at the executive level. I'm having it all the way through my organization and I'm seeing that by results and what we're going through and the results we're still having with our members, the efforts that we're seeing out in our branch network. I'm very, very proud of that team and I'm 6 months in, I couldn't be more pleased with the progress they've made. And that's, you know, that just gets you excited and want to continue to go do it and do it a little bit more.

Pretty obvious.

Yeah.

What is it you think that's unique that you bring to the table?

I would really— it's, it's— I'm excitable. I think that's it. But it's— to me, I truly have a passion. One of the things that I tell my team a lot is a saying I like is heavy head, heavy heart. And I'm okay with having a heavy heart. It's okay to struggle when you have to make the hard decisions. And I lead with that a little bit. The heart's always in the forefront of the tough decisions, the impact of I'm going to, you know, one more chance, you know, this person needs this. If I could have done something better as a leader, would this person be a different person today? So that's that heart where I put it back to myself. What else could I have done? And so I think what separates that a lot is when we talk about heavy head, heavy heart is the fact that I want my— the entire organization and they're slowly knowing that, but I care about them personally. I care about them first, then I'll care about the results of the credit union because I truly believe when they know I care about them, then we'll always be doing the right thing.

That's a really great philosophy. I wish more people would adopt it. Yes.

And we're working on it. Yeah, it's not there, but we're working on it. But I think that's that influence and that's one of the things I always want to make because it goes back to what I said earlier. It was my dad. I learned that from my dad at an early age. He cared about the people and they went out of the way to help them. And I hope and I, you know, again, my philosophy is I'm going to do that with my organization now that it's close to 300 employees, that they're going to realize that. And I want that same impact to happen to them and then we can move forward with it. And that's how we get better results.

So do you see the credit union expanding and continuing to grow with new branches as the years go forward?

Definitely in the years going forward. I have so much confidence in what we're doing, where we're going, and with the team that we have here. Obviously right now, I would say short term, you know, inflationary costs just makes things not economical. But definitely, I think we have a brand, we have a model, we have just a culture that I think people want to be a part of. And, you know, for us, you know, again, I think to wrap up everything I was saying about the heavy head, the heavy heart, the passion for the people, They're caring about them. That's our culture. And when you build a strong culture through your caring, one of our sayings is a genuine care and concern. We care about our employees, and that is a culture that is hard to create. And we have one. And I believe we can take that culture and do a lot of great things to more, more areas, more locations, and for more members and more employees.

Yeah. And you're in a part of the United States going through growth. Population growth.

Definitely. And, you know, and that's— it's a different way to handle it because the demographics coming in a lot. One of our new strategies that we're taking into place is looking at the demographics, generations as we talk about it, and making sure that we're serving everybody at a different level. That again, that came from empowering the right people to make the right decisions at the right time. And by listening to that now, in this case, listening to our members, You know, a younger generation, they probably want more phones. My parents' age people, they want to come into the branch and they want to talk to somebody. Well, how do we, how do we broaden that spectrum across the board? You've got to listen. As much as we know, we have to listen to our people and we have to listen to our staff. We also have to listen to our members and make sure we're delivering the right product to them at the right times.

Right.

And, you know, and so that's, that's part of that success as well.

Interesting. So credit unions have been around for a long time. Do you continue to see a credit union as being a viable financial institution? Yes.

Oh, 100%. You know, as long as I've been in the financial career, I now feel I've been in the credit union space more than I have on the banking side. And I really love what we do. I love the overall structure of what credit unions are, where we come from, where the decisions are made. And it fits more my personality side. So don't ever want to sound critical because I did serve on, you know, work many years in our commercial banks, and I learned so much from that side, as I said earlier. But, you know, I like our model. I like our not-for-profit organization. I like the fact that every member is one vote and no one person gets to drive a lot of the thought process around that. And, you know, there's challenges with that because, you know, there's 300 members and 300 different personalities, you know, so but, you know, luckily we have a volunteer board that does it, and we narrow that down for our board, and I get my guidance from them as the truly elected officials. I like our structure. I like what we do, and I like how our mission is to serve underserved areas. And I feel, Sharon, we do that very well. If you looked at where a lot of our branches are, they're not near metropolitan areas. Our best branches, you know, from a transaction count— I don't want to say in another category for my other leaders that may listen to this. But from a transaction of where we impact the communities, it's in the smaller communities and some of the underserved. So I feel credit unions will have this for a long time because of what we do.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

I've got one more question for you before I go. Okay. What's one thing about yourself, Herb, that we would never know unless you revealed it to us?

Oh, wow. One thing about myself. I live in South Carolina. I don't know why this just came into my head. And so, and I do not like being hot. I was born and raised in Denver, Colorado, and I miss the snow about that piece. But, you know, more of the— on that professional side, one of the things that it is, is I— most people, you know, you see that I went to school and got that my undergrad, and I want to encourage people. I got my undergrad things, but I was 50 years old when I finally went and got my master's. And, you know, so I hope that encourages a lot. You know, it wasn't that straight path. I went through a lot of my career without that. And, you know, always want to— it doesn't always have to be a formal, but I will always encourage people to continue to educate themselves. So separately from that, one of the things I always like to push is it doesn't have to be a degree program, but, you know, we have money in our budgets for continued education, and I truly believe in that mindset. And then, like I said, I was honored at 50 to finally make that achievement. And, you know, so without talking about it, I don't think a lot of people know that there was that many years in between. And so small joke with that is I had to—

you—

they asked us on the first day of the class, what's going to be the biggest challenge in taking an online course? And I had to answer that Windows wasn't out yet when I got my undergrad. So, well, there we go.

Uh, we have some things going. I started learning Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, BASIC programming, in 1969.

Okay.

At Dartmouth College on a mainframe with 2K of storage and, and Hollerith cards and punch tape to input data.

Okay. Yeah.

And I got my master's degree when I was 51. I got my law degree when I was young. I got my law degree in 1977, but I got my master's in peacemaking and conflict studies when I was in 2001.

So very nice. Yeah, very nice. So same process. I just love that journey, um, encourage that because it just changed the way I look at things after so many years difference and So, you know, I'd always, from a leader, I'd always encourage that. Don't stop learning. I think our job is a requirement of our job to continue to learn. And I wanted mine was focused, was, it was an MBA, but a focus on leadership because even at that age, even where I was in my career, I wanted to get better at this leadership journey. And, you know, I wanted to, I wanted to commit to it.

I'm thinking about going back and getting a doctorate in education.

Oh, that'd be, yeah.

I'm 72 years old.

That would be— I think, yeah, that's great. I think it's a great idea.

So, well, this has been great. Thank you so much, everybody. Really enjoyed our conversation.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Doug. Appreciate it.

Absolutely.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team.

Want to know more?

Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.