Episode Transcript

Greg Farber:
Welcome to the Building Interest Podcast presented by Leader Bank this week we have teamed up with a Happy at Work Podcast. Leader Bank, President J. Tuli was able to sit down with the Happy at Work podcast team to discuss what truly keeps team members, well, happy at work and the ways in which Leader Bank has adjusted our corporate culture to provide a better work environment for team members to thrive.

Laura Hamill:
Welcome back for another episode of the Happy at Work podcast, with Laura, Tessa and Michael.

Tessa G. Misiaszek:
Each week we have thoughtful conversations with the leaders, founders and authors about happiness at work.

Michael McCarthy:
Tune in each Thursday for a new conversation. Enjoy the show. I’d like to welcome Jay Tuli the President of Leader Bank in Boston. Jay, welcome to the program.

Jay Tuli:
Thanks for having me. Michael, this is great.

Michael McCarthy:
Jake, could you tell our audience a little bit about Leader Bank and and how you consider leader to be different from traditional banks?

Jay Tuli:
Sure. Yeah. So Leader Bank, we are headquartered right outside of Boston, Massachusetts. We are in the grand scheme of banks, we are a younger bank, we’re 20 years old, which is young for a bank. And one thing that’s interesting about us is we’re privately held. So this is very much has family roots, my father started the bank 20 years ago, I joined about 15 years ago, we are still privately held. And we believe that’s that’s one of our competitive differentiators, we really have the ability to do some different things. Think long term, we have a very entrepreneurial organization. I think part of that comes from the fact that this was a bank that started from nothing. And now we’re about 4 billion in assets with over 400, folks. So it’s always been very growth oriented. I’ll say another thing I perhaps we do a little differently is we’re always trying to run lots of experiments. They may not pan out. But we are a little deliberate about that making sure we’re running enough experiments to see if there’s something there that can maybe develop into a long term business strategy.

Tessa G. Misiaszek:
So Jay, you have seen a lot of growth. And it’s super interesting to hear your different approach to the market, what what has been fueling that growth? Do you think?

Jay Tuli:
Yeah, we really believe in this whole concept of specialization. And you know, some call it like the verticalization of banking, which is that you can no longer be the bank, to just everyone, you have to really learn to focus on specific industries or segment groups, and things like that. And as a bank, that’s hard, right? Because, you know, you kind of want to like be out there and do everything for everyone. And so we’ve we’ve been very deliberate about saying, Okay, we’re going to, we’re going to go after this market, and we’re going to do it really, really well. And that before we open up a new market or a new business line, we really think hard and long about whether we can do it and be committed for the next decade. So like, for example, we, we don’t offer wealth management. We have no like trust in wealth services. We don’t offer credit cards, we don’t do student loans. So these are services that a lot of banks do, but we feel like we can’t do them. With any sort of competitive advantage. We don’t we don’t want to be distracted by that. We want to put all of our efforts into things we do do well. So that has fueled a lot of the growth because what it causes you to do is rather than go horizontal to go really deep in the segments that you that you do focus on.

Laura Hamill:
That’s really cool, Jay. So question for you, I was really intrigued when you just said run lots of experiments. That kind of got me like, wow, that love hearing that you just don’t hear experiments and banking go hand in hand. So I was curious about what are some of the conditions that you are trying to create at Leader Bank with your employees to be able to do experiments and I’m just really curious about maybe if you could share maybe one experiment that you’ve done or some sort of intervention around how you’re working with your employees. Really to set those to set those To set the stage for that.

Jay Tuli:
Yeah, I mean, experiments, first of all, like, they run the gamut. I mean, it can be something from how you do a meeting, you know, changing the format of a meeting, to a new product idea, a new hiring practice, you know, a new way of communicating, I mean, so there’s so many different ways. And I think the other piece of it that I always try to communicate is not a lot of these things have, like risk in the traditional sense. Like, if it works awesome. And if it doesn’t work, great, just like, won’t do that anymore. But I think the key is that we have to keep always trying to find a new way to adapt. And what we like one of our big values is continuously improve. We have that branded like all over the bank every day, we have to continuously improve. So whether that product service, you know, how we conduct ourselves, you always have to get better. And it’s taken a while, I think I think it is starting to become part of the cultural fabric now.

Laura Hamill:
Do you have one? That’s your favorite?

Jay Tuli:
Oh, an example? Yeah, I mean, we, we have this one. And this kind of kind of gets to like happiness work thing. So just go back. Like, during COVID, we had a we had extreme growth period. And we actually had to hire 120 people during COVID. And we sort of took kind of, and there were some experiments with this too, which was, okay. We can even interview people in person. Because because this was like, really the height of the pandemic, no one wanted to. So it was like, Okay, can we interview and hire a person, fully virtual and make that work? So, you know, we tried did one person two people were like, okay, okay, that worked, then the question was like, Okay, can we onboard them? Virtually, because we just have them come into the conference room, do all their paperwork, get acclimated. And that took some tweaking, but we finally got that to work. And then we said, Okay, if those two things are true, why do we have to stay in Massachusetts for recruiting? Let’s find the best people wherever they are in the country. So those 120 people we hired during COVID are in 21 states. So that was great. As far as getting good talent. The challenge now we thought was coming was like, Okay, how to culturally, we get everyone acclimated. So we sort of took a book from Harvard Business School, which is when you teach a class, right? Sometimes it’s the popular classic. I remember Clay Christensen’s class, everyone wanted to be in his class, but you couldn’t. So there’d be like five different professors teaching the same content. And so what we wanted to do is how do we stay nimble in a scalable way. So we broke the organization down into 10, groups of 40. So we have 400 people, 10 groups of 40, each senior vice president, we have about 10, would head up one of them. And their goal is to really get to know those 40 people like a cohort, and bond with them, give company updates, elicit feedback, and then have discussions and topics that would be useful to the brand. So for example, like we would have discussions and topics on continuous continuous improvement or client obsessed service, like we do, like the Zappos case study or something like that. So it gets everyone kind of like unified working together, in even though we’re virtual. So that’s an experiment we ran is actually going great, we get a lot of good feedback about it. And it’s helped kind of like keep the culture positive in a virtual setting.

Tessa G. Misiaszek:
So Jay, I would love to ask a follow up to that, because I what you described is really trying to take that what you wanted to be known for what your brand is, and then trying to operationalize that and develop a culture that would be reflective of that and really engage people and have, like you said, a vice president, take a cohort of 40 people and really do specialized activities with them and to really get to know them. So I’m really curious, I love the research between kind of brand and organizational culture. So just really curious to see like, did how did that work for you? And how does that perhaps, you know, develop a more cohesive, happier culture, a culture where people were more supportive of each other? Like, what were the what was the outcome of that type of an activity, kind of longer term on your culture?

Jay Tuli:
You know, just on that, really interesting thing happened to us is when we went remote, our productivity went up. Our culture became stronger. And you know, like we got named to Boston’s best places to work. Two years in a row, like after going remote. And some of the interesting stats were how our engagement scores and our cultural scores were like double digit percentage higher than other banks in our industry. And I think what happened was, when we were in person, we were a little bit casual about what does our brand mean? We kind of were like, you know, you’ll just sort of like pick it up by like, walking around and talking to each other. When we went remote, we had to be extremely deliberate. Because if you’re an individual person, you know, working for us in Texas, and not interacting in the hallways, and when we have to explain, this is what we’re about. So that’s what happens, we got really, really deliberate, we built this like brand bible, we talk about it a lot, we try to, we try to include it a lot of the things we do in the company, and, and we use these 40 person cohorts to reinforce the brand principles, share success stories, and among other things, and it’s been phenomenal. I mean, I think one of the biggest takeaways I’ve had is how powerful the team is, when everybody knows not only what we’re doing, but why we’re doing it that way. thing I tell all of our folks is like, there’s a lot of ways to make money for an organization, but we’re gonna make money this way, with the with these core tenants of our brand bible, you know, and so, I think I think that’s important. You know, again, being virtual, and having grown so much, we can’t micromanage every little decision, every little client interaction. So we need these broad cultural tenants to sort of guide that behavior.

Laura Hamill:
Jay I wanted to double click on the comment that your, your double digits above your closest competitor on engagement, which is what we love to do on this podcast, the happier you are, the more engaged you are, I have a Wall Street background and back in the 80s and 90s, they would just throw a paycheck at you and tell you what to do. And whether you were engaged or happy or not was asked about that. But what are you seeing is the benefit to you? Or why does it matter to you and management? That a worker is engaged? What are you getting out of that?

Jay Tuli:
Yeah, I mean, I think engagement is probably the most important thing we could focus on. I feel that if you have high engagement, you have high productivity, if you have high productivity is going to lead to good client service. And so the goal for us is to figure out how to get higher engagement. And well, there’s maybe a couple things there first, we have to recruit correctly. And so there’s a bunch of different recruiting practices we’ve put in place we’ve we’ve taken a couple of sort of tips from the Amazon culture. And so we have to recruit appropriately, make sure the right persons in the right seat. I think the second piece is people really have to know the why the why the why the why for everything we do, like why does Leader Bank exist? Why do we offer this product? Why are we doing this service? And not the others? Why did we just tweak like this little process? You know, all those things, they need to know the why? Because that is at the end of the day, what gets people going like that, you know, they want to feel valued. And I think valued is more than just saying, Good job, buddy. You know, like, obviously, you have to, you have to give feedback and stuff. But feeling valued is knowing what your role, like really being valued in the organization, like what your role to create value and organization is. And so I think we try to spend a lot of time on that. Even to the extent like I try to spend time really explaining the business model of the bank to a lot of people, even if they’re like, very junior folks, they ought to know what they’re doing fits in the whole pie of providing service to the client. So I think I think those things help engagement. I think it is more than just, you know, ping pong balls, and you know, beanbag chairs and stuff like that. I think it’s about being part of an important mission. And I think what was cool for us is, during COVID, community banks really got elevated on a national platform with the PPP program. And we our team, it was incredible, like they were up to midnight 1am. Like we were saving small businesses that were like about to go out of business. And I’ve never seen so much engagement, and we didn’t ask them to do that. Like we’re not forcing anyone to do that. But it was like a call to duty and everyone stepped up. And so I learned a lot of lessons from that, which is, you know, people want to be valued. You know, they want to create value. And so we need to help them and we need to make sure we’re aligned to do that.

Tessa G. Misiaszek:
Jay, you’re just you brought up a really important word, which is why the why behind what, what we do and why we do it. A lot of people would say that would be the purpose, right, the purpose of the organization? Is that why the common thread that really, you know, is the underpinnings are the foundation of the organizational culture? And is what keeps people motivated. So, my question is to operationalize that, you know, you have banks are known to have incentives, like financial incentives and other types of incentives. But what else? Do you provide people to kind of keep the book KPIs? Or what other types of incentives is it just about, okay, you do this, you reach this goal, you make more cash, or there are other things that you do to promote well being promote healthy work environment, a good culture to work.

Jay Tuli:
I mean, we do a lot of the standard stuff. A lot of banks do, like, you know, we’re flexible with work from home, obviously, we try to promote like fitness and health and you know, all those things. But when we get to the why, like, here’s an example. We’re saying, like, we’re client obsessed, like we’re all about that, we say that when people what does that mean? Well, one thing is sort of converting bonuses and commissions to be more based on NPS scores versus just like unit count. So we do do that. And that, that works pretty well. But you have roles where you, you can’t exactly create the comp structure just that way. So we’ll get creative. For example, in our call center, okay, we take about 6000 calls a month, we put in place a laugh competition, okay. So whatever a call center reps can get their, their clients to chuckle on the phone, okay, the high, the winners of those would get, like, you know, gift cards, or like, they just get different things, right. And it was amazing to see the results like, so I would even listen to the recordings. And you know, and you’re really talking to like a different type of personnel who’s taking the time to get to know you to make you feel at ease, maybe like, tell a joke, or just make it light hearted. And you know, these are some of the things that people like love coming to work for. So but that fits back into the why, like, why are we doing it? Well, we’re saying we’re client obsessed. Well, what does that mean? We want to feel make the client feel at ease when they call us.

Laura Hamill:
I love that laugh contest. That’s such a great idea. I was just kind of thinking about something I wanted to follow up with you related to that. There’s been I’ve been working in the engagement space for decades. And I’m full believer in that that deep connection with your work, right, and how different that can feel when you feel that emotional connection to your work. But I’m kind of I’m sensing and kind of, I think, on the band bandwagon with this idea that for so long corporations have been saying, Come to us employees and give us everything you have, right. It’s all about all the things that you can do for this company, and not as much back for what the company can do for you. Right kind of a lack of mutual commitment, more just one sided in a lot of ways. And I think that’s a lot about what’s going on with burnout and things like that is that we’ve just been asking so much of our employees for so long. So I was curious about how do you think about and I think you’re sort of getting to it with some of the things you were saying around, you know, how you support your employees, and even just like the last piece and the purpose piece, but how do you really think about supporting your employees as whole people, right?

Jay Tuli:
You know, it’s, I’m going to do we operationalize it, and I’m trying to think, do we operationalize that or not. But I will say, you know, as far as whole people, we spend a lot of time, making sure people are learning, they don’t have to just be learning about like, their specific task. But like learning in general, we try to provide a lot of access. We try to, I mean, when it whenever people want to do something where they’re going to be learning more whether whether it’s professional, or even like something else, we totally embrace it. We want to make sure people are having fun. So, you know, we do a lot of things to celebrate our successes. I think that’s key, and I think off off of work, you know, it’s kind of taking it’s kind of taking its own journey, and I really support it like I was I was talking to when we were having these conversations about, okay, like, do we come back to work or not? Right and now was like a big topic during COVID. There’s a one point where we just began interviewing a lot of our team members and say like, okay, tell us exactly how this has changed your life from working from home. And it was really interesting. People would say, okay, cuz I don’t have to drive in, I have this extra 40 minutes. Do you know what I do with it, I walk my dog. I meditate. Sometimes I work out. And we were like, This is phenomenal. Like the, our people are actually happier. And that played into our calculus, like, we, we just didn’t ask people to come back at all, even to this day, where we are. We’re slowly getting people back if we can, for two days a week. And that’s not the whole company just because we do need some like culture and interaction with each other. But we’re very much embracing the work from home environment. Because if you can be more productive and live a happier life, because you’ve cut out commute time, I mean, that’s like a phenomenal thing.

Laura Hamill:
Completely. That’s huge. Thank you for sharing that. You asked, ask them and talk to them about it. Right.

Michael McCarthy:
Jay, I wanted to follow up on that, because it’s been so interesting that we get lots of different feedback on the back of work, you’re actually the first guests we’ve had, that didn’t make a rule that said, you need to come back or you’re not going to come back or two days here, three days there. So I’m curious if you could tell us a little bit more about it. What What I’m curious is, is there anyone that wanted to come back it said, Hey, I’m going crazy at home, I want to come back? And the people that have stayed out? Have you noticed any difference in their work? Versus when they were in the office?

Jay Tuli:
Yeah, these are? These are great questions. Well, first of all, if people wanted to work the whole time, we always made that available, I come into the office, we always made that available, right. I mean, I think every company had abundant office space, and still has abundant office space. So that was never the issue. And throughout COVID, we did have a core group of people who came in. And if you if you dig into the reasons why it’s usually because they don’t have a sufficient office space at home. They had, you know, too many kids and family members and stuff like that at home. And it’s just logistical reasons, kind of why they were coming in. And that’s fine. That’s great. We have seen more people want to come in now. But the vast majority do not want to come in, or they are there. They really embrace the hybrid thing where, okay, I’ll come in once or twice a week, I like meet people that I need to meet, have those in face meetings, and then I’ll work from home for individual contributors. So someone whose role it is, is to like, do a specific task, I actually observed they do very well remotely, because you’re cutting out commute time, you’re cutting out. There’s just like a lot of waste, you know, and their role is not to manage a group of people and lead and they’re not, they’re not in intercompany meetings all day long. Their job is to like, like work on a specific process. So that works very well remote, and in fact, they’re happier. And they have a more balanced life. Because they’re shaving off these little little pieces of time everywhere that they can reinvest into whatever they like to do. For for kind of your mid level managers, hybrid. My observation hybrid seems to be pretty good, because they’re managing a small team. But they’re also like doing work themselves on something. And so like coming in to have those meetings and meet people, but then also having time where they can be at home and focus. You know, the office is great, for a lot of reasons. But sometimes it is hard to get work done to because like everyone wants to talk to you and grab you and all that. Here’s a fun fact, like our board meetings were in person. They would when they were in person, they would take three hours. They are they’ve been virtual ever since COVID. I don’t think they’re ever coming back in person. And this like 75 minutes now. You know, so the efficiency is through the roof. Now. We do need to figure out where to how to keep the camaraderie going. So is that a one supporter retreat or whatever, you know, we got to figure that type of stuff out. There is a balance for sure.

Laura Hamill:
So good. Jay, thank you. This has been such a good conversation. I love all the things that you’re doing at leader bank. It’s really pretty darn impressive. So thank you so much for your time. Is there anything you’d like to leave us with any words of wisdom or anything that you feel like we didn’t quite cover?

Jay Tuli:
I don’t. I think I think we covered a lot of it. Yeah, I think it’s I think it’s a new time in how companies and organizations interact with their workforce. Like it’s a new, a new paradigm shift, you know, and so going back to experimenting, like there’s just a lot of things about experiment to see What works with people and what doesn’t?

Laura Hamill:
I love that mindset. That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much Jay.

Greg Farber:
The Happy at Work podcast is not affiliated with or owned by Leader Bank, N.A. and all opinions expressed by Laura, Michael and Tessa are their own and not the opinions of Leader Bank. In addition to past episodes, you can also find our corresponding blog entries on our website leaderbank.com equal housing lender. Member FDIC. NMLS number 449250.