This week on the Building Interest Podcast, we are joined by Marty Sunde to talk through his journey as a Leadership Advisor. With over 36 years of leadership experience, he explains the importance of creating your own brand or theme to lead by and lets us in on the most impactful advice he has received over the years.

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Episode Transcript

Greg Farber: 
Welcome to the Building Interest Podcast presented by Leader Bank. In season two of our Podcast we've been exploring what it means to be a leader through conversations with leaders from within the Bank, the communities we serve, and from across the banking and technology industries. Each conversation focuses on our guests personal leadership journey and hopes to gain insights on what it means to be a good leader. In our last episode, we were joined by the Co-founders of the Hult Undergraduate Investment Group, Alejandro Suarez Cordova and Sahil Dhir, to discuss the founding of their organization, their personal leadership journeys, and the impact that immigration has had on their growth and success as leaders. Today, we are honored to have a guest with more than 35 years of leadership experience, Marty Sunde, as we look to talk through his journey and hope he will let us in on some of the most impactful advice he's received and given over the years, and explain what makes or breaks a strong leader. Welcome, Marty.

Marty Sunde:  
Hey, thanks, Greg. I'm honestly honored to be here. I've enjoyed the podcast series. And I'm looking forward to our discussion today.

Greg Farber: 
I'm excited to hear that you're a listener and not just a victim. So this is good. Listen, you know, I haven't known you for quite as long as all the experience that I teased in the opener there. I've known you for about five, five, and a half months now. And we work together just exploring some of my own personal leadership challenges and the directions that I might be able to grow and develop and things. And so I came to really understand a bit about how you operate and how you were able to turn that lens back on me. And really helped me understand a little bit how things were going. For me my career, my development, all based on, of course, the experience that you brought to the table. And so I guess for today, I kind of want to start with rambling off that introduction, painting a picture of what my view is of what a leadership adviser does. But let me ask you to share how would you summarize what it is that you do these days?

Marty Sunde:    
Thank you, Greg. And I appreciate it... No, I have appreciated actually getting to know you and, and the engagement that we had. I don't, you know, first I don't really consider myself a you know, a professional leadership advisor. But I sure enjoy continuing to use, you know, lots of years of experience and wisdom, and trying to figure out how to listen closely to what challenges people feel like they have in developing themselves to be more effective in their roles, managing people in their roles, trying to grow their businesses. And I tried to use my experience and listening to just pose questions to people that might stimulate an area that they could focus on to improve. Or I, I try to motivate people to anticipate what's coming. And to make sure that they feel like they can look around corners just a little bit better. Because if they can anticipate maybe the alternatives that are available to them, or anticipate some obstacles they might encounter, and have some time to think about them and prepare, then I feel like I've added some value to knowing the outcome that they're aiming for.

Greg Farber:   
Did you want to be a fortune teller when you were a kid growing up? And then you figured out that peeking around the corner and in corporate America was the best way for you to get there? How did you sort of come up with this? I love that statement that you want people to be able to look around corners, right? Because none of us know what the future holds. Right and yet, the idea of being a leader is somehow to guide people into that uncertain future and hopefully do a decent job of it. So was that something that you always wanted to do? Or did you have totally different dreams as a child what you wanted to be growing up?

Marty Sunde:  
Well, I had a variety of different things that I wanted to be I think as I was growing up and I probably fall into that category of not knowing exactly where I wanted to go when I was growing up I have a brother for example who I think knew at four years old that he wanted if he could be a doctor and he was very focused on that and it worked out for him and he is that and very happy. I actually growing up enjoyed looking back on it now i enjoyed a lot of different pursuits, but most of them had to do with group activity and I enjoyed being A member of a team, I found myself more often than not, maybe ending up trying to be the kind of the team leader, or the instigator, depending on whether we were, you know, doing mischief as a little kid or trying to get something done. But, and I found myself actually at a young age, age, comfortable and in front of people talking about, you know, what we're trying to accomplish, or a variety of different things. And so, it felt natural to me, as I, you know, as I went through school to be engaged in, you know, continue to be engaged in team-related activities. When in the early days, when I joined IBM and went through training, I didn't really know anything about technology. I'm fortunate that I found IBM because technology at that time offered an amazing amount of innovation opportunities. It was changing the way business work, and it still is today. And so I learned in joining IBM, that, you know, that that it was it was really a challenge to think about how technology could create innovation and what innovation was useful and what wasn't. And I think that really attracted me to thinking ahead or seeing around corners.

Greg Farber:   
Well, just there in a little bit. You mentioned a lot of very interesting words, and I want to come back to some of them like challenges. I want to get back to challenges a little bit. But you talked about being comfortable and being natural, which is something I think that you exude as well, you offer a certain comfort and a certain natural environment when speaking with you. And yet you mentioned something very countered to comfortable, which is an instigator, right? And you mentioned a little bit about trying to break out of that box a little bit and not be constrained. Now, you mentioned IBM, you've had a number of different roles with some of the biggest names in corporate America, not just IBM. Were you? I mean, you come in kind of the at the entry-level, at some point with one of these places, you're obviously not yet the guy who was going to lead everyone else forward. And yet you used words like like not constrained and comfort. And so do you feel like that environment where you were in really nurtured your ability to become passionate about leadership and corporate structure? Or was it almost in spite of it, like you felt like, Oh, this is this, this sort of droning, a pigeonholed corporation, and I want to make it different?

Marty Sunde:  
That's a great question. And, you know, I, I, it could be my nature I that that helped me answer the question that I've used that environment as enabling, and not as suffocating or constraining.

Greg Farber:   
The same environment might have been constraining to someone else. But you turned around and used it to your advantage because it spoke to kind of your vision of there we go looking around corners again.

Marty Sunde:    
Yeah, Well, first, I believe that that, you know, I joined the company, with the idea that I was going to play a role for them, but I was going to learn a lot in the process. And, you know, IBM, you know, people today talk about millennials, wanting to change their experiences every 18 months or so. You know, what's funny is I joined a very big company a long time ago. And one of their messages was we're so big, and we have such diversity in the kinds of roles we have available. If you work hard, if you're willing to learn, and if you do well in the role that you're currently performing. Any option is available to you. And so in my mind, right away, I didn't feel constrained. I knew I knew I had to learn what I was being asked to learn. I knew I had to perform well, against what was expected of me. But I always, I always felt like I could look around and see what other people were doing. And, you know, I was going to be free to aim for that. As long as I understood more about how to prepare for it and how to earn not be entitled, but earn the right to compete for that. So it was an interesting corporate culture that taught you a certain way to operate, which I respected. The values aren't very different than Leader's values, to be honest with you. I was very comfortable playing inside those boundaries. But they also said if you do well, there'll be plenty of opportunity for you to continue to be curious and stay stimulated forever and ever. And that was a pretty neat culture in those days.

Greg Farber:   
Yeah, I mean, obviously not the instant gratification, and you sort of meant mentioned the millennial approach of wanting something fresh and new all the time. And maybe that's not just limited to that group, we shouldn't chastise them alone. Fortunately, I'm out of it a little bit myself as well. But we all like that instant gratification, but what I'm hearing is this idea that the gratification was there, and you knew it was available, it just was a little bit more of a patient road to get there so that you could be a little bit more formative before you got to that gratification.

Marty Sunde:    
Well, and yes, yes, exactly. But not as, I'll re-qualify. The reason I use the millennial example is after some, you know, after kind of the initial the, the initial onboarding, and kind of proof that you kind of fit in the culture and you could, you know, you could deliver consistent results. Some of the opportunities came every 18 months to two years. Okay. So it was literally, for me, I forget now, but, you know, I feel like in the, oh god, in 18 years, I may have had 11 different experiences.

Greg Farber: 
Gotcha. So it didn't feel like you were stagnant or stuck, you were still constantly evolving. And that provided some motivation as well.

Marty Sunde:  
Right. And, the culture was so collaborative, that if you wanted to try to figure out... If you are willing to learn, there was always a way to, you know, gain the value of somebody else's wisdom. There were no other training courses available. Today, those resources are available, in a much broader sense, right? The internet's made them available to everybody who has an appetite, to want to continue to learn. And, you know, Leader's culture, I think, is collaborative, in the same way, and that if somebody wants to reach out and say, can you explain to me how you approach this, people are always willing to help somebody else and pay it forward a little bit.

Greg Farber: 
Absolutely. And the fact that we have some of these values spelled out at the Bank is actually new for us, but they're not new concepts. And they're proven and they work. And that's, that's why, you know, we have them in place. So let's talk about challenges. And let's challenge part one, we'll call it corporate America wasn't always as great as the picture that you just painted of your early years at IBM. And I'm wondering if you could share some insights that you learned, we saw these things going, right, this pushed me This motivated me, I had this cycle of opportunity that we just talked about to develop myself. But what did you see in corporate America, that was more challenging to someone who wanted to grow forward and gain these leadership skills?

Marty Sunde:    
Well, I I always, honestly, I always, at one point. IBM had so much training available, and kind of so much history that you could sell, select how to fit into the system, and grow. At some point, I wanted to actually find out if my ability to progress was a function of working well within the system, or whether there was some of me in that. And yep, and so I, I left and the very first choice I made, I went to work for a company following another IBM person thinking that would be a safe bet. And I found out that company cultures are very different. And I walked into a company that was much a much more ruthless environment, much more get results or you're out kind of situation. And in a general lack of trust in the culture, starting at the top that was really foreign to me and this, I'll ultimately name names a little bit for you, Greg, but this, this was, this was an experience that was really a shock to me, because I really was more of an idealist and kind of presumed that I could make an environment any way I wanted it to.

Greg Farber: 
You didn't know how good you had it where you were.

Marty Sunde:    
Right, and this, and this was an environment where I asked also learned that, you know, I, I could have an influence, and I could apply my own skills. But wow. You know, what a change. And it was, it was one that I actually had the I was there. And by that time I had a family and responsibilities, and I had to make the best of it. And so the learning there was, okay, how do I actually embrace what this is, and try to adapt and, and try to be flexible in what they expected, but also not compromised myself in terms of my own values, and so for that year, I fit in, I did my best I applied skills I learned in other places and found out they did work pretty well. But I also learned things that I would remember for future roles and companies that I never wanted to experience again. So and in the same way companies interview employees to find a good fit, I think I learned the hard way that it was very important for me to be very conscious of the kind of culture I was going into. And to do some more research before I took the leap to make sure that the company was going to be compatible with the kind of person I wanted to be. Throughout my career. And maybe starting in college or a little after, maybe at IBM, I was trained to be more self-aware of what I did well and what I needed to improve on. And so I was conscious of that. And at some point in time, I actually decided that I would come up with my own brand idea, I would think about a theme that I thought set the tone for kind of the way I wanted to be, and my little theme was blending imagination with results.

Greg Farber:
Exactly those two components.

Marty Sunde:    
I'd met a lot of people in all these companies that were head the clouds, always ideating and always expecting never to have to deliver the results. Because their ideas were so amazing. And then I met a lot of people who were just grinding it out day to day. And their idea of thinking ahead was maybe the end of the month. And so I guess I decided over time that there was a unique gap in the businesses I'd been involved in, for people who had the capacity and willingness to try to think more broadly and do the work to you know, to think creatively and innovatively about other approaches. But to also respect the fact that you had, you actually had to figure out how to apply them to a successful result. Or, you know, they, they didn't have any credibility. And so to me, I got in my head, the idea that if I could always pursue imagination, and always stay focused on reverse engineering that into predictable results, that it would be, you know, easier for me perhaps, to have credibility and things I did, whether it was inside a big company moving up, or with people that were working for me, wanting to trust that we were doing good things, or ultimately investors who, you know, wanted to make sure that somebody was representing their investment in a responsible way.

Greg Farber:
So, Marty, you mentioned kind of creating your own theme and brand and I'd like for you to explain a little bit about that. I mean, are we talking about a physical brand here? Are we talking about just sort of your personal vision? And how do you actually go about creating a theme and a brand and what does that mean, going forward for, for the role that you're in?

Marty Sunde:    
Yeah. And, again, it's in our conversation, throughout our conversation, you're going to probably hear me make statements and asked me about them. And you'll realize almost every time it's it's a mindset that I created for myself. So, you know, a lot of this is about having a frame of mind. And I was I was in I think a class or learning more about product management. You know, how how to position products for consumers. And I was daydreaming a little bit. I wonder if I can learn anything myself about what I want to be when I grow up. Because, again, I don't know that I limited myself to too many choices. And, so I started asking myself, gosh, if I am in a position where even if I don't exactly know the industry or the exact role I might aspire to, or I don't want to limit myself to that. But is there a general theme that represents me, that would, that would help me make priorities about what I learned, and set a tone for the way I want to be viewed? And so I, I started giving it some thought, and I came up with this observation, you know, again, like you might observe when you're trying to do research to see if there's a new product idea, you see a gap in the marketplace. And my gap was, I saw a lot of people that were very creative and counted on somebody else to figure out that make it work. And I saw a lot of people that were very comfortable just pounding out the results day after day, but when you ask them to think innovatively at all, they weren't that capable or willing. And so to me, it felt like there was a gap between the two. And I thought, how amazing if you could live with the visionaries and understand what they're trying to say. But then come back to those that just wanted to pound it out every day and communicate it in a way that was understandable to them, there was a gap. And I thought, Gosh, I want to be that kind of person. Because I think if I can learn how to lead and translate between these two mindsets, I'll enable better results for both. And so, so my brand actually represented the kind of leadership opportunities I went looking for. And, it just helped me differentiate between choices I had, when I'm trying to, when I'm trying to help people think ahead. I don't want them to say, well, I want that job. Usually when, when I asked this question, and they say, Well, I'd like to have this job, I usually ask them to describe the characteristics of the job that are exciting to them. And, and why it inspires them. And if they've seen or felt a, you know, a kind of a gravitational pull in that direction in other parts of their life. And, if they say yes, I say, Well, why don't you think of a theme that represents you? So that when you're talking to people in the future, and they say, Well, what are you all about? You don't have to say, Well, I'm, this is my role today. And I want to be in this role, tomorrow. You say I'm committed to figuring out how to fill the gap between imagination and results. And I'm building my training and my discipline and my leadership skills around that. Well, if you're thinking about future opportunities, and you say that simply the people, it catches their air, and it makes them think about, oh, wow, well have you thought about this, or this or this or this. And what you find out is, by working on a theme that represents your brand, you create more amazing choices to pursue. And you don't ever feel as constrained as you might by saying, Oh, I got on this track, and I'm stuck in this track forever. Well, you're not the way you behave. And the way you interact with people is there's a brand and a theme to it. And if you can pull that out, you can see where you might be able to play and be productive in a lot of other ways. And it's fun to know you have those choices.

Greg Farber:
I think that's really neat because it means you're also not limiting yourself. You're not pigeonholing, right the same way that maybe there's a brand of I don't know a particular beverage or something. And maybe it's not just limited to being served in restaurants, maybe you can buy it at the store, maybe you can buy it at the train station, maybe it's provided at holiday parties or whatever. And so if your personal theme or your brand is helping people, sure, maybe at a bank, you want to work in the call center or you want to be a teller but maybe helping people could also mean working in a restaurant, maybe helping people could mean working as a flight attendant and so your theme transcends lines of business, am I hearing that sort of correct?

Marty Sunde:    
That's exactly right. I just I, I, I wanted to make sure that for somebody, again, that grew up not exactly knowing like my brother, that I want to be surgeon, I, I was nervous that I'd get stuck on a path to go searching by accident. And I never wanted to get stuck on a path by accident, I wanted to see if there wasn't something about me. That would always give me multiple paths but would be appealing to others. In the way, I went about doing my work. And I think it's liberating for people sometimes when they're feeling burned out to realize that it's, it's not the job they're doing today, or the company they're working for, or the industry they're in. It's the way they approach their job, right, that people admire and look at. And sometimes it's easy if you can describe that. It's easy to help others realize how you might fit in their world.

Greg Farber:
And that maybe that job that they're stuck in, or they're or doubt on is not their only option.

Marty Sunde:    
Right? And the important part of that is if you go to somebody and say, Hey, how do you think I might be able to fit in your company, most people aren't going to get to know you well enough to say, Oh, I think you'd be perfect here or here or here, they might say, tell me a little bit more about what you think you're good at. And if you have a tagline that you truly are inspired by and believe in that gets the other person thinking about how there may be a fit, where you never thought one would exist.

Greg Farber: 
So fast forward from that, we're gonna go to challenges part two now. You teased at the beginning that you're not a professional leadership advisor, I would beg to differ I think you're certainly professional, I know you in a professional environment. And that's exactly what you helped me with. So I'm gonna call you a professional leadership advisor. I think that's fair. But in that, in that framework in that role, surely you also run into challenges. There are some times and perhaps especially with people in companies that you engage with who are more senior, but perhaps, you know, to hone in on the term, not yet the best leaders. And so I'm curious to hear if you've had situations where you've been an advisor to someone who was resistant to change or unwilling to listen to your suggestions, because while they're the big boss, they know, they know everything already, right? Almost like you're, you're talking to, to someone who doesn't want to hear from you what your advice is. And then what happens to they ultimately come around, is there an aha moment? Do you just kind of say, well, that person's beyond help? I can't work with them anymore. What do you do?

Marty Sunde:  
That's a great question. And thanks for asking it. I think I've, I've also developed over time, a little bit of a change management philosophy. A lot of, you know, a lot of getting things done involves leading change. And in general, I've always believed that about 20% of anybody you explain a new idea to get it actually gets it faster and better than you can even describe what to do. And they're often running, it just took describing it. And then another 20% actually hear it and get it but they don't like the answer. And there's not very much you can do. After a fair amount of trying to maybe change their minds, they're just closed-minded about some of the ideas.

Greg Farber: 
What don't they like about it, they see it as an insult to their personality, or just they would have to work extra and that's not appealing or what is it that you think keeps them from taking that step to making a positive move?

Marty Sunde:    
In some cases, the source, you know, somehow we just don't know each other enough for me to be a credible source for them to really think about a change. Okay, oh, they need a credible, somebody that they view or some reading that they do that's, that's influential and inspiring, credible. In some cases, it's just philosophically difficult for them to imagine that they kind of need to move in whatever direction to change. They just, they just don't believe the assertion I'm making and, and in some cases, you're right They're, I would say they're just so busy and overwhelmed that they see it. And they're just going to need to figure out how to feather it into their environment over time, but it's not the right time. So timing might be bad. And then that the middle 60%, I want to go back to our ones that actually are more in that last category where, where they kind of see it, and they feel it, but they just don't quite know how to enable it. So hey, I see this change, and I see what you're talking about. But let's talk about practical ways to actually start to move in that direction. And so...

Greg Farber:
You take an overwhelming suggestion and break it down into little steps.

Marty Sunde:  
Yeah.

Greg Farber:
And kind of get rolling that thing?

Marty Sunde:  
Yeah. So I think I what I've learned to number one, it's, you know, it's easier, I've always enjoyed the idea of being a coach, I think, I think early on, as you know, that team instigator, I was trying to coach and cajole and do things like that, and have more formal training later on, I've always wanted to pay forward, my learning to others, to kind of help them move a little faster. And when I was in roles of authority, I found that it was a little easier sometimes to make suggestions, and, you know, have people more willing to try, and when, when you're an advisor, and you really don't have any authority, other than perhaps a little bit of credibility and your willingness to listen and help them diagnose, you really have to learn how to be patient, and, and how to probe and how to be persuasive, to see if you can move people in the right direction. And I think what I've discovered is, sometimes you can see it, and you want it for him. But there's going to be just a more gradual pace, to accomplishing it. And that's just fine. Honestly, if you, you know, if you incrementally build on improvement, it's surprising how much you can get done. And I had to learn how to be a little more patient. Ultimately, I also had to learn that if I even though, like young managers, if, you know, if I wanted to save everybody, you know, I really, I, I wanted to save everybody. And I've worked hard to try and see if there's not a way I could have them see the light. But after you've tried multiple times, if it's just not gonna work, you just have to accept the idea that this is the wrong chemistry or the wrong time. And there's a better source. And I'm I think I try to be vigilant in making sure that any discussion I have with anybody is a value-added discussion and a playing sense that it's not, I try to be direct with them, and say, This doesn't feel like it was a good use of time for you.

Greg Farber:
No, it's interesting that you mentioned sort of the position of authority, too, because when I think back to our conversations, and obviously, you know, there are folks in positions of authority within the Bank that give me direction and give me guidance and do this and don't do that. And that's, that's entirely normal and expected, but they've known me for so long in the role for so long, and what I'm good at what I'm not good at for so long. And what I thought was really refreshing about our time was that you were exactly that you weren't in a position of authority over me, you were an independent, outside person who had to get to know me first. You got to get to know me through conversations with myself and with my peers and with my managers and so forth. And that gave you a perspective that I actually found to be very valuable because it wasn't sort of, well, I've seen him do this for 15 years. We all know that blah, blah, blah. But I've known you for a couple of weeks. Here's what I'm seeing. Here's what I'm hearing, here's what I'm observing, take it or leave it No. And you were very, you know, obviously, you were very polite and everything about the conversations that we had. And I thought that that was so refreshing that it was exactly that it was an advisory type of relationship. And then anyway, I wanted to just say that because it was I thought that was really neat. Well, but I didn't want to go back. Oh, go ahead.

Marty Sunde:    
Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And honestly, I I I think you bring up a good point, you know, people that you've known for a long time that are in positions of authority. You take their advice because you respect what they've accomplished sometimes. Sometimes they know you so well. And, those are influential times as well. But yeah, you're right,, I discovered that I play a different role. And, I just have to sense the, I'm always careful, but honest.

Greg Farber:
Right. So that's a good approach.

Marty Sunde:  
And I feel like, sometimes people aren't going to get honesty from everyone. And if I feel like I have a qualified observation that I've seen in other people, or in my own life, and I can qualify it and give an example, and then make a suggestion, even if it's a, you know, stings a little, then I've done a good job of making somebody think a little bit more.

Greg Farber:
And there's a certain liberty in if I don't like your advice, because it's too honest, or you don't like how I respond to it, because or whatever. We don't ever have to see each other again. And there's a certain liberty in that that actually allows you to step back and say, Well, wait a minute, this guy is on to something he doesn't, he doesn't even know me, and he's onto something. So again, but you mentioned coaching before and then you mentioned sort of the 60, not 60, the 20% of people who are too busy life gets in the way this that? And I was wondering Do you do any coaching outside of your professional life? Do you also, you know, quote, culture, any teams or any sports or anything like that? What, passions Do you have outside of work, and where do I want to go with this is really to kind of understand how you balance work and life. And we can't always be working all the time. And, you know, we hear these stories, and athletes are a great example. They say, well, it's not it's an it doesn't feel like a job, I love what I do. And I'm playing the game that I love. Well, yeah, you're playing the game that you love for a few hours on TV. But other than that, you're being meticulously managed your nutrition, your workouts, and your travel, You're never home. So there is a lot of work that goes into living the job. That's the game that you love, right? And so I'm always curious to see how much of your work is your personality, and you do the same things. When you're not on the clock, you're coaching a little league team or something like that, versus it's your job, and it's what you are good at professionally, and you do completely different stuff on your private time. Which one is the healthy way to go? That's what's the what's Better Work-life balance for a senior leader who's stressed out in a busy company.

Marty Sunde:  
Yeah, I'm not sure I was juggling early on I, I was conscious, of other activities. And so you know, I, I like to try and exercise always have, I like friends. And later when I had a family, you know, paying attention to being a responsible contributing member of the family was an important thing. A lot of my hobbies, I actually would tell you, I probably in the early days, put on the shelf for my interest in trying to learn as much as I could, and, and satisfy my ambition at work. I ultimately started to apply what we talked about at the outset of this podcast, which was, you know, I really started to visualize not just a business outcome, I started to visualize kind of an overall outcome for me. So, you know, at some point out three years or five years, and I, I tried to actually say, okay, how am I going to take all these competing things that I'm interested in? And, you know, ideally, how would I want it to work out in the future? And I started, it forced me to actually reverse engineer priorities a little bit better. Interesting. So in the, you know, in the early days, I, I was consciously making the choice that I enjoyed what I was doing, and that I would continue to try and learn and observe, to make myself qualified for other things. And so in my case, my work and my work environment were kind of combined, you know, it was a passion to keep learning, so I could satisfy my ambition, but I also made sure that I spent enough time with my family, which met crazy hours for me sometimes no Making sure I knew when my family was around and making sure it wasn't working then and then working different hours when they were asleep or whatever and then staying in shape. I did coach because I loved it. You know, as when the kids were growing up, I made sure I was an assistant coach on a soccer team, I had an amazingly fun couple of years coaching, Little League football, even before my kids were old enough for it, because an IBM manager told me that I would learn how to manage and lead more effectively in IBM, by trying to figure out how to manage and lead seventh and eighth-grade footballers. And that was a very fun experience. Today, I do much the same thing, I I love the idea that I can stay connected to be business relevant, and not have my sale date expire with a limited amount of business involvement. And I balance it with what I visualized as something that was going to be important for me that I hadn't really focused on which were other hobbies. So I semi-retired. I live in an area that's close to a resort, ski mountain. And so I've kind of taught myself, how to be more competent and skiing, and spend a lot of time doing that. And it's important. Family is still really important. And actually, I have a desire to be more involved in some community related and, you know, larger societal issue-related projects that are of interest to me. And I'm dedicating time to that, because it's, you know, it's now time to balance some of those other interests in a different way. But I, I know, people talk about work-life balance that I think it's a very individual decision. And generally, when I talk to people that are asking about that, especially maybe younger people who have heard the word work-life balance, balance, and presume it means a certain thing, I try to say no, it, it's what it means to you. And think ahead a little bit and ask yourself how you want your world to look across not just work, but a variety of areas in two or three years. And see what that means for the priorities you're setting today.

Greg Farber:
I think that's really, really neat. I haven't really heard it put that way I was expecting you to suggest that work-life balance means different things for different people. And yet, I was not expecting you to say, to sort of to oversimplify it to look in your your personal crystal ball. Imagine where you want yourself to be at x point in the future and what that would look like and then reverse engineer to use your words sort of the plan to get there. I think that is really neat. I want to touch on one more thing. And I do want to be cognizant of time as well. You had mentioned a very impactful line when we were kind of talking about getting together and doing this. And I believe the words you used were leadership is a process that creates followers. Now, linguistically, that might be obvious to most because if you are a leader, there must be followers behind you. And that's sort of how it works, right. But these days, everybody talks about followers, you got followers on Twitter and YouTube and whatever else the latest hippest social media is. And that's definitely not what you mean. Right. I mean, let's dig into that a little bit. What is it that you mean, leadership is a process to create followers? And what would be an example where, you know, maybe this kind of created followship followership then resulted in positive change for an individual or for their organization?

Marty Sunde:    
Yeah, well, thanks. I'll tell you, first, it's a mindset. It's my it's a mindset. It's my mindset. That's handy for me, and I'll try to explain it because I'd love others to have this mindset. Back in the IBM days, I was managing a fairly large business in a very bad economy. And there was a lot not going well. And people weren't very happy either. This so you know, we got together our little management team one night after work, and had a meeting. And remember We're kind of technology-oriented people and in technology, there's this idea of you have inputs, then you process them. And then there's outputs. Absolutely. And factories can do that and everything else. So if you have inputs and you process them, you want to have a high yield of, you know, of a result. And so somebody drew that on the board. And they said, well, is leadership an art? Or do we think there's a method to it? We all, we all agreed that we hoped there was a method to it, because if it was an art, we didn't know if we were naturals or not. Right. So I asked everybody to take a poll on anonymous poll, little, little pieces of paper in a hat. And I asked them to say, if leadership here is the methodology, the process, and the input is all the folks that are working for us. What do we think the yield of followership is for our people. And nobody in the room wrote more than 30%.

Greg Farber:
Wow.

Marty Sunde:    
And so that was pretty self-aware, maybe self-critical, because we were in the mood to be self-critical. But what was interesting about that is we all looked at each other and said, that's not good. And, you know, are we going to do something about it? And what we did was, if you, again, picture a lot of people, part of our company, our leadership applied to them to get them all going in one direction, happily and smoothly. And then our estimate that the yield was 30%. Well, that meant that in that little box called Leadership, there were a lot of leaks,

Greg Farber:
You lost 70% of the people along the way.

Marty Sunde:    
So the fun, the fun exercise that somebody one of our colleagues, let us through was okay. If we're leaking followers, what is it that we're actually doing that's causing that to happen? And we got talking about it. And we said, well, you know, what, I'm not sure we've properly communicated to everybody what we're aiming for. And they all said, Oh, come on, we've all written our mission statement. And we have our goals out there for the year. And, and somebody said, No, wait a minute. You know, people don't just hear things once and immediately get it. You know, there's a lot of things going on in everybody's lives. Are we regularly and in an inspiring way explaining what the outcome that we desire might look like, in the future a little bit on my, you know, have an inspiring outcome. Then we said, well, have we actually adjusted the way we measure and ask people to perform so that it would line up with that outcome are we know have we made the changes we need to make to reinforce what the behavior looks like? And that was another area where we thought it was leaking? A really interesting one was, do we believe we're behaving in a way ourselves, when issues come to us that reinforce that new world? Or are we acting with our old instincts? And we kind of call ourselves out to say, well, you know, we're 50/50 on that, and so on, and so forth. And so we made a list of about seven or eight things that we thought would close the leaks. And we wrote down what that meant that we had to go get done. We had some, you know, again, a vision of what where we're aiming which was a higher yield. We talked about the benefits of that and the obstacles and then we made a more practical plan to hold ourselves accountable to making those changes. And by the end of the year, a very difficult business environment had improved a lot. And, and, you know, a lot of the people that were struggling with our environment changing the technology world was changing around us, you know, we kind of got through that through the right effort in the right spots. And so, I, I adopted this idea, that, if I had a group of people, whether it was you know, in my personal life or you know, and some other non-business related activity and we wanted to accomplish something, I had to always be very conscious of who those people were. And if I wasn't getting them all aligned to create this outcome, it was my responsibility to figure out where the leaks were. And to try and be helpful in plugging those leaks.

Greg Farber:
It's fascinating, we think of leadership as a skill and not something easily quantifiable. And you created a way to measure a quantifiable result of leadership in that 30% and growing, who's going to be the followership so you can actually see what's working and what's not working, and then go and apply that to improve the non-quantifiable skill.

Marty Sunde:  
Well, and it was, it was, to your point it was, it was, in some instances, very quantifiable. And in some instances, I called it objectively subjective. You know, when used before, which just kind of meant, you know, the might the important part of the mindset, Greg, for me, was to truly not be so arrogant as to presume that just because I was a leader, everybody was following. I stopped and really tried to be honest and sample, what the follow-up what the important followership really was. And when I heard it wasn't where I thought it was going to be. I didn't blame everybody else. It made me want to know, where are the leaks. And, you know, we, we, it led to some really fun, practical, creative things. We actually even once during that year, I explained to you the story, we decided that little tiny things were aggravating people, and we weren't dealing with them fast enough, because it was such a crazy environment. So we took a little part of our call center. And we told we had a lot of people or a couple thousand, we told him that they could call what we call "1-800 I can't get my job done". And we just let them call the call center and tell us what they thought was aggravating them. And we logged those and categorized them and looked at him every week. And took action on him where we could, but followed up with everybody, for no other reason than to prove to people that we were paying attention and listening.

Greg Farber: 
Well, for what it's worth, and, and I hope I'm using the term correctly. I'm a follower. Marty, it's been an absolute pleasure. It was a pleasure working with you the first time around, it's been an absolute pleasure talking with you today. I know we want to be cognizant of time here at anything, any kind of closing thoughts, any particular sort of last sentiments that you may want to share or a leader in your life or history that's made a particular impact on you or something kind of you want to dangle out there as as the last have the last word in our chat?

Marty Sunde:    
Wow, that's dangerous for me, but

Greg Farber:
well, you know, we have an editing team. So you can say, like,

Marty Sunde:    
Well, yeah, I guess, a couple of concepts that I always try to leave people with that I think are really important. And you, you hear them reinforced and maybe validated when you listen to other podcasts like The Founders. Which reviews a lot of philosophies of various leaders. And again, as inspiring as athletes stories are, you know, for their grit, grit and relentlessness, and everything else this is a similar version of that for very successful business leaders.

Greg Farber:
Absolutely. I'm familiar with the podcast

Marty Sunde:    
Yeah, a couple things that that I take away that I've heard other places is I I think I really learned over time to never feel entitled to my stature or never feeling entitled to the you know the success we're having to always feel like you're earning it every day. And to have to fight arrogance or hubris in order to listen. That's where the searching for leaks comes in. Second, I always used to tell anybody that worked for me, and I would try to sell it to people I work for that every performance review our every performance objective document It should start as the number one line item, saying no surprises both ways. And, and that I find that if people commit to doing their best to not creating any surprises, it causes a lot more communication. And it gives people the permission to have conversations sometimes they'd be afraid to have. And I'll stop with those two because I think that kind of mindset makes you work hard to stay aligned with your teammates and makes you collaborative. And always keeps you on your toes to make sure you're earning value for your customers and for your team members.

Greg Farber: 
Fantastic, Marty, a little humility and a little integrity to close things out for us. I love it. Thank you again so much for joining today. I had a great time. I could talk to you for hours about this stuff, so I might have to pick it up another time.

Marty Sunde:  
Well, I really appreciate being included. Thanks very much.

Greg Farber:
For more information on today's subject, visit leaderbank.com. In addition to past episodes, you can also find our corresponding blog entries for more insights. This podcast is a production of Leader Bank N.A., equal housing lender, Member FDIC. NMLS number 449250.