Preparing for change … are you ready?

This afternoon our local branch managers and regional executives had a training session that proved to be invaluable to me. The purpose of the session conducted by our very own John Bushee, a very well respected sales and leadership coach, was to prepare us for 2019 business planning and more importantly to equip and enable us to service the needs of our loan officers.

As we assessed our 2018 results, including a strong 4th quarter underway now, we challenged ourselves to prepare for market environment change, look inward at our own coaching skills, and determine how we can help our loan officers be more successful in the coming year. Next month we will begin LO level business plans, really dig in and provide a consultative approach to allowing each of them to blossom to the next level.

As the session played out, John artfully moved us through change management, helped take us back to the 2008 crisis and how we overcame those challenges, helped us identify skills and actionable traits we learned at that time, and most importantly how to convey that to our teams. This brought us to our own Embrace culture and unique selling proposition, which for me just reinforced all the reasons I chose to join this organization this summer.

This was a refreshing approach, instead of being dictated to, we conducted more of an interactive management style and I can't wait to share this with my team at our next sales meeting, and then have them interact with Jason Abell next month for individual coaching and planning sessions. While there were a huge number of "aha" moments for me, the topper was when my boss and mentor, Tim Higgins, spontaneously shared the infamous John Maxwell quote, "A leader is the one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way". No doubt I can speak for all of us in attendance to say we ended with a clearer vision, prepared, invested in, and ready to share the good news.