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0:00 / 18:43Speed: 1x
(-)Many of us have heard
why diversity and inclusion are important,
but I think it's important for all of us here
to understand the how.
Can you give us some specific examples
of things that you've seen or you've done
that have really brought it to life?
(-)Well, with respect to diversity, as you pointed out,
and so aptly pointed out, it's really about making sure
that you have the population.
The things that you can do to make sure
that you are successful is go to certain schools
where you know that there's going to be a large population
of those candidates and be very methodical
about building relationships with those schools
because often, you find them
as some of the smaller liberal arts colleges.
And interestingly enough,
unlike some of the larger universities,
those small schools are very protective of their students.
If they think you're just coming to do a land grab
and try to get the bodies,
you will find that you won't get the best talent.
There is an investment that needs to be made
in those institutions to build trust,
such that you'll have an opportunity to see the best
and the brightest that that institution has to offer.
The second thing that you need to do
is you need to make sure that you are being very fair
with respect to the kinds of assignments
that you give people very early on.
Because within six months, I have learned,
especially at the entry level,
if you don't make sure that people are exposed
to certain types of assignments,
by the time they get to month seven or month eight,
they're at a deficit,
not because they came in behind the eight ball,
but because they didn't get the same exposure
to the kinds of deals
that really help you ramp up your training.
And then I think the third thing
is that you have to be intentional about making sure
that people have the right sponsors.
Mentors, in my view, are, frankly, a nice to have,
but you can survive a long time in your career
without a mentor, but you are not going to ascend
in any organization without a sponsor.
And it does not happen naturally or organically.
I would argue that the institution needs to be mindful
of that and making sure that people put themselves
in the position or that they are put in position
to be exposed to good sponsors or that they get the tools
to actually exercise their own power and ask for a sponsor.
(-)Our footprint is a mix of suburban,
as well as rural markets.
And I think, like many of the folks sitting in this room,
one of our goals is to have our boards,
as well as our workforce, look like the communities
that we're serving.
We've made a lot of progress with our boards.
Recruiting has been harder, though,
especially in the more rural markets that we serve.
I'm just curious, what would you,
how can we get out of the box and do something different
to help recruit in those kind of markets?
(-)Yes, and I'll tell you, Jim, it goes back to what I said
about being intentional with building the relationships
with the institutions.
You generally can't just show up on campus
and they don't really have a sense of who you are.
Believe it or not, as large as we are,
when we started going to some
of the small liberal arts schools,
there was a question about our intentions.
We couldn't just say, oh, we're Morgan Stanley
and we have a great opportunity
and we're gonna pay your graduates six figures.
It was, who are you, and why are you coming down here,
and what do you have to offer, and what are they going
to get in their first year, and what can they do afterwards,
and what do your graduates
from your internship programs do afterwards?
You really have to spend some time educating
and selling at the same time.
And then, again, the real reason
that you wanna be intentional about making sure
that people have the right sponsorship
is that the most effective tool,
if I can call it that for a second,
that you can have in getting other diverse people
into your organization, women and/or people of color,
are the women and the people of color themselves.
(Jim)Absolutely.
(-)I spent a lot of time talking to corporations, and I said,
it's nice to go out and get people from the outside
and recruit them in,
but the person that should be doing most of that
are the people that look like that already
in your organization.
And if they are not doing that,
then it's leadership's job to figure out why,
because I would argue, something's wrong with the house.
(Jim)Right, right.
(-)They're coming in, they're doing a job,
but they're not saying, this is a great place to work,
you oughta to come over and work here.
(Jim)Right.
(-)I would spend time at the outset
understanding how inclusive my organization is,
because I would argue that it's relatively easy
to get the bodies in, but as everyone who's been involved
in this journey over the last 30 years
that this conversation has been happening
in corporate America knows, retention is the key issue.
Ask yourself before you even get started,
how inclusive are we?
Do people feel like they have a voice in this organization?
Are our leaders adept at soliciting people's voices?
Because at the end of the day,
that's what inclusion looks like,
that's what inclusive leadership looks like.
You must solicit your team's voices.
You want everybody to contribute their best thoughts,
their best talent, their best effort at the end of the day.
And in most environments, you have to solicit that first.
But I would submit to you
that if you do that four or five times with your teams,
then you don't have to do that the fifth, sixth time
because they're gonna wanna contribute.
They feel valued, and most importantly,
they feel like someone sees them.
And that's really what inclusivity is all about.
Do I belong here?
Do people see me?
Do I have a voice?
Do I want to contribute?
And it's one thing for someone
to fulfill the job description.
It's another thing for them to contribute.
The tool that a lot of companies have used,
obviously, are the employee networking groups,
because that gives you a vehicle, if you will,
to create events, create other opportunities
where people have an opportunity to lead.
They may not have an opportunity to lead
in the seat that they're sitting in,
but if they're doing something else on behalf of the company
for the Asian employee network,
or even the parents employee network, or the veterans,
that can be a very useful tool
because when people feel engaged, they are invested.
(Jim)Right.
(-)And that a long way towards retention.
The other thing is making sure that you move people around.
Because it's easy for anyone to get very comfortable
in the seat that they're sitting in,
but if they know that there are going
to be several challenges along the way
before I get to a vice president's role,
or before I get to an executive vice president's role,
you now give me something to aspire to.
(Jim)Right.
(-)And by the way, I am collecting experiences
and skills along the way.
That is a bigger retention tool
than you think it might be.

(-)Sure, sure.
(-)Especially for millennials-
(-)Because they are looking,
they want something they can look forward to, number one,
they wanna feel that somebody is investing in their career.
And if you're making sure that they're collecting
lots of different skills and experiences,
then you have a better shot of having them stick with you.
Most CEOs that I talk to
are deathly afraid of millennials.
They're like, aw, the tsunami of millennials are coming.
And I know now why they're afraid.
(-)What's the fear for that?
(-)I'll tell you, I know why they're afraid,
because they have 'em at home.
That's part of the reason.
But the thing is, nobody ever uses the word loyal
with millennials.
And I spend a lot of time with millennials
and I have found that they are very loyal,
especially if they feel like you are investing in them.
(Jim)Right.
(-)It's really setting up a management system, if you will,
so that they feel that somebody is watching
and guiding their career.
As boomers, we didn't have that.
(-)Right.
We were told, put your head down, work really hard,
you don't get fired, you know you're doing okay.
We didn't get feedback, so we didn't even have the luxury
of craving it.

(-)Right.
(-)But they want the transparency and they want the feedback
and they want inclusivity.
They want to feel as if you value their input.
(-)Right, that's great.
(-)Yeah, they wanna belong.
(-)They don't wanna just join a company-
(-)Absolutely.
And the more we can do on that, the better.
I'd like to turn for a moment
to something that can be a little sensitive,
the concept of unconscious bias and how might we,
as leaders of banks and directors of banks,
how might we broach that subject
to really examine ourselves and our teams?
(-)Yeah.
Nancy, thank you so much for that question,
because I'm often asked,
Carla, what do you see as best practices?
And since I speak at a bunch of companies
across various industries.
And I always say, if you're starting your journey,
start with unconscious bias, because we all have it.
And I was astounded, frankly,
when I was first exposed to it
because as a 31-year banker, pretty well educated,
I might say, I think of myself
as an enlightened black woman, of course,
I am very self-aware, I don't have any bias.
Hmm, until the trainer put four sentences on the screen.
First sentence was general counsel and CFO
are having a conversation.
General counsel articulates an idea to the CFO.
CFO and CEO are talking in a room.
General counsel walks in while they are speaking.
What happened here?
I said, I know, I know!
The general counsel is a woman and she gave her idea
to the CFO who's a man and he took it straight over
to the CEO and claimed credit for that idea.

Right.
And she said, Carla, thank you very much
for your excellent example of unconscious bias.
She said, that's what it does.
Your perspective, your personal perspective,
your brain fills in the sentences
and creates a narrative that's not there.
There was no gender, there wasn't anything,
other than those discreet sentences.
But yet, my brain filled in exactly what happened.
And she said, we all do it.
And ever since then, I've been hyper-sensitive
and questioned when I get to a conclusion about a thing
or a person, I ask myself, okay, where's that coming from?
Are you looking at the facts?
And are you assimilating the facts
and coming up with a judgment,
or are you adding something in there
that is now driving your conclusion?
And you have to be trained to think that way.
I think it's an excellent place to start
in any organization,
if you are trying to transform the culture.
As bankers, I think we tend to think that
if we hire smart people, they will just execute
and they will know that they are valued
and they can do it on their own.
We are fond to say, we don't wanna micromanage.
But at the end of the day,
I do think people have an appetite to be led.
(-)Right.
(-)And in some cases, they have an appetite to be managed.
And I think that we underestimate the power of our voices
and we don't realize sometimes, as leaders,
how we take away other people's voices.
(-)Right.
I heard a CEO say in a meeting,
well, I just wanna get an idea
of what you guys think about this particular thing.
Personally, I don't think we need to do it,
but what do you guys think?


(-)Right.
(-)And I thought, and I happened to be listening on the phone
and I thought,
does he realize
that he just took away everybody's voices?
(-)Sure.
(-)Who is going to challenge the CEO at the end of the day?
He doesn't get the benefit of their real thinking.
And even if they have a counter point of view,
they're gonna be careful about how they articulate it,
so it's probably gonna be so watered down
that the point is missed.

(-)Sure.
(-)I think as bankers, we forget that
because we think everybody is self-possessed, type A,
and of course, they're leaders too.
(Jim)Yeah.
(-)But I think we forget those kinds of things
and we forget to go the extra mile,
as I said, to intentionally be inclusive.
What are you thinking about that, Nancy?
Wow, that was a great idea.
Now Jim, I'd like you to push back on that
because we need to understand where the gaps are
before we take this product to market.
Give me the, play the devil's advocate
against what she said.

(-)Sure, sure.
(-)Your team gets used to the push and pull.
That's really a big example of what inclusivity
is all about, and I think we've failed to do that.
(-)The recession, as it relates to hiring folks,
caused two issues.
One, banks stopped training and hiring folks-
(-)Yep.
(-)At the depths of the recession.
And two, let's face it, we got a black eye,
rightly in some cases, wrongly in many of them,
during that time period.
What do we need to do today, do you think,
to help improve our image for people that are looking,
that are coming out of college, looking for careers,
as well as folks that are older that might be looking
to transition into another career?
What's been effective and what do you think we,
as part of this industry, need to be doing today?
(-)Yeah, I think we've actually gone a long way
to repair our image.
And I frankly think that was one of the best things
that could have happened to us as an industry
was to get the black eye,
because it provoked conversations between Main Street
and Wall Street that had not happened before.
The two have always been inextricably tied,
but we weren't really talking to each other.
And because of that, I think there was a level of education
that happened for the masses, if you will,
about who we are and what we do
and the mistakes that we make.
I think that we have repaired our image a bit,
but I do think that to the extent
that we can start investing in our people again,
and as I said, create an environment
where your people want to sell for you,
that will be the thing that will attract new talent.
Because when folks are going out and saying,
this is a great company, I'm having a ball.
Here's what I've learned over the last six months
and here's what I'm gonna be doing in the next six months.
Then, you'll get people wanting to come into that space.
If you think about it, the reason why we all wanted
to come into this space back in the '80s,
I know I'm dating myself, '80s, yep,
frankly, was because we saw the intellectual challenge,
we knew we were gonna have a variety of different things
that we were going to work on,
so we were gonna have diversity of assignments,
and we knew we were gonna get paid well.
And for our generation, the pay mattered.
For this generation,
it's not that they don't care about pay,
but it's number four or five.
But what they do care about
is who are you in the larger world?
And as a regional bank, as a community bank,
you have a bigger impact in their immediate community
than any of us could ever have.
Turning up the dial and amplifying what you really are doing
in the community and who you are,
I think will also go a long way
to generate interest from that next generation of talent.
(-)Great.
(-)A lot of companies,
when they're working on the workforce representation
and retention, will step into doing diversity
and inclusion training.
And some do it really well and some kind of bomb out.
What would you say are some of the pitfalls
that people who are considering doing some kind
of diversity and inclusion training,
what are the pitfalls that they should try to avoid?
(-)Yes.
The first pitfall is, don't do a whole set-up.
You've never done this before.
Don't pick the Cadillac of the training programs.
Pick something that you know that you will be able
to execute going forward over the next two or three quarters
'cause it needs to be reinforced.
If it has not been a part of your culture,
having wholesale training is not going to magically,
all of a sudden, make it a part of your culture.
You have now checked the box because you had the training,
but the implementation is really where the trick is
and reinforcing it so that it becomes a part of the culture.
Then, follow that up with part two and part three.
But you have to sort of bring the organization along
so that you expose, you teach, you educate,
but you implement, you reinforce,
and then you go to the next level.
That's the biggest pitfall that I would say.
The second, and the last thing I'll say,
is that you don't wanna make a big splash
and say, this really matters,
and then you do absolutely nothing else
in your organization that's demonstrative
of what you're trying to get done.
Yep.
(-)What do you think some of the lowest hanging fruit
that bankers could do,
when they're back in their office tomorrow morning,
later this week, what would you advise them to do?
Some of the simplest things that they could start with?
(-)Number one, bring all of your staff together
and talk about what you got from this conference.
And with respect to this particular topic,
pick three bullet points that were aha moments for you
and say, listen, I think I'm pretty smart,
but maybe I'm not the smartest person in the room,
'cause here's what I missed.
And I'd love to get your thoughts on this topic.
What could we do?
What should we do?
What's something that will give us 30 to 60 days
of a point on the board?
What's something we should do in the intermediate?
What's something we should do in the long-term?
I want a dashboard so that I can know
that we're actually getting something done.
(Jim)Right.
(-)Because here's what we look like today,
here's what I want us to look like this time next year,
and I need everybody's help because I can't do it by myself.
That's the first thing I'd do.
The second thing I would do is think about
what are the roles that are open
and how can I be demonstrative with respect
to putting a woman or a person of color in those roles?
And if I don't have someone on the inside now
that can fill a role that is a visible role,
then let me think about the relationships I have
with executive recruiters, let me think
about the relationships I have with my fellow bankers,
and maybe I can find someone that's really good
that can fill that role.
That would speak volumes,
especially if it's never been done before.
Those are two things that you could do right off the bat.
(-)That's fantastic, great advice.
What else should we be thinking about?
What do you wanna leave us with today?
(-)Yeah, I would just say, just think about who you are today
and who you think you wanna be in five years.
Because look at how fast the world has changed since 2013.
We all have habits, we're doing things
that we never would have thought about doing.
Can you say 8-track?
Hmm.

Can you say cassette tape?

(-)Absolutely, sure.
(-)Can you say MP3?
Now streaming.

(-)Right.
(-)Just think about how fast that's happened in our lifetime.
Well, the rate of change has also sped up.
I would argue it used to be every 10 years,
every five years, now it's 18 months, if that.
If you think about how fast the environment,
the competitive landscape, is going to change,
what do you need to do today
in order to make sure you are best in class,
the employer of choice in your market,
getting the absolute best talent,
and being able to take advantage
of some of these entrepreneurs, because this generation
has an appetite that's different, I would argue, than ours
and they're gonna be the source of business
for this community, whether it's payroll or investments,
whatever it is, they're gonna have businesses,
and are you going to be the bank
where they actually wanna do their business
and grow their business with.
(-)Absolutely.
Thanks so much for taking time to be here with us.
Let's give her a round of applause.
(Carla)Thank you, thank you, thank you.