Let’s Get Personal.

While I have always been a competitive person by nature (my first “sales” job was selling Kirby vacuum cleaners door to door at 18 years old; qualifying as the top sales person in my first 3 months of the company and getting my first taste at top performer “luxury” by winning an award trip to Mexico), my success has always come from my incredible passion for people and helping each individual person and team, no matter how large the team, succeed. And not just succeed, but to be the very best that they possible can be; thrive within their career, emotionally and mentally take pride in what they do, advance within the company, and of course become as financially lucrative as possible. That’s what I have always loved about “sales” roles; typically the better you do, the more lucrative you become.

By putting people first, success naturally follows. I’m sure most people have heard the quote by Theodore Roosevelt “Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.” Nothing could be more true. When you truly care about your associates and partners, not only do you have increased retention, you have teammates that want to come to work and do their best. In my career I have experienced numerous times where associates have turned down a competitive and more lucrative offer at another company to stay on my team, or to stay on the teams of other managers that have the same mindset, as you cannot put a price on feeling valued and supported.

In my early 20’s after reaching the top 2% of the company as a Mortgage Loan Officer, I received my first big promotion to a Business Support Manager that was actually titled “Sales Champion” on my business cards (which we used to giggle about) in charge of all sales performance for an entire mortgage call center. This role had no direct reports and had to manage by influence. At the time, this call center was ranked last with their sales performance.

The very first thing I did was to create a recognition program designed to recognize top performing mortgage loan officers, but also and most importantly to recognize the “Most Improved” mortgage loan officers. You would not believe the difference that made not only in performance, but also in morale.

I then spent the majority of my days side by side with managers teaching and coaching them on how to motivate their team, identify the strengths of the team that we could leverage to help others, and identify what was getting in the way of success from others so we could overcome challenges together.

I sat side by side and listened in on calls with clients- providing real-time coaching to mortgage loan officers as well as their Sales Managers, and performed group listening sessions designed to encourage peer to peer coaching and support.

Watching individual mortgage loan officers as well as Sales Managers and their teams begin to improve was the most rewarding thing I had done to date. Being able to celebrate not only their improvement from a career standpoint, but also from a monetary standpoint was incredible. I loved hearing the stories of the vacations they could now take their family on, or the house they were now saving for. NOTHING is more rewarding than helping others. Nothing.

When the call center sales performance improved from last in the country to #1 in the country two years in a row, I earned Pinnacle Club recognition which was accompanied with recognition trips to Hawaii. My success did not come from how much I knew, or how many hours I worked, and certainly not from writing anyone up or terminating them . It came solely from a heart of caring for others and wanting the best for each person within that call center.

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to teach other “Sales Champions” these tools when I was asked to travel around the company to support the other mortgage call center teams as well. Nothing, literally nothing, is more rewarding than watching someone improve to the point they are thriving.

When I was recruited to be part of the National Sales Process Design team, I was able to combine my love for helping people (both associates as well as clients) succeed with what I continued to learn in the Process Design role including Manage by Fact, Six Sigma, and other fact based management styles. This role helped hone my skills at identifying things getting in the way of success, including leadership styles that were hurting performance and pushing away the best associates, and identifying sales goals that weren’t based on factual opportunity. This in turn allowed me to capitalize on what WAS working and leverage those common traits across across the country.

When a former friend and colleague took over a Mortgage Call Center that was ranked last in the country asked me to join his team to help him turn performance around, like the Loyal Leo I am, I agreed.

The team I took over was ranked within the lowest quartile in the country - so much so that they had been removed from answering sales calls and were now doing back office processing for other sales teams.

When I was recruited by this same former colleague to my most recent role within the company as Market Leader in 2015 (reporting to the Northwest Division spanning Washington and Oregon markets), I left my former team at #2 in the country, being recognized with a Pinnacle Trip to Florida.

Within months of being hired as the Market Leader (formerly referred to as Market Sales Manager until 2018), I was able to pin point the primary reasons why the Northwest Region was consistently ranked last in the country;

1. The treatment and expectations of the associates in the Financial Center; the requirements and challenges of managing Financial Centers with a fraction of the headcount compared to other Divisions across the country not only created stress and anxiety, but they were also at a disadvantage to meet sales performance goals as their daily activities centered around simply trying to open their doors when they didn’t have enough people to do so (and in many cases they would have to borrow associates from other Financial Centers which in turn would run low in staff) and still be required to complete the same amount of tasks as their peers with more staff (read more about this in detail in the section “The Culture”).

2. A culture focused on what was wrong and focus placed on the people that needed to be punished, vs. focusing on teaching and coaching associates to develop to their full potential. While the company has coaching programs in place, and by definition the Market Leader role should be spending the majority of their time developing and coaching their associates, menial tasks including many times intra-day reporting on various metrics including how many phone calls each sales associate made for the day kept the Market Leaders and Financial Center Managers from being able to spend much time at all coaching and developing their teams.

3. An Executive Leadership team that focused primarily on their own individual ranking and standing within the company, who used bullying and intimidation tactics to try and drive results.

While in my office I had inspirational quotes and letters from my team, peers, partners and others decorating my walls (you can read some of these in the section ”What Keeps Me Going”) as well as a running tally of who had been promoted from my team since I had accepted the new role, other offices reflected sales stats, credit card performance stats, and who was going on progressive discipline for sales performance. The negative culture was palpable.

In Winter and Spring of 2016, the Portland Metro Financial Center Managers and their teams began voicing their concerns regarding their direct leader, the Operations Market Manager. When conducting my visits focused on coaching and developing sales associates, the Financial Center Mangers would ask to speak privately where they expressed not only concern regarding treatment, but lack of responses from their leader regarding urgent issues like lack of staffing, no coverage for vacations, etc. It was shared with me by numerous Financial Center Managers that weeks would go by and still no response from their calls and emails asking for help. Many managers broke down in tears under the frustration and pressure to perform with no leadership support.

After months of hearing these concerns, I approached my direct supervisor, the Regional Executive at the time. After no change was made, it was suggested to me by him that I reach out to the Operations Market Manager’s direct supervisor, the Operations Executive, to share my concerns and the concerns of the Portland Metro team.

After a very low Associate Satisfaction survey came in for the Operations Market Manager (I was told one of the lowest in the franchise at the the time), an announcement was made that the Operations Market Manager would be taking a new role with no direct reports; the Sales Performance Manager for the Greater Washington and Oregon Region. One of the Sales Performance Manager peers on that team would be promoted 1 year later to our Regional Executive, and treatment would become even worse. Once the new Regional Executive was put into place in May of 2018, he partnered closely with the Sales Performance Manager (recently moved from the Operations Market Manager role), to the point that he would defer to the Sales Performance Manager on all people- related decisions. How did someone that had such unsatisfied employees, who had been moved to a position with no direct reports, now be given so much more power at a Region level? This is addressed further in the section “Truffle Shuffle”.

Remember “Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care”? The last 4 1/2 years of my career, and specifically the last 18 months under the current Sales Performance Manager and Regional Executive appointed in May of 2018 (who stepped down at the beginning of 2020 to his former role as Sales Performance Manager in another region), could not have proven this point more true.

The Division level and Region level calls were focused primarily on calling out those that weren’t performing in their sales metrics and emphasizing our failures as leaders for not “holding people accountable” to a higher standard of sales performance. The tone of the calls and meetings were negative and common phrases like “this is unacceptable”, and “we don’t need people at our company that don’t want to be successful” were used regularly throughout meetings.

After in person meetings with our Financial Center Managers, the Regional Executive and Sales Performance Manager would begin insulting our Financial Center Managers intelligence, leadership, and even make fun of them in a personal way.

We frequently heard how “lazy” and incompetent the associates in Oregon were; something that was not only incredibly offensive but also could not have been further from the truth. The simple fact that the majority of the Financial Centers in Oregon have a fraction of the headcount that other Financial Centers in other states have meant they were working harder and longer hours, reflected the mis-truth in these statements.

In addition I had just come from managing an Oregon team that I left at #2 in the country (out of more than 600 teams), and as the Sales Champion had moved the Oregon Mortgage Call Center to #1 in the country multiple years in a row. I was disgusted and appalled to continue hearing these demeaning comments about our hard working associates, and voiced my concerns to my peers and the Regional Executive.

My team was consistently ranked at the top for the sales metrics that we were instructed by the Regional Executive and Sales Performance Manager to focus on in order to improve their ranking, as my goal had been and always will be around teaching and coaching individuals and teams on “how” to get better which included the “why” behind the request as opposed to how the Market Leaders were being treated by the Regional Executive and Sales Performance Manger with a “because I told you so” approach (when I was severed my team was ranked #1 in the Region). When someone doesn’t understand the “why” behind something, not only does it make it more difficult to be successful but it creates negativity and confusion resulting in lower performance and depleted morale.

The Regional Executive continued to give more “power” to the Sales Performance Manager (remember from the post “The Beginning Started at the End”- they were peers as Sales Performance Managers before the Regional Executive was appointed to the Northwest Region); something that a peer of mine shared with me was something she had voiced concerns about to the Regional Executive several times, and leaned heavily on the Sales Performance Manager who had been in the Northwest Region for 15 + years.

Remember also that the Sales Performance Managers former role was as the Operations Manager managing the Portland Metro Financial Center Managers and tellers, and was moved from that role which had direct reports, to the Sales Performance Manager role which had no direct reports, due (as was communicated to us at the time) to the continued concern of his treatment of his employees which was also reflected in his Associate Engagement Satisfaction with Manager scores.

So how could someone who had been moved out of a market level position that had direct reports, be given even more power over associates at an even greater level by the Region Executive? Where were the checks and balances?

What I experienced in the last 18 months at this company was outlined and explained well In the June 7, 2019 Market Watch article; “There’s a scientific reason your company rewards incompetent Bosses.” The article gives three reasons why there is “ so much tolerance for incompetent leaders.” The article goes on to describe how, in the influence of office politics, and in “the absence of clear-cut performance data, leadership is reduced to a popularity contest, a political game in which Machiavellian and manipulative leaders will thrive.” This case and point was made when sometime between April and July of 2019 (to the best of my recollection) when the Divisional Executive (boss of the Regional Executive) was moved into a role in another area of the company, and the Northwest Region was “absorbed” into another Division rather than replaced.

When the newly appointed Division Executive and his team came to Portland, Oregon to visit the Northwest Region (as we were told; to understand why the Region continued to rank at the lowest in the country for sales performance), it was shared with the Market Leaders that the Division Executive had hand chosen his team of executives (including the Sales Performance Executive, which the Northwest Sales Performance Manager reported to) which we quickly learned had what seemed to be identical management styles as our direct boss the Northwest Regional Executive and the Sales Performance Manager; a leadership style that focused on the negative, calling associates incompetent and lazy, and conducting meetings laced with fear and intimidation.

With entire levels of leadership focused on looking for ways to terminate associates rather than seeking to understand the true reason for underperforming areas by engaging proven and successful Emotional Intelligence leaders with extensive backgrounds in Associate Satisfaction, sales performance success, as well as historical success for developing and promoting talent, the manage by fear and pressure leaders will continue to thrive. This cycle has to first be recognized, then broken; with ego, personal gain and ranking taken off of the table.

The article goes on to state that “incompetent leaders will reproduce: the more inept and corrupt a manager is, the more detrimental his or her hiring decisions will be. Moreover, such managers will go to great lengths to sabotage the career prospects of talented and ethical employees focused on helping organizations rather than pleasing their bosses.” Indeed.

In addition there “is a failure to understand leadership potential. This can take many shapes, but the overarching theme is the tendency to ignore the science of leadership at the expense of flawed leadership models and unreliable evaluations of leadership potential. For example, organizations put too much emphasis on candidates’ past performance, but many great individual contributors aren’t really able to manage people” so “what is the logic of moving people away from a job they were doing well, to put them in one they can’t do?” I couldn’t have worded it better myself.

One of the groups I was a part of, prior to the Regional Executive removing me upon being appointed, was the Business Integration group with our Market President.

This group focused solely on referring clients from one department to the next to keep any and all business within the company (for example if a mortgage loan officer identified a client that could benefit from a credit card, they would refer to an associate within another area of the company that could fulfill that request).

In 2017 I was tasked with owning the Consumer Bank to Mortgage “flow” (referrals from Oregon/Vancouver Metro Financial Centers including my West Portland Market, to the mortgage department). We ended the year at #1 in the country, resulting in national recognition.

When the Regional Executive was appointed in May of 2018 he removed me from the Business Integration board, and not until months later (when to my understanding someone from the Business Integration Board asked why I was no longer attending meetings), was I added back to the board. However, everything changed for me at these meetings once I was added back.

I stopped speaking up and sharing best practices to help others due to the glares I would get from the Regional Executive and Sales Performance Manager whenever I spoke. It was common for both of them to glare at me, then look down at the table with disgust. I learned to stay silent and withdrawn to avoid calling that type of attention to myself; I was already fighting for my career on a daily basis and was terrified to gain more negative attention.

When the Regional Executive would share his plan for improving the performance of the Oregon/Vancouver Metro Market’s performance (which had dropped significantly in 2019), he failed each time to share that my Market was not only performing, but also the top performing market consistently over 100% of goal in the referral categories.

As a leader, why would you fail to discuss what was working so that you could brainstorm and leverage these tactics across your whole team?

My passion and mission is to help as many individuals realize and reach their very full and best potential. Regardless of who gets the credit. Worrying about getting the “credit” is what gets corporations into trouble in the first place; the more focus we put on ourselves, the less we are focused on those we are entrusted to care for and develop. The rest spirals from there.
A strong team needs both IQ and EQ leaders that are open to feedback, focused on the success of their employees, and are eager to share what is and what is not working in order to continue improving.

No one leader “has it all”. It takes humility, being open to learning and feedback, putting your teams success ahead of your own, as well as the willingness to consult with others (a wise man has many counselors) to create a thriving team. Invest in your team and stand up for what is right - you cannot fail.

Heather Bryant • May 3, 2020