Engaging Employees for Growth - Leadership Lessons with Brian Waldron

Would you like to discover the secrets behind fostering a thriving & engaged workplace culture?

In this episode, we sit down with Brian Waldron, President & CEO of Dort Financial Credit Union, to discuss how leadership actions directly impact employee engagement, culture, and organizational performance.

Brian shares his leadership journey - from starting as a teller in college to leading a $2.3 billion credit union - and his lessons on building a culture of empowerment, fostering leadership development, and aligning people, processes, and profits to drive long-term success.

Tune in to hear actionable insights on:
*The role of leadership in shaping employee engagement & retention
*How cultural alignment impacts financial performance & customer experience
*Strategies for empowering employees & creating internal growth opportunities

With over two decades of experience in the credit union industry, Brian discusses the importance of understanding diverse employee backgrounds to cultivate an inclusive culture. He also emphasizes the need to anticipate financial trends to safeguard a positive work environment, offering actionable strategies for leaders at any stage.

This episode is a must-listen for leaders seeking to create a values-driven workplace where open dialogue, employee satisfaction, and cultural alignment drive performance and success.

Connect with Brian on LI

We'd love your feedback on how we can improve - send us a Text!!

Seeking to align your culture, boost performance & impact your bottom line? Let’s chat—no sales, just real talk about your challenges. Not ready? Join our PL3 Community for free insights & connections.

Episode Transcript

William Gladhart (00:00):
Welcome to the Leadership Levers Podcast.
I'm your host, Will Gladhart,CMO at the Culture Think Tank.
At the Culture Think Tank, weempower leaders with metrics
that strengthen culture, driveperformance and return.
We're here today to learn aboutthe actions leaders have taken
to address organizational change.

(00:21):
Today, our guest is BrianWaldron, President and CEO of
Dort Financial Credit Union.
Thanks so much for taking thetime to join us.

Brian Waldron (00:32):
Will, thanks for having me.
I truly appreciate it.

William Gladhart (00:34):
Absolutely.
Let's begin by having you sharewith our audience a bit about
yourself, your background andyour organization.

Brian Waldron (00:41):
Absolutely! Well.
As you mentioned Brian Waldron,president and CEO of Dort
Financial Credit Union, I'vebeen the President and CEO since
March of 2022.
I built a 20-plus year careerin the credit union industry,
actually starting out when I wasin college at First Miami
Student Federal Credit Union, oncampus working as a teller.
So I've done a lot of positionsacross the country, but I think

(01:02):
it's a really uniqueopportunity to start when you're
in college as a part-timeteller and work your way all the
way through and now being CEOof a $2.3 billion credit union
in Michigan, which is awesome.
Besides that, in my personallife, I am a father of three
boys 21 and twin 17-year-oldsand a dog dad to four dogs and
I've been married to my wife forover 20 years.

William Gladhart (01:23):
As you mentioned in some of our
pre-conversations, it's neverdull around the house - never,
never.
So we'll be discussing threequestions today as a warm-up to
start our conversation.
Would you share why you believea healthy culture is critical?

Brian Waldron (01:37):
Well, you know, I've built my career in
management around employeeengagement right.
I really feel like it'simportant for employees to feel
engaged and create that workculture where employees feel
empowered and that they can askquestions and then they can make
decisions and they can lead thecredit union forward.
One of the biggest experiences Iever had early on in my career
the CEO came into one of ourleadership meetings and said we

(02:00):
were having some issues and weneeded to lay off some staff.
And sitting across the deskfrom someone and telling them,
for no reason of their own, thatthey don't have a job anymore,
really impacted me in a not sogood way at the time, but I
vowed at that moment that Iwould never do that if I was
ever to become a CEO or in asenior leadership position.
I've kind of built my careeraround employee engagement,

(02:21):
making sure employees aresatisfied, because I truly
believe that when an employee isengaged and they're happy, that
they're going to provide thebest member service or customer
service right, and so to do thatand to change culture and to be
a change agent for culture hasbeen really important throughout
my career.

William Gladhart (02:36):
Yeah, I love hearing that.
Often we see that leadership'sactions and behaviors directly
impact performance andconnectivity and how people
understand their role at anorganization.
Just as we kick off the nextquestion, it's been my, it's
been our experience that leaderstend to struggle in three key
areas people, process or profit.
In your role as CEO, would youidentify maybe one of these

(02:58):
three areas that represented acultural challenge within the
organization?

Brian Waldron (03:03):
Well, I think people is always the challenge,
right, because people come fromdifferent walks of life, they
come from different backgrounds,they come from different
cultures, based upon eitherwhere you live or where they've
grown up or lived in their past.
So I think people is just areally challenging effort.
As the CEO, I think we need tounderstand the other two key
factors, right.
We obviously need to understandprofitability and how that

(03:23):
affects everything, but I thinkit's important to understand
profitability and how it affectspeople, right?
So, going back to my originalexample, where I sat across the
desk and had to lay somebody offof no fault of their own, I
believe in my heart and I'm notspeaking poorly of ass leaders
that I've had, because therehave been some really great ones
but I believe it's our key roleas a CEO to understand
profitability in the future,right, and to make sure we're

(03:46):
looking out and making sure wehave all those things so that we
can provide the best employeeculture.
When I go back to understandingpeople, I want to meet them
where they are right.
I want to challenge them, Iwant to understand, I want to be
able to have a conversation.
I think you know one thing I'veheard throughout my career as
managers is we don't have enoughpeople.
And then, of course, I kind ofchuckle right, because I look

(04:06):
down at the numbers and I'm like, well, we could improve here,
we could possibly improve there,and no one's working overtime.
And when I look out the windowat five o'clock there's a rush
to the car, right.
And so to say you need morepeople, we need to challenge our
people right, to work harder,work smarter.
But we need, we need to givethem the opportunity to do so,
and if they really love whatthey do and where they work,

(04:27):
they'll put in that extra effort.
And then, as we start to seethose numbers go down or, over
time, go up, then we can startthinking about adding the staff
and so just.
But having that very transparentconversation is tough for a lot
of leaders.
Right, we say, oh, we need morepeople.
Yep, I understand, let's do it.
Right, that's how you thrownumbers or you throw people at
numbers.
I just don't think that's theright answer on the test.
But I think people inleadership positions are so

(04:50):
afraid to have the appropriateconversation or that tough
conversation.
But what I have found outthroughout my career is if
you're willing to have thatconversation and teach and
engage the staff.
They're much more willing tolisten and they truly appreciate
the feedback.

William Gladhart (05:03):
Yeah, no, I love that you address that,
because all the people, processand profits really truly are
wrapped together, butindividuals understanding their
role, how they're contributingto the organization, but at the
end of the day it's appreciatedby all across the organization.

Brian Waldron (05:33):
Yeah, you know, I do say in front of our we have
an all team meeting once a yearand there's over 400 employees
that attend this and I get tostand up in front of all of them
and I do get to be very honestwith them and say what keeps me
up at night is making sure thatyou have a place that you can
come to work every day, right?
So that incorporates people,process and profits.
So it incorporates all three Psand I think making sure that

(05:55):
they're the center of my thoughtwhen we reach out to do that is
really important.

William Gladhart (05:59):
You kind of identified that people challenge
.
Was there a specific instanceor specific challenge within the
organization and, if so, didthat negatively impact the
organization?

Brian Waldron (06:10):
Again, talking poorly about a past leader is
not really my forte, right, andthat's not my intention here,
but I will say that people comefrom different backgrounds,
right?
So when I took over theorganization, we did an employee
engagement score and it came infairly low.
In fact, it was lower in allcategories across the board and
including all comparativestatistics.
Now, that wasn't to say we hadbad leadership, but it was just

(06:30):
a different type of leadership.
The previous CEO had come upthrough the financial realm,
right.
So chief financial officer intoa CEO role and in some of those
ways, they're always challengedby more of the profit role,
right?
They're less engaged with thepeople, and that's just what
I've seen across my career.
However, I came up through moreof a lending route, always been
engaged with people, whether itwas making people alone,

(06:50):
talking to staff and engagingand cross-selling and things of
that nature.
So people has really been mypriority and over that time
March 2022, so we're almostcoming up on three years we have
improved employee engagement tothe point now where we are
higher than all comparativemetrics across the board.
We are higher than creditunions 1.5 billion and above.

(07:12):
We are higher than creditunions who employ 300 to 400
employees and we are higher thancredit unions in our region and
that's really important.
But we didn't do it by throwingmoney, salary dollars,
incentives at people.
What we did is really goingback and looking at our value
statements empowerment,community service, right and
looking at those differentthings and there are others but

(07:33):
really taking a look at that andtraining the staff on what that
meant for us, right.
What does empowerment mean?
It means that you can make amistake or you can make a
decision and you know what.
There are consequences to somethings, but most of the time
mistakes are minor and notintentional, and so we can kind
of learn from those things.
If you waive a fee or you dosomething that you're empowered
to do and it's not the rightchoice, we don't terminate or we

(07:57):
don't look down on you.
We simply have a conversationand we try to learn and teach
from that.
We have really learned from thislesson and we have started to
engage employees who wanted tomake a career and how do they
advance, right, and so coming upwith an emerging leaders
program where we teach peopledifferent leadership skills and
how they all come together andso really just again, engaging
with that staff and moving thatneedle forward and worrying less

(08:20):
about the member service orcustomer service has actually
improved our customer servicehas actually improved our
customer service.
I hear more good things fromcustomers now, when I see them
out and about, than I did before, and it's because we have an
engaged work staff and so wereally sat down, we explained
our mission, we explained ourcore values and we actually have
annual training on these.
But they're fun, right.

(08:40):
They're really fun trainings.
The other thing we've reallydone is we've really dove in and
we have really focused ongenerational differences right,
because if you look across ourworkforce right now, we have
four different generations thatare working under the same roof
and they operate very, verydifferently, and so we have
generational training on howconversations affect each one of

(09:01):
us and how we hear that or howwe view that, and so, again,
just taking our differences andreally learning from them and
leaning in has been awesome forour organization.

William Gladhart (09:11):
Well, I always love it when I get a two-fer
from a leader, which is theyaddress the problem, but then
also they share how theyidentified it, how they made it
turn it into a positive, and Ithink that's a fantastic
testament that you not only hearfrom your customers and people
in the community that they'venoticed a difference.
They actually are feeling likethe customer should, and their

(09:34):
customer experience journey isvery different, as you noted.
Taking those steps to helpemployees understand their next
steps in the organization,giving them an opportunity for
leadership whether they want tostep into that or not is huge.
So, as we wrap up today, brian,is there anything else you'd
like to share for fellow leaders?

Brian Waldron (09:54):
You know, I think , for leaders, I think employees
are just always looking foranswers.
Right, they're looking for moreand I don't think we give them
enough credit for why they'relooking for more.
Sometimes in that leadershiprole, we want to just sit there
and say, well, it's because weneed to do this.
If people understand the whybehind the statement or the why
behind the process or the whybehind the profit right Again,
going back to those three Pswhen you engage people where

(10:16):
they are and you explain the waythat they can relate, I think
it creates such an engagementfrom them that they want to do
that.
Next right I'll leave.
One piece of information that Ijust think has been so
informative in my life is whenpeople look for a promotion,
they look at the job descriptionand it says must have I'll use
in my career in the credit unionspace.

(10:37):
I list this long right you mustqualify for five years of
lending.
Sometimes that can be reallytough, especially if you have
been in a branch or you've beena teller, you've been more of a
back office role, and you mightnot meet that qualification.
So the other thing that we'vedone is we've created more kind
of like a university typeprocess where we will teach you
how to do real estate lending orwe will teach you how to do car
loans and things like that.

(10:58):
And then that job descriptionnow says either you've completed
five years of experience oryou've gone through the Dort
University of Lending.
And let me tell you when you canhave a staff member get that
promotion because the workplaceprovided them the next step.
That is awesome.
And so internally this year wehad over 76 promotions

(11:19):
internally.
We didn't have to go outside,and I'll tell you what.
That speaks volumes, right, andnot only does it talk to the
people who got promoted or whoreceived the promotion, but it
talks to the incoming staffmembers saying, wow, this is a
great place to work and I wantto make a career here and they
will allow me to do so and it'sa really cool experience.

William Gladhart (11:37):
Yeah, that's well, and I think that that
wraps back in what you mentionedabout some of that generational
communication, generationaltraining, but also that's a
fantastic number 70 plusindividuals that internally were
promoted because they weregiven the resources by the
company to be able to do that,so that's right.
Brian, I've enjoyed having youon our Leadership Lovers podcast

(11:59):
.
Thank you again for your timeand insights.

Brian Waldron (12:01):
Oh, I loved being here.
Thanks so much for asking me tobe here.

William Gladhart (12:06):
Thank you for joining us on the Leadership
Levers Podcast.
Find our Leadership Levers atThe Culture Think at www.
theculturethinktank.
com or listen on your favoritestreaming platform.
We'd love to hear from youabout the challenges you have
faced as a leader.
Tune in weekly as we inviteleaders to share their

(12:29):
experiences in strengtheningculture and performance, one
action at a time.