KODIAK, Alaska–For credit unions, like all organizations, the search for great leaders is never-ending—and it often overlooks and under-develops those leaders, according to one person.
Speaking to the Alaska CU League’s annual meeting, Danielle Scodellaro, executive benefits specialist with TruStage, spoke to the issue of “How Internal Talent Mobility Creates Long-Term Leadership Excellence,” and outlined how credit unions can develop a “pipeline” of leadership.
“Organizations that actively engage, retain and develop their best talent in house tend to get better bottom-line results,” Scodellaro said. “Building a succession program around internal talent mobility, including cross training, coaching, complementary leadership and regulatory assessment, prepares your leaders to step up when they’re needed most. Internal mobility increases your pool of employees who have direct experience in multiple areas of operations.”
The Critical Piece
Scodellaro said a critical part of succession planning is making people feel valued and building a culture of appreciation.
Why do executives hired from within do better? According to Scodellaro:
- Better information is available to evaluate internal hires
- Internal candidates can be developed earlier to suit the credit union’s specific membership and operations
- External hires may lack cultural awareness
- It’s difficult for many external exec hires to build crucial support networks
Three Basic Types of Succession Planning
According to Scodellaro, there are three basic types of succession planning:
- The emergency succession plan, “or what I like to call the ‘Oh, shit’ succession plan,” said Scodellaro. “It’s a quick fix vs. interim position. It has to be one piece of a larger plan.”
- Business continuity plans. These are comprehensive, documented, communicated and rehearsed. “It has a purpose, but it doesn’t get to the deepest level of leadership continuity,” she said.
- True leadership plans.
And those true leadership plans are, according to Scodellaro:
- Proactive
- Feature continuous improvement
- Expand professional range. “This is really about cross training, so nobody is in a silo and they are ready to step in or step up. It’s also about continuing education.”
- Are regularly updated
- Lead organizations into the future. “You might have people who are in one career, but they love technology. If you cross train, it’s going to help you have a broader organization.”
Scodellaro added that succession plans need to be “wide and deep,” and must also recognize that competence goes beyond the core competencies and include behavioral competencies.
Some Best Practices
Scodellaro said some of the best practices to strengthen a leadership pipeline include:
- Establish responsibility/accountability
- Routinely recruit candidates from outside
- Cross train the management team
- Change the leadership culture and create freedom from fiefdoms
- Reward managers for training/hiring results
- Create meaningful motivation to protect leaders from would-be poachers. “Executive benefits and other packages are critical here and are an important part of succession plan to function as an extra layer of security,” Scodellaro said.
How to Create a Meaningful Retention Program
Scodellaro said the components of a meaningful retention program include:
- Assess your overall executive benefits program to ensure you address changing needs of leaders, especially your rising stars
- Consider adding new plans of expanding/revising existing plans
- Consider retooling underlying funding strategies
How to Sign Up For the Best Daily News Email in Credit Unions? (It’s Free!)
Every workday CUToday.info delivers the most comprehensive, freshest daily newsletter with the day’s news headlines, including links to the related articles. The Fresh Today newsletter is the most timely, relevant and widely-read source of news and information in the CU community. And it’s free!
If you haven’t yet signed up for the new email solution on which CUToday.info has partnered with ResponseGenius, you can do so here. Signing up requires less than one minute of your time—and it’s free!
Please note that after signing up you may need to go to your Spam/Junk folder and mark the morning headlines email as safe. CUToday.info does not provide its list of readers and emails to outside parties,
And did we mention it’s free?