Banking & Finance
Kurt Treu
Regional Chairman Northeast and Central Ohio, U.S. Bancorp
By Mike Cottrill
Smart Business Cleveland | October 2007
Kurt Treu is a leader in flux — his leadership style is constantly evolving as he learns new things and talks to new people. That’s
because Treu, regional chairman Northeast and Central Ohio for U.S. Bancorp, the parent company of U.S. Bank, knows that the
best leader is one who continues to learn how to pilot an organization. So while Treu takes pride in the way he leads his 1,300
employees, he continues to study other leaders and read books on how to improve company culture. Always ready to hear new
ideas for improving his leadership style, he is constantly adapting to his staff to produce better results at the country’s sixth-largest commercial bank. Smart Business spoke with Treu about why it’s your job to make employees understand how they help
the company and how to create a winning environment.
Help employees by explaining their roles. The
most important thing for people is to
answer the question of why — ‘Why should
I be great at what I do? Why does what I do
matter?’ You have to answer that for people.
Help people understand why what they
do matters, how it fits in to the bigger picture of the team. We need to trust people
with that information. I think the old style
of telling people, ‘Do this because I said so,’
doesn’t give people enough intellectual
integrity. From the entry-level person to the
most senior-level person, they need to be
trusted with the ‘why’ to fully understand
their role.
If you stop there, you have a piece of it,
but the next step is making the emotional
connection. You really help people to
understand how they fit in to the bigger
picture and how what they do truly does
matter, not just to the company but hopefully to the customer they serve. When you
do that, now you have the opportunity to
inspire people, and it is the leader’s responsibility to provide that inspiration.
I believe that people want their lives to
have meaning, and it would be a pretty
shallow, empty career for most of us if we
went in every day, putting in the hours that
we do at our jobs, and not feel that there is
some real, true meaning to that. To the
extent that you can help answer that for
people, it gives them meaning and makes
them feel relevant every day.
Create a winning environment. A leader needs
to create a winning environment. Nobody
likes to be part of a losing team. The leaders create a new future and inspire people
to be better than they would have been if
that leader wouldn’t have been there.
We have a real coaching culture here, so
there is an absolute requirement that all of
our managers are not just meeting with
staff annually but there is continuous
coaching going on. And that can be formal
and informal. In a lot of areas, we have
weekly coaching sessions, and then something more in-depth on a monthly or quarterly basis.
If that’s done properly, it’s huge. Coaching
isn’t always about, ‘Golly, are you hitting
your goals, and how can I help you do
that?’ Part of it has to be career development, personal development and professional development. Most people don’t
leave their jobs because they don’t like
what they’re doing, it’s because they are
not feeling personally and professionally
fulfilled. They don’t feel like they’re developing, or they don’t see an opportunity for
the future.
Build up your community. We are made up of
communities like Cleveland, Akron and
Columbus, and people may know the name
U.S. Bank, but they bank with people. So to
the extent that we can tell the story of who
we are and be out there in the community
and supporting the things that are important to this community, that says a lot
about our organization.
It’s leading by example, and it’s role modeling. Not only do we tell people that it
would be a nice thing for you to be
involved and be on board, we expect it.
From a selfish standpoint, the more we can
make the community strong, the stronger
we’ll be as an organization. So it’s the right
thing to do, but it’s also a smart business
thing to do.
Combine cultures for the best ideas. When
there is an acquisition, you are acquiring a
group of very proud people, and proud
people are proud for a reason; they’re
proud of what they are doing, they’re proud
of what they’ve done.
First of all, you have to respect that. You
can’t have so much ego that you think what
you’re doing is right just because you’re the
buyer.
You need to listen, and you need to take
the best of both worlds, if you will. When
it’s all said and done, you need to inspire
people about what the new future is going
to look like. You need people to be convinced that they can create that new future,
and that they’re not going to be the victims
of whatever happened to them, but instead,
they are going to control that to create
what tomorrow is going to look like. You
have to help paint that picture for people to
understand how they fit in to it.
Hire people who fit. The most important criteria for someone here is fit. In real estate,
it’s location, location, location; here it’s fit,
fit, fit. It’s all about cultural fit, so you have
to test for that, you have to get a feel for
that in the interview process.
My litmus test isn’t scientific, but if I’m in
an interview and I find that I end up trying
to sell the bank as opposed to the candidate selling themselves to me, then somewhere in there I’ve made the emotional
connection that, that candidate fits. That’s
a hard thing to put on an interview sheet,
but you can ask them some behavioral
questions that will help get to that.
It’s really trying to find out about that person, and what makes them tick, to see if
their values match those of the organization.
HOW TO REACH: U.S. Bancorp, (800) 872-2657 or
www.usbank.com
