Banking & Finance
Sharing the vision
How to keep your employees excited about coming to work
Smart Business Philadelphia | February 2008
Tim Abell
President, Firstrust Bank
Interviewed by Matt McClellan
Tim Abell is a survivor. The
first nonfamily member tobe named president of Firstrust
Bank survived multiple acquisitions and mergers at some of
the publicly owned banks he
previously managed. Those
days were difficult, he says,
because just when your team
started to get on the right track,
someone came in and switched
all the uniforms when the
organization was sold to distant
shareholders and much of what
that team worked to build was
lost.
He hasn’t missed the constant
ups and downs at all since 2004,
when he joined Firstrust, where
he serves as president and chief
operating officer. The bank,
which has $2.2 billion in assets
and 24 locations, was founded
74 years ago by the grandfather
of the current CEO, Richard Green.
Smart Business spoke with
Abell about how to create a
winning team and how to keep
your employees excited about
coming to work every day.
Let your team learn from mistakes.Listen to your team. You need
to be willing to empower them,
you need to be engaged and be
engaging.
For me, having come up
through the ranks in the organization’s trenches, you earn your
team’s respect by working hard
and caring about the people
you work with. I try to be open
to doing different things. In
doing that, you need to recognize that some mistakes will be
made on the path to progress.
Richard Green, the owner of
the bank, his grandfather used
to say, ‘If you’re going to fall,
fall forward. If you’re going to
make a mistake, make a new
one.’ So we try to recognize
that in empowering people,
they are going to make some
mistakes, but you need to
learn from those and develop
other leaders in the company.
Keep a focus on a team
approach.
They need to feel comfortable
that making decisions, if it
turns out to be wrong, we’re
going to learn from it. They
need to know we’re not going
to chop their heads off.
It’s important for them to
know that we’re going to support them and allow them to
learn.
Give your employees the power of
responsibility. I know that I
always feel least empowered
when someone is second-guessing or micromanaging the
decisions I’m making. So I want
to be there for them if they
need it.
I want to make sure we’re
moving in the right direction, I
want to be guiding it, but it has
to be a shared vision. So others
have to feel that they have a
part in shaping it.
I let them be accountable for their decisions. If they’re successful, they’ll be rewarded; if
they aren’t, we’re going to have
conversations about it. We let
them do their craft, and they
appreciate that.
We welcome people who are
talented and want to make sure
we give them a chance to grow
here and have an impact and
feel the days they’re spending
here are meaningful.
Make work more fun. People
want to be on a winning team.
Once you start to have some
success, you get other people
who want to join in.
The way you treat employees
is the difference. I’ve worked at
banks that have been sold five
times. So to come to a family
bank was a significant difference. Especially in this marketplace, where there has been so
much consolidation.
Employees get a little tired
from that.
Richard Green has said, ‘If
you’re building a house to live
in, you’d use different materials
than if you’re building a house
to sell.’ I think there’s a lot of
truth to that.
We’ve been able to attract
good people because we recognize their efforts. We pay well
for people who perform well.
You have to have good compensation programs, but it’s
important that we try to make
it fun, and the family atmosphere is something that is true
and meaningful. We’ve had people leave and come back, and
we welcomed them back.
So whether it’s the softball
games, the holiday parties or
the other things to recognize
people’s efforts — even though
it’s work, we try to keep it
something people look forward
to coming to every day.
Don’t forget what got you to where
you are now. You always have to
look at things from a customer’s perspective. Sometimes
if you get larger, you forget
that. We don’t ever want to get
away from the customer.
Spreading yourself too thin so
that your quality erodes is a
risk. As you’re growing, you
want to make sure it’s good,
quality, sustained growth but
not so much that we have
some quality issues. You just
have to stay focused there.
As a leader, you have to remember to not take too
much credit from all the successes. Realize that really
comes from the efforts of your
employees. So we spend a lot
of time recognizing a wide level
of employees.
If you’re in touch with your
customers, if you spend time
with them, ask them what they
like about what we’re doing
and what they don’t like about
what we’re doing. The president’s breakfast is a good way
for me to hear from the
employees if there are any
issues.
I have spent days in the call
center to hear what customers
are calling in and asking about.
If you’re engaged, you’ll get a
pulse of it.
HOW TO REACH: Firstrust Bank, (610) 238-5000 or www.firstrustbank.com
