Most influential women in payments conference: Leading during uncertain times

What are the systemic, long term challenges posed by global economic uncertainty, and how will this affects the workplace, talent recruitment and retention, and what are the skills and mindset required by leaders to successfully weather this storm.

Transcript:

Daniel Wolfe (00:09):

So I absolutely love the conversations that we have in these sessions, and I think this is going to be the most challenging of them all. It's the last one before lunch, So that's when you're supposed to laugh at my joke. No. All right. They want us to be serious. All right. So, I'm Daniel Wolfe with American Banker. You met me earlier today. Brittany, do you want to introduce yourself?

Brittany Marten (00:33):

Sure, Thanks, Brittany Marten, I've been at Bank of America for 28 years, my entire career. Spent about 10 of those years in the consumer part of the bank, and then I moved into the corporate part of the bank and have been there since, well, for the past 15 years I guess. So I lead our global industrials, treasury sales team. So my team covers large corporates, primarily in the manufacturing, transportation, and logistics space. We also touch on travel, so we've got airlines, cruise lines and rental cars as part of that, but we cover automotive, chemicals, aerospace, defense, engineering, construction, and a wide range of other clients. So it's a very diversified sector. And again, these are large corporates.

Daniel Wolfe (01:14):

Okay. So our topic this morning, and Thank you. Our topic this morning is leading during uncertain times. Now, we've had a number of really interesting conversations this morning about leadership, about mentorship, women sharing what their views of this have been and how they've evolved over the course of entire careers. But today is, well, like you say, about every day a bit different. There's a lot going on in the world, a lot. I think the very way you might define uncertain times could vary from person to person, from industry to industry, whether it's inflation, the war in Ukraine, the bank runs and whatever else. Great resignation if we're still calling it that. And I wanted to ask just how does any of that affect not just your interaction with your employees, but also your clients, and how do you maintain that confidence in yourself and your team as leaders?

Brittany Marten (02:08):

So I think what our clients expect during uncertain times is the same as what they expect during regular times. If we're doing our jobs well because we cover not just payments, but we cover liquidity, receipts, working, capital optimization, it runs the full spectrum. And if we're doing our jobs well, we have a very thorough knowledge and understanding of our clients, their business, what they do, what they need, what their priorities are. We have a very thorough understanding of the industry, of trends, of the external environment, and we're very well connected globally. These are large corporates. We touch them in almost every country, major country around the world in a variety of capacities. And making sure that that global coverage team is very closely aligned is important to ensure that we again, tie back to really knowing and understanding our clients. And if we do that all the time, maybe we amplify it a little bit when we are in uncertain times, but if we do that all the time, we'll be successful. So really no change.

Daniel Wolfe (03:12):

Okay. Well, we're also seeing changes in work culture as well. Even today, the remote versus hybrid versus in-person office debate is still ongoing. We're still seeing reports of companies changing their policy about that. And I know it almost missed the certainty of the early lockdown where everyone was on the same. I hinted at this during an earlier session, but everybody was on a level playing field. Nobody had any more FaceTime than anyone else did in the office. We were all our squares on that zoom call were exactly the same size. So every everybody had that and now it's changing. And some people had restructured their lives. We'd hired people without considering or even minding where they work and whether that would affect what would happen if things return to normal. And so I'm wondering just how do you see that dynamic still evolving and what is different today about the culture and remote versus hybrid versus in person, and how does that affect, how do you lead through that dynamic?

Brittany Marten (04:16):

So firstly, I think it's important not to have a knee-jerk reaction to anything, and it's easy to do that. So continue to be thoughtful, continue to monitor the environment, continue to talk to your associates, talk to other leaders, and constantly monitor and evolve. So that's the first thing I'd say. But the second thing I'd say is that when we were all working from home and everybody was on the same page, I think there were a lot of really healthy changes that we made to our behaviors and our interactions that make sense now that we're back in the office or some working from home and in hybrid environments as well. At the bank, I think we did, there was a very concerted effort to better connect globally and everyone was isolated and that made sense. But for my team, my team is spread across the US anyway, and my kind of extended team is spread around the world and the things that we did to better connect with each other when we were all home, we've kept those behaviors now. And so we're more connected than ever before. We've made leaders, especially senior leaders, more accessible to junior talent through virtual coffee connects and kind of round tables. Now that we're back in the office there, one of our most senior leaders, a direct report to our CEO, During Covid created this. And I think it started as just a thing he did one time and it was so popular. He did it on a regular basis. There were these hello out there emails or we called them hot emails, and it was just kind of a rundown of all of the things that were around the world, stories of global resiliency, what teams were doing in all different parts of the world to help clients, to help each other to stay connected. It was a great best practice. And I think we're seeing that now throughout other leaders across the organization. That's just one example.

Daniel Wolfe (06:15):

The hot emails. Okay, I got to work on that. I think I've been trying to be cool on email a little too. Cool. No, but that does raise the question of, so now we have people who we may never see face to face, at least in person. And so how do we make sure that they have that same connection, not just through a Zoom window, but make sure they know what's going on, not just with their direct bosses, but with other people. Just if I could just completely take my brain on a tangent here from the last conversation, there was this discussion about collecting mentors, and I thought that was interesting. And I think that is something that's presumably more difficult in this remote, more dispersed environment, in this environment where there is this uncertainty. You don't know what your company is going to be doing, what their priorities are going to be doing. How do you even meet these folks? And so when you are working with folks on a global scale, how do you make sure they still have these connections if they don't have hot emails?

Brittany Marten (07:15):

So we've done a couple of things. I think one thing that we've done is create these cross-regional cohorts. We called them global sales connect teams, kind of informally, self-governed teams that came together around the globe virtually to exchange ideas, share best practices, talk about challenges within my own peer group. Of course, we have my peers and I have a team meeting with our leaders, but we started a team meeting with just us bosses s where we can really have an informal, honest, candid dialogue about things that worry us, what are the challenges, how we're dealing with those challenges, what we hate. It's a safe space and it's been a really healthy way to connect. The other thing I think I read somewhere a while back that as leaders, our tendency, especially as women, I think when our teams come to us and say they need help or they need something, they need something we want to jump in and help. We want to give them the answer. We want to be the one that sets them on the right course, but it's actually more powerful if we connect them with somebody else who can do that. We help them expand their network and that in turn, I think helps bring people together and create some of those connections, whether that's in the office or virtually.

Daniel Wolfe (08:36):

I think that's a really good idea also, because especially if you're at a distance, you're your biggest contact with the mothership, home office would probably be your boss.

Brittany Marten (08:47):

Exactly.

Daniel Wolfe (08:47):

Yeah. So let's talk about from the employee's perspective. As we were talking about a lot of recent, both in the past year and in the past several years, expectations change not just at the office, but the work-life dynamic and such. What expectations do employees have now that we need to be aware of, that we need to be mindful of?

Brittany Marten (09:12):

I think the first is that they don't want to do unfulfilling work anymore. Whether that was the kind of covid reckoning, the great resignation, maybe there's a little quiet quitting. You heard about that a little bit this morning. But I think really this idea that I don't want to waste my time is precious. Experiences are precious and I want to be fulfilled. I want it to be purpose driven. And as leaders, there's kind of two ways that we can look at that. We can either change the content of the work, maybe there's tweaks we can make, but the job is the job. The other way that we can look at it is how can we better connect everyday work and the tasks, even the menial ones, especially for your juniors, your analysts, how can we connect that work to the bigger picture? How can we showcase value and make that really meaningful? And that's where there's a huge opportunity, both in terms of retaining talent, but also attracting and developing talent over time. I also think that associates employees now expect leaders to be authentic. And we've talked, I think almost every panelist this morning has talked about the importance of that. They expect that now, anything less than that and you lose trust. And I think if you don't have that trust, then you can't establish that right balance between understanding the trepidation concerns, however they might be feeling during times of uncertainty, but also, so first you've got to kind of balance. You've got to say, I understand that, but then you've got to help lead them down a path of here, here's the direction we're headed. This is where the brighter future lies. But you can't do that. You can't strike that balance if you're not authentic.

Daniel Wolfe (11:02):

Okay. What about clients? Are there any clients that are bringing up new things that completely change the dynamic of the relationship?

Brittany Marten (11:11):

I think clients just expect us to be more agile and resilient. They're more agile and resilient. We all learned a lot during the pandemic, and I think they expect the same from us. And I think in this most recent cycle, we've been able to prove that.

Daniel Wolfe (11:28):

Okay, so we've gone through a number of just very big changes, not just in the past year, but not even covid, but the recession in 2008, other things and everything always seems to change. We always talk about this new normal. What lessons from those past incidents still apply today as people are concerned about global uncertainty, are concerned about inflation and whatever else?

Brittany Marten (11:55):

So I think the first one is this idea around burnout. I got obsessed with this during the pandemic because I run a sales team. And so my team is typically out in front of their clients meeting with clients all the time. That's what kind of motivates them and inspires them and makes their jobs interesting and exciting and fun. And all of a sudden they weren't doing that anymore. They're sitting at home and yes, they're in front of the computer screen with their clients, but you all know that's not the same. So I got obsessed with this idea and did a lot of research on it. And I think one of the things I learned is that burnout does not come from too much work because we all know that when there are times of change, it does create more work. There's more work to institute change to understand that change, to get a message out. But that's not what really causes burnout. It's doing work that's not impactful. And I know I mentioned this earlier, but I think this kind of meaningful work and this purpose-driven work is really important. And yes, it was important, especially important during the pandemic, but that's a lesson that we need to take through to the future. The second thing is around the importance of wellbeing and kind of mental and emotional wellness and making sure that that starts with us. I think it can be counterintuitive as leaders to focus on yourself. You think, oh, I've got to take care of my clients, I've got to take care of my team. That's where the focus is. But you're missing the best opportunity. You've got to be available. You've got to be present. You've got to be there to be most helpful to your team. And you can't do that if you haven't taken care of yourself first. There's a reason they tell you on the plane to put your oxygen mask on first before you help other people. And I think that applies in real life too. So just focusing on wellbeing and make sure that you also know what that wellbeing means for you and how you can be most productive. And by the way, it's not by doing more work, usually it's by taking time off. It's by exercise, it's by sleeping, eating healthy. It's about having constructive dialogue with your colleagues about things that matter, about things you're concerned about doing, all of those things. That's what creates a more healthy work environment and helps you be best for your associates and clients.

Daniel Wolfe (14:14):

If I could just drill in on one point, you made the idea of being available for your employees. Anytime people talk about this work life dynamic, we're thinking of being more available for our families. Before the lockdown, I would spend two hours commuting home and miss out on that time with my son, but now he knows when my workday supposedly ends and he knows that that's when I can spend time with dad and I don't want to take away the time from him. But if somebody, a colleague of mine needs my time and attention as well, that's now a different part of that, and I may not have the ability to just bump into them at the water cooler, that takes more effort, that takes more, how do you make sure that you're not missing those opportunities and that you're not missing an issue when you now have all these different needs, not that you didn't before, but the dynamic has changed.

Brittany Marten (15:09):

How do you make sure you're not missing the needs of your employees, employees, that you're not bumping into the water?

Daniel Wolfe (15:13):

Not that my son still isn't the most important, but that doesn't mean everybody else isn't important.

Brittany Marten (15:19):

I think you've just got to schedule that time. You've got to be more intentional. You've got to create those opportunities. And by the way, when you do schedule that time, build in the kind of informal connect time too, right? The kind of casual chat that would happen at the water cooler. You've got to be more deliberate about doing that when you're on the phone or on a Zoom or a WebEx. But you can do that. And I think because I think that going back to what employees expect, they don't expect you to just know them and care about how they perform at work. I also think, and especially Gen Z wants you to know and understand what matters to them personally and they want, and going back to authenticity, they want you want to know you and what the real you is about, and you've got to create, be more intentional about creating that time.

Daniel Wolfe (16:08):

I will say in terms of things like social media, I've noticed that younger employees are a lot more open on social media, and maybe that's generational. It's just what people are comfortable with and what they're accustomed to. But that authenticity always shines through. I may talk to somebody about their hobbies inside of work or outside of work, but if they're broadcasting, oh, I'm preparing for a marathon, that sort of thing, that's a window into their life that I didn't necessarily have, I mean, what is the appropriate balance to strike there when you start to see, I mean, you see not just what they want to show you. People will talk about mental health, wellbeing and such. What is appropriate to take away from that?

Brittany Marten (16:55):

I think all of that openness is healthy. And I also think that as women, this is perhaps the greatest opportunity for us to showcase our strength that we've ever seen before. This kind of new, softer, gentler style is kind of caring for each other, caring for your employees, caring for your clients, getting to know them beyond what they getting to know their whole selves beyond what they bring to work. And so I guess if your question is about boundaries.

Daniel Wolfe (17:28):

I kind of made up this question on the fly.

Brittany Marten (17:30):

Yeah, I'd love any feedback from the audience. I've never seen anyone kind of cross a boundary, but I suppose it happens.

Daniel Wolfe (17:38):

Yeah. So what are you all seeing in terms of just now there is this new openness. People want honesty, people want authenticity, but maybe that they didn't know their boss was following them on Twitter or TikTok and maybe they're griping about the higher cost of milk or toilet paper or what have you, wasn't necessarily something that was meant to strike a conversation at work. What does anybody in the audience want to chime in on this? Nobody wants to talk about toilet paper. All right, so when we're talking also about just leadership during challenging times, recruitment and retention are a big part of it, and we had thrown out words like quiet, quitting, like the great resignation and what we had seen with people being more assertive about what their needs are and what they think the contract is that they have with their employer. What advice do you have based on your own experience, what are you seeing in terms of recruitment and retention and how our attitudes toward that need to change during these times?

Brittany Marten (18:44):

Well, the first one is obvious. I think flexibility matters. And I think right now the expectation is that we do have workplace flexibility. Maybe that changes, maybe it doesn't. But right now, that's the first thing they'd say. The second thing is the importance of corporate culture and team culture. That's always been important, but I think there was a spotlight shown on that. And again, kind of tying back to the purpose-driven work, the fulfillment people want to be fulfilled in their jobs, and so we've got to figure out a way to showcase that during the recruitment process, during the interview process. And one way to do that, of course, is making it more of a kind of incorporating, giving them the opportunity recruits the opportunity to meet team members on your team across other parts of the team so that they don't just hear the hiring manager's view of the way things will be, but they can kind of validate some of the things that you say with who would be people who would be their peers, juniors, colleagues, business partners.

Daniel Wolfe (19:46):

Okay. Well, why don't we open it up also to the audience. And this time I won't ask you a question. You get to ask us questions. Does anybody have any questions or comments or thoughts on this topic? We have a hand.

Audience Member 1 (20:03):

I don't always want to be that person, but thank you, Brittany. Great feedback on being authentic and leading in uncertain times. I sometimes wonder personally how you draw the line or what are the boundaries around authenticity versus competency and how that may impact how you are coming across or being available for other opportunities if you're, so where is the yellow caution tape, if you will, or if you've experienced that, I would love your thoughts on that.

Brittany Marten (20:41):

So there was a time in my career where I wanted to stifle a little bit of my authenticity because I felt like that's what I needed to do to get promoted. I needed to be tougher, I needed to be more focused on the financials. I need, what I needed to be more strategic, whatever it was I felt like I needed to change. And it took me a long time and a lot of self-reflection and a lot of coaching with mentors and sponsors and other people I trusted to come to the realization that this is who I am, and instead of trying to fix all the things that I think are wrong with me, and I've been in this business for 28 years, if they were easy to fix, I would've fixed them already. Instead, someone told me, double down on your strengths unless you have a fatal flaw that is preventing you from getting to the next step in your career of preventing you from being successful. Instead, identify what your unique strengths are and capitalize on those. Double down on those, find the roles that showcase those and the projects that showcase those, and that's where you'll find the most success. And that was the most liberating, freeing thing when I did that. And I've never looked back.

Daniel Wolfe (22:09):

If I could just chime in. Also, one thing that has been a theme of these conversations has been authenticity, but also that may or may not be another word for honesty. And one thing that I've encouraged people to be is to be honest with themselves. You don't have to tell your boss about every struggle you're going through if you're not comfortable with it, but at least understand what that means for you and how that impacts your work life and see, and just don't try to fake it. If you do need that oxygen mask, if you do need assistance putting on that oxygen mask, I'm sure the boss who has your back or the mentor who has your back will want to help you with that. But you need to be aware of what's going on in your life to be just hon. The more honest you are with yourself, I think the more PE that'll come across. Oh, I have another hand.

Audience Member 2 (23:02):

Thanks, Brittany. Great comments up there. And I think to add to it is that you build your team with the talent that you don't have and that's how you build it. And a lot of times your boss knows you're not good at that one particular thing. They do it and they have you there because they know you're driving what they need you to do. And so I take the pieces that I'm weak at and I make sure that as I build my team, they have the strengths that I don't have. So really appreciate your honesty.

Brittany Marten (23:35):

It's such a great point. And I think that this was also kind of something else that we learned during the pandemic is getting comfortable with not having all the answers. And I don't have to be the expert in everything. As Mary said, that, you know, hire people on your team that have diverse experience, that have unique areas of strengths, and you leverage that. You don't have to know it all. It's a great point.

Audience Member 3 (23:58):

Hi, I was maybe going to piggyback off the first question. So very much agree with the importance of authenticity. How do you balance authenticity with also maintaining a professional environment? Because sometimes you're dealing with two extremes. You have people that are very much not willing to be their authentic selves at all. And then you have some people that are on the other extreme, and I've kind of seen that happen more recently where it's not about reigning people in, but how do you maintain them being authentic, but also still, like I said, professional work environment, whether it's clients or internal cultures as well.

Brittany Marten (24:35):

I'd welcome feedback from the audience on this. I think if you build a culture and this takes time, right to do this, but if you build a culture of authenticity and you allow people to be their authentic selves, people who don't feel comfortable, but it's not easy to do and it's something that you've got to, you get enough people that are doing it and they get recognized and you see that they're kind of elevated for their authenticity. I think that has a ripple effect. Welcome anyone else's experience.

Daniel Wolfe (25:20):

While the mic's walking over, I'll just say that the definition of professionalism has certainly evolved over the years. I haven't worn necktie in 10 years and once upon a time that would've been unthinkable.

Audience Member 4 (25:30):

Yeah, I would say ensure that you're leveraging off of the team's strengths and ensuring that the team sees that, right? That's kind of been a motivator and a team to build that morale within the team, encourage everybody to be leaders instead of, sometimes I might know how to do the whole job myself, but instead of me doing it, let me delegate this so that the team is empowered to lead and then identify those strengths and build off those strengths. So maybe there's a new project, so I'm giving someone else the opportunity to take lead as that project and so that they can build to grow their building procedures, they're training their peers and it kind of makes their other teammates step up. It's kind of like that friendly competition, that friendly challenge that kind of kept the morale going. We're cheering for each other, and I've seen that. If you keep that going, like you said, it's consistent. It can't just be a one time thing. You come in, sometimes I play music for the staff, sometimes it's like a dance party and we're just celebrating that somebody did something great and someone else like, oh, I want a dance party for something I did great. It kind of makes them step up to say, well, what can I do?

Brittany Marten (26:34):

Yeah, That empowerment piece that you mentioned I think is really important. Tie back to the burnout and the purpose driven work, empowering them to not just wait for the organization or some manager to make a change. If you see something that needs to be better, that could be improved, that is broken, fix it. Come forward with your ideas.

Daniel Wolfe (26:56):

And the delegating comment is important too. It's not always easy to delegate it. It's hard to let go and make sure you hand that off to somebody.

Brittany Marten (27:06):

Some early mistakes I made as a manager was not telling, not delegating because I thought that it was too much work or, oh, I don't want to give them, stress them out, and instead not fully recognizing that those opportunities help them grow, develop, as well as freeing you up to be more strategy leader.

Daniel Wolfe (27:29):

I remember not delegating certain things because I thought other people might find them boring and I wanted them job.

Brittany Marten (27:34):

Yeah.

Daniel Wolfe (27:35):

And then I realized that I was depriving them of an opportunity to learn something that is actually important to their job. So I learned that lesson the hard way.

Brittany Marten (27:44):

Yeah.

Daniel Wolfe (27:47):

Okay. So as we're wrapping up, I wanted to ask, just bringing it back to the whole uncertain times thing, we're looking ahead. Nobody has a crystal ball that is perfectly clear, but what do you see in terms of any of these topics that we've discussed that that's on the horizon that's keeping you up at night?

Brittany Marten (28:05):

I think it does go back to how we can ensure that our teams have the right frame of mind, the right emotional and emotional and mental wellness to continue to thrive in this environment where now the instability is trumping stability. It feels like it's always unstable now, and we work in a really dynamic, interesting industry, but it's also fast paced. It's high pressured. There are challenges, and as I said, the environment's changing all the time, and that can create stress. And so we've got to make sure that we're doing that. We continue to evolve, that we continue to do the right things to create the environment for people to succeed and feel fulfilled despite the noise and volatility that's surrounding us.

Daniel Wolfe (28:55):

Well, I want to thank you very much for this conversation. I want to thank this audience for just being so dynamic and interactive and for just challenging us as well. So thank you all. Lunch will be served.