All Olympian athletes without exception have a coach. They want to be the best at their individual sport with the long-term goal of winning a gold medal. If Olympian athletes have a coach, why wouldn’t executive leaders need one too? This blog describes five benefits of having an executive coach. It is first important to establish the difference between a coach, a mentor, a consultant, and a counselor.

A coach is a professional who works with leaders, managers, and high-potential employees to enhance their leadership skills, strategic thinking, and overall performance. A coaching arrangement is typically paid.

A mentor provides advice, shares experiences, and gives guidance to another individual based on a mutually agreed relationship. Although companies can engage a firm that provides mentoring arrangement service, the mentee typically does not pay a mentor. The mentoring relationship can be formal or informal.

Consultants are professionals who provide services in a variety of areas. An executive coach is not a consultant although he or she may provide consultative services during a coaching session.

Lastly, counselors are trained professionals who provides guidance, support, and advice to individuals regarding personal, social, psychological, or legal issues. Typically, counselors are covered by a person’s health insurance, or the employer may offer these services.

All these types of relationships or business engagements are confidential. This blog focuses on the coaching relationship only and five benefits of having an executive coach.

Accelerate your career.

Having an executive coach can help accelerate your career. Often each person must experience a variety of situations to grow as a leader. Having a coach can help you avoid mistakes or resolve issues faster by sharing his or her experiences.

A coach can help you discern if a particular “next job” is the right career move for you. Or they can listen as you brainstorm the pros and cons and provide some input.

Discuss difficult topics and address Board and senior leadership conversations.

Some of the most difficult topics to address as a leader is succession planning. The CEO position is determined by the Board of Directors. However, the sitting CEO typically has some input in the decision. A coach can assist in the identification process. The other executive positions can be identified by the executive team, but the CEO’s decision carries a lot of weight. Discussing potential successors to the executive positions with a coach helps ask the difficult questions. Examples are what does this person bring to the team? or would you hire this person again today?

Another difficult topic is how to deal with another executive’s performance or behavior that impacts the rest of the team. Also, how to address the Board of Directors when proposing new ideas, setting strategic direction, or ownership succession.

Learn to facilitate strategic conversations.

A coach can help executives learn to facilitate strategic conversations with their peers and the Board of Directors. The best leaders are influential and have a vision that others want to follow. You can share your vision with your coach for feedback on communicating it to everyone.

Become the best leader you can be.

Knowing yourself well is crucial in becoming the best leader you can be. Working with a coach helps you discover and maximize your top talents and understand your personality well. A coach guides you to maximize your strengths and work on your weak areas. An excellent coach brings out the best in you and lets you know which areas you must improve on to be successful.

Develop your team.

Once you know yourself and your talents, a coach can help you identify your ideal team members with complementary talents. One of the primary responsibilities of leaders is to develop the team. The coach helps you ask the right questions to get to know your employees and their talents. A well-developed team brings success to the whole company.

If you have been considering hiring an executive coach, the first step is to identify if you need a coach, a mentor, a consultant, or a counselor. It is okay to need one or more of these important people in your life at some point. Successful leaders take advantage of these five benefits of having an executive coach. If you strive to be the best leader you can be, just as Olympian athletes have a coach, get one too. You may not win a gold medal, but you will become an exceptional leader who others want to follow!

Technology and strategy must be aligned. Community banks and credit unions need to align technology with overall strategy to achieve success and maintain growth going forward. Institutions must develop a formal Technology Strategic Plan that supports the overall Strategic Plan. And it should include how the organization plans to incorporate technology in all its operations to increase efficiency organization wide. In this blog, we explore the five key areas of technology and how each area must align to the institution’s strategic plan.

Internal Technology – Network and tools for employees

Internal technology that is slow and unreliable frustrates employees, decreases efficiency, and ultimately impacts customer service. Financial institutions need to invest in modern network technology to secure its systems and customer sensitive information. The investment may include outsourcing the high-level IT network and user support to an IT managed services provider (MSP). Simultaneously, institutions must invest in quicker Internet connectivity and solutions that integrate to the core seamlessly. These solutions include everything from the Teller Module to Online Banking Platform, to internal processes such as loan workflows.

Core System & Auxiliary Modules

We facilitate strategic planning sessions around the nation for community financial institutions. During these meetings, we often discover that their core system is obsolete or simply old. This creates huge issues for the employees and customers. Starting with the unreliability of the system, the inflexibility, to the lack of integration capabilities that limit the institutions. These core providers are keeping them behind! Larger institutions have the resources to invest in developing their own core systems. Smaller institutions don’t have that luxury and therefore depend on core providers to offer modern products and services to customers. Additionally, community banks and credit unions are stuck doing processes manually. The main reason being that the core provider “doesn’t integrate well” with a new internal system like a CRM.

The easiest way to get through a core system renewal is to do nothing. Stay with the current provider to not upset the staff or customers. Often institutions extend their current contract for another 18 or 24 months and push the hard decision down the road. They just delayed improving their technology for two years and are now behind two more years! Going through a core conversion is painful. But staying with an old one will be more painful in the long run. Again, the technology and strategy must be aligned.

We also hear about core providers offer a “new modern” tool, but it doesn’t even integrate to its own core! How can that be? They sell these tools to their clients but don’t offer proper connectivity or integration. Therefore, now the institutions have new manual processes and go backwards instead of moving forward with technology. One strategy in the Technology Strategic Plan should always be to ensure flawless integration of new systems to the core.

Technology Products & Services

Business and consumer customers now require modern technologies for their banking experience. It all starts with your Online Banking Platform. Consumers want to see all their accounts under the same login. They want to see transaction history, make transfers, bank statements, images of checks and deposited items, and bill paying capabilities. These are considered “old services” and are expected as a minimum technology. Now consumers want more. They want to see ALL their banking relationships under the same umbrella or portal. This is “Open Banking” and it will be the norm soon.

And guess what? Businesses want the same. Small business owners want to see and access their personal and business accounts under the same login and platform. They want the ability to transfer between personal and business accounts as well as paying bills online. Larger businesses have different needs including using treasury management services.

Treasury Management: Business customers or members who use TM services want to access them all via the OLB platform. They want to use one login and not have to visit separate sites for each service – a single banking portal. Businesses want to upload ACH files, Remote Deposit Capture (RDC) deposits, or approve their Positive Pay exceptions in one site. Businesses are looking for unified, real-time reporting, easier cash flow forecasting tools, seamless ERP and accounting integration with various solutions. These are no longer wishes but a requirement.

Payments Technology

Stablecoins, Tokenized Deposits, FedNow, and RTP are here to stay. And business customers want the ability to choose which payment service they want to use. Therefore, institutions may have to offer them all. These capabilities will become what Bill Pay is now – a standard offer by all institutions. Below are the definitions of these important payment services:

Stablecoin (USA Stablecoin): A digital asset designed to maintain a stable value relative to a specific reference such as the U.S. dollar. Uses a blockchain platform and is backed by reserves such as United States Dollars, U.S. Treasuries and other financial instruments as defined by the Genius Act. The primary goal is to provide the benefits of digital currencies: speed, transparency, and programmability while avoiding price fluctuations.

Tokenized Deposit: A digital representation of a traditional deposit held at a regulated financial institution. Use a blockchain or distributed ledger technology platform. Each tokenized deposit corresponds to actual funds held in a bank account. Deposits are subject to the same regulatory protections and oversight as conventional deposits; therefore they are FDIC insured. They are fast and programmable and a secure way for transfers and settlement of funds.

Real Time Payment (RTP): Uses the ACH payment system, provides immediate availability of funds, only available to issue credits, and payments are irrevocable. Owned by a consortium of banks.

FedNow Service: Uses its own payment rails in a “closed loop” meaning both sending and receiving institutions most be in the network. Provides immediate availability of funds, transfers are irrevocable and settlement is instant in real time.

These payment solutions are technology based and are simultaneously receivable solutions as businesses can pay bills and also receive payments. They each bring risks as well as benefits. The Technology Strategic Plan must include the process to assess both the risks as well as the opportunities they bring.

Technology and strategy must be aligned with AI usage throughout the organization

Community banks and credit unions can no longer “wait and see” where AI is going. It’s here to stay and larger institutions are already using it and embracing it in full. Of course, the AI Policy must be clear as to what’s not allowed to do or use it for. However, the use cases list is growing by the minute. Employees are finding ways to incorporate AI in their daily work functions to make them more efficient.

The embrace of AI starts with the “tone at the top.” While understanding the risks, institutions must incorporate AI wherever possible to increase efficiency in every department and in every function. Once you identify the risks, implement the appropriate mitigating strategies and move forward. Technology and strategy must be aligned in order for the institution to embrace new technologies including AI.

Technology decisions should never exist in a vacuum. When technology, payments, treasury management, and AI are aligned with your institution’s strategic plan, they become drivers of efficiency, growth, and long-term relevance rather than ongoing pain points. If your organization has not taken a step back to evaluate whether your technology strategy truly supports where you are headed, now is the time. Start the conversation internally, involve the right stakeholders, and consider engaging an experienced partner to help assess gaps, priorities, and next steps. Alignment today prevents disruption tomorrow.