Julie Cosgrove, 30 Under 30, Affinity Plus FCU
“It’s fine to hire bright sparks but to fail to plant them where they can fuel fire is wasteful.” Roy White, the VP of HR with Sony Europe. Roy White’s message to Sony’s graduate program employees who are moving into permanent roles is, “Do what you are passionate about and find a way to use your talents to contribute to the business.”
What do you see your credit union focusing more on with individual employees—-areas of strength or areas of weakness? Its not surprising that based on research that Marcus Buckingham facilitated on how often people actually really use their core strengths at work, he found only 14% of people who could say that they use their strengths most of the time
Given the next generation of employees who thrive on environments that are less about command and control and more about the opportunity to be independent, creative and driven by doing what they are really good at, workplaces will have to find ways to further develop ways that maximize an employee’s strengths, resulting in even stronger performance outcomes for the members as well as for the organization.
Marcus Buckingham has remarked that while the statement “Our company’s greatest asset is our people!” is a nice motto, its basically meaningless without introspection and application. He believes that people aren’t your greatest asset, unless they’re in position to leverage their greatest strengths – those things they do well consistently and energetically.
In an industry that is founded on people helping people, the credit union industry has an incredible opportunity to be known as an industry that brings out the best strengths in people, maximizing performance outcomes for the members and communities in which they serve as well as creating the most engaged and passionate employee base.
Comments
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Julie, You are so right! It is all about putting the right people in the right seats in your organization. If you LOVE what you do and have a genuine passion for the type of work you are doing and not just the paycheck or incentives, then you are naturally going to give everything you have, and chances are you won’t even break a sweat doing so ;). The challenge young adults face is gaining enough credibility in an organization or industry when you lack the years of experience that are perceived to be a greater determining factor in how successful you will be.
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Great thoughts Julie! I completely agree that if we love what we are doing and we are utilizing our strengths, then the members will ultimately be the ones to benefit from this dynamic combination. I do think that Gen Y is also responsible for finding this fit. I believe we are very quick to require companies to fit our needs when we are not necessarily doing everything we can to make this easy for today’s businesses. If we know we are interested in a specific program or project, part of the responsibility falls on us to let your company/credit union know what we want.
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Your question about whether credit unions focus on strengths or weaknesses is key to all this. It goes back to the 80/20 rule and quite honestly even I can wrapped up in putting focus on the 80.
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