Bernard Hampton
Appearances
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
So somebody may have better skill in an area, they may have a different experience, they may have different educational background. But if you're willing to put in the work to listen, learn and apply, those are gaps that you can close.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
simultaneously by saying regardless of what you do, what level you may operate at one day, having a healthy respect for everyone that you work with elicits or creates an environment where people will always be able to, or at least interested in helping you with things that you want to be able to learn from them and vice versa, but also has the benefit of creating followership.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Those were important lessons, but understanding where people are, And then I shall add a fourth one to it. I think everybody has an origin story that's unique to them that makes them special. And the more we understand them, the more we help people incorporate their voices in different ways, the value, their opinions, their perspectives, that makes the team better.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
And so across these four things ends up creating a fabric, from my perspective, of just incredibly dynamic teams that
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
tend to collaborate better together, they solve problems together, less about competing with one another, because in a company environment, there's one stock price at the end of the day, and the company's at its best when everybody's rowing in the same direction, everybody's being thoughtful about better solutions and how to solve problems, but then doing that together.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
I'll tell you two ways. One, I always believe when you prioritize people. I mentioned it before, but they truly are the most important asset in any organization, team, company, regardless of the size.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
And so I can't remember who said it, but someone somewhere along the way in history made the statement that good leaders give instructions through the chain of command, but they get information outside the chain. What works from my perspective is, yes, you can't touch everyone, but
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Whether it is a visit to a single location, a visit to a massive location, your ability to be there early, build in time to stay late, not overpack the schedule, to be able to grab individuals, make individual connections and find out about them. It's just exceedingly important. It's valuable.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
And out of connections, those create the moments where people tend to pick up the phone and tell you the things you need to know when you need to know it without worrying about some structured process to be able to provide information. Extremely valuable.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
I can tell you the number of business plans that I've been able to make, derive, explore more information, interrogate a problem I may be trying to solve for the organization, and go further through some of those individual conversations and connections. The second is about origin stories. I do it in my current organization. I did it in the last one that had 13,000 people in it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
This is the impact to me of thinking about the chain of command because once I started this opportunity of sharing origin stories, I shared my own with my team, but not till two or three other people had did it prior. And it was as simple as saying, hey, Alana, we've got a meeting coming up. We're going to be in person. I would love it with whatever you feel comfortable with.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
If you take 15 or 20 minutes, share your origin story, whatever parts of it you feel comfortable with. You can use pictures or props if you want, but 10 or 15 minutes to present and maybe spend 10 minutes being able to get reflections or questions from the audience. And that's literally all I ask. And
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
But I can't tell you the number of times that through these tears are around the room or shock and awe and the things that somebody may not have known about this button up serious professional that's hard charging always. But all of a sudden they became human and the number of connections across the room. And this has worked beautifully, whether it's an established team.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
I've used it when there's been periods of change or new organizations coming together. But I've got to tell you, when you talk about the four stages of a team forming,
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
This process has helped me through several organizations now move through those stages with light speed like I've never seen before, because those connections have brought people together, either because they admire the story, they're inspired by the story, they made a connection to several points in their own history, and it's brought the teams together.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
And it doesn't have to be everybody at once. Number one, emotionally, you probably couldn't take it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
That's a pleasure. Thanks for the invite.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
to be able to do it. And so we've done this over a series of months where two or three people may start it at an offsite and then virtual meetings in between every month, every other month, somebody additional from the leadership team will tell. And so it may take a year to have a 12 or 14 person leadership team be able to tell those, but the momentum is incredible.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
And the side conversations that aren't just about business are also what happens to be able to elicit trust.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
So I happened to take my team to the Center for Civil Rights and Justice in Atlanta. And it was as we did the tour through a number of experiences. So in the South, civil rights movement, I'm seeing all of the things that my parents grew up and lived through. And we get to the end and we're debriefing. So it was an offsite that had a cultural element to it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
But at the end, I told my origin story and how my origin story is tied to a stock of cotton. and what that meant for my mom who's one of seven to have been during her high school years she's the second oldest of seven her and her oldest sibling to be taken out of school by their father and for three or four months during the year during cotton season have to pick cotton at 100 pounds a day
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
And so imagine missing three or four months of high school. That's what it took for the family to be able to survive and what that would mean. But then to go on and talk about a lineage that goes back into slavery and what I consider a point of privilege for my family, quite honestly, is at some point, my great, great, great grandfather's
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
And his brother, their families were sharecroppers at post-slavery and came to own 21 acres of the land that they sharecropped as a family and passed down through the generations. Well, my family owns some of that land today. We grew up on some of that land. And that's where my father built the home that my mother lives in to this day. And you start to think about ownership.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
What does that mean to be able to have an asset that was part of the story for how they were able to send my sister to college as the first person in our family to go to college? And it spins from there, critical decisions that somebody made along the way. How do you respond to what happens to you in life?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
I don't know that it was about the what necessarily. So I grew up with modest business. beginnings, middle class family, one that also farmed, by the way. So we grew a lot of our own vegetables. So hard work was a big part of what we did. I had a father who was in the military reserve duty by the time all of us came along, me and my older sister, younger brother.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
And that's part of a story that I'm proud of, that I certainly think that I have grown from, not in spite of, but because of that story.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
I would tell you initially upon making this move, that wasn't the case. It certainly has been an asset to me professionally throughout my career. All the tenants of talent management, of good human resource discipline, engagement of people, But I considered it in a way to say, you know what, that's something I may want to do at the end of my career.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Today, that is such an integral part of how do you build successful teams, deep and broad benches of succession plans, redundancy in organizations, expand organizational capacity. And so I thought about it in terms of businesses that I run. So up until this point, I've always run a revenue generating business.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
And out of some very good advice from a leader and a sponsor and a mentor, I began to document not roles that I would want to do in the future, but what was the what. specifically in planning my career, what did I want to continue to be able to learn? What were different ways I wanted to continue to be able to contribute to the success of the organization? I wanted to continue to be challenged.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
I wanted to broaden in my role. And then what were specific aspects of leadership and business that I enjoy? And so that was the list. And by the way, there was also a short list of, here's some things that I'm least likely to get fired up in the morning to go do. And I think both of those were important, but what they enabled me
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
sponsors and advocates to be able to do was help me think about fits for what ultimately would be the next phase of my career. And so it wasn't until, by the way, like a lot of people, one of my biggest failures I think at the time is when you begin to think about jobs, Jobs change, morph over time, may or may not become available.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
But it became a very different exercise to say, how would I relish the opportunity to spend my time? What would fill my tank, so to speak, when it comes to my purpose, what was important? And that's what ultimately took on the complexion of this role to be able to head the academy, which wasn't on my radar. It's something I thought about at some point in the past, but it wasn't on my radar until
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
But being faced with an opportunity to go back through my list and said, this is exactly what I would love to do.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
and then a mom who worked two jobs as well. The family worked really hard, which meant, by the way, that they didn't have an opportunity to attend some of our events or sporting activities always, but it was all in the neighborhood or advancing the family. As I grew up, my parents had enough to send my older sister to college, my younger brother, My hiatus gave him a chance to recover.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
That was a moment of discomfort, to be quite honest. And I remember asking a particular sponsor, well, why would somebody think that was the next logical step? Or what would make you think this is something that fits? And without missing a beat, the person said, I'm going to take you back to the list that we talked through a year ago. And why this couldn't be a better opportunity.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Because amongst the things on that list was, I wanted to be able to experience more, learn more of the organization. Well, it happens to be not only do I get to work with this amazing group of folks that support 35 different organizations, support functions, businesses around the company, but all of the line of business heads are my biggest clients for organization today.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
So to be internally connected to organizations hasten or accelerate the pace of learning is extremely exciting to me and to be able to build bridges, quite frankly, across these vertical academies that support our organization globally. and capitalize on those relationships amongst my leadership team that are even stronger today that I mentioned.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
The ability to apply a strategic lens with leadership bias across really did create open doors for me to be able to think about and ponder this differently. I will say it also helped that I just a couple of months before I had read this book by Steve Magnus called Do Hard Things.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
It has four pillars in it, but two of the ones that stood out particularly was the ability to respond instead of reacting. Actually, I'll give you three. To transcend discomfort. That was the moment right there. And then the third one of actually the first one in those pillars was to ditch the facade and embrace reality.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Which forced me to think about, here are all the things I don't know today that I want to learn and how this opportunity can connect to accelerating the closure of that gap. And so it was bringing me back through everything that I read in a different way that I had initially had applied to a different perspective.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
realm but it was now square in front of me i couldn't have been more excited and honored from that point to be able to work with the people i get to work with today and build new strategies in the way that we are
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Super question. I'll tell you three things. Number one, big difference in sponsors and mentors. I think a lot of people have mentors. The mistake I have given some folks feedback on in the past is don't treat that like a check the box.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Your goal is to have that be two-way, is to develop a relationship of trust where you can honestly expose what you're struggling with, what you're working with, because you're going to miss the ability to really capitalize on the real value that they have to bring.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Because your goal would be, if you did that well, if you weren't just pulling from them, but you also poured into it, ideally, you'd turn it into a sponsor relationship. So I've made those mistakes in the past. I had to pivot as well. And I share that from just lessons learned.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
So I had to work through that myself, which was fine. We all work through school, by the way, like most people do. And as I was working at a retail company, I started as a part-time sales associate and worked my way through.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
And then the ones that turned into sponsors, because there's a level of trust and transparency, a couple of things happened. Number one, that person will tell you when you have broccoli in your teeth. They'll put the mirror up. They'll tell you the truth when you don't need to hear it. And I can't tell you how invaluable that's been. And I'm not pretending that that's always going to feel good.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
But we accept it because you grow to know that that's coming from a great place, from somebody that only wants to see you do well, be at your very best. And so that connection is always important. Sometimes mentors can be given. Nobody can give you a sponsor. Somebody can assign you a mentor. Your relationship and the way that you help that unfold will determine if it becomes a sponsor or not.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Sometimes they come through programs. I always encourage people as I've been on my journey over a career is to seek them on your own, to think about everybody you meet. By the way, I've got peers that are phenomenal mentors and sponsors today because of investing in and fostering relationships. We do great work together, but we also support the growth and development of one another.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
The other place that I think gets thought of least sometimes is I highly encourage you're not cheating on your company. I encourage people to also seek and develop outside relationships that become sponsors and mentors. Because to your point, fresh perspective matters. At the end of the day, leadership is leadership.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
You want people that are going to be thought, intelligent, engaging, not listen to a company's secret process, but be able to help you about strategies. We've all got different experiences. And so we're going to come at things differently and provide you advice today that breaks the mold maybe out of whether it be cultural that you're in or because you've always done it that way.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
That perspective can be a catalyst for change in different ways.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Culture is important and we've been on this journey for quite some time and that's why I have just so much credit to the folks that I work with and their willingness to be able to do things different. Many of them came from within the business, by the way, and so they bring a level of subject matter expertise, they learn learning and our tools and resources.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
But the way that we think about this culture of learning, if you will, is to one, be party to create an environment where continual learning is celebrated. In order for that to happen, learning needs to be interesting, it needs to be democratized. We tend to bring forward the use of various modalities, including great new technology like virtual reality and AI into it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
We create environments of training that leads people into real life skill development. It has to solve a problem, solve a challenge somebody's going through. They need to feel enabled and empowered to perform their roles at a higher level when they're done. And it needs to be supportive. And one example of doing that is we use AI in something that we call iCoach.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
where literally 1.3 million times last year, employees across our company engaged in immersive learning where they can use tools that would provide them feedback on either areas they were struggling with and they decide to self-driven go in, or one, a leader encourage them to be able to go in and get feedback and practice whatever the scenarios are that they're struggling with.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Yeah. So I grew up in a small town in South Carolina. I was a good student. I consider myself an AB. I was driven, but it was I had a lot of interest. So I was a Boy Scout, actually became an Eagle Scout. I was really active in my church, did a lot of youth leadership functions in church was a big part of my childhood, as well as a lot of external activities.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
And they may get feedback from, in this case, a computer. but it allows them to feel enabled, empowered, and now my leader is not catching me in the act of doing something poorly. Now I'm showing off a little bit because they see me being successful with it. These tools and resources allow them to do that. The other opportunity, my colleagues in our global talent organization,
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
went through a process and identified the 200 skills around the company that are significantly important because they're either functional skills or they're managerial skills applied to all roles across the company. My organization built and launched last year, the Bank of America Skills Library, which gives them access to those skills.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
And importantly, they're connected to something that we call the career path tool, where someone can go in and say, hey, you know what, I'm in this role today. I would like to do this as an individual producer, or I'd like to pursue a leadership track.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
They can see the skills required in those roles, and they can see all of the tools and resources available to give them access to not wait, but begin to develop those skills today. And so that ability to say we're one company that has many careers and I have control as an individual employee, regardless of my level, regardless of what I do today, I have access to that.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
So, yes, I've got great leaders I can work with, but I can also demonstrate some personal ownership by being able to engage in these tools and continue to learn today.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Yeah, and if they don't exist in your company today, I think we're fortunate at Bank of America, but if they didn't exist in your company today, there's resources like your academy, the LEAP Academy online. There's so many, there's books that you can read. There's just lots of sources of information. There's people that you can observe.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Sometimes that's about what to do as much as what not to do in key situations. But the bottom line is, what are you doing to learn something new? And then how are you, not just learning, because you can get in a continual vacuum of learning, but if you never, apply it, then what happens at the end of the day?
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
That's part of balance for me in my life. And I'm so pleased that it's reflected in my children and the way that they volunteer today as a priority. In fact, they go to food distributions and all sorts of activities with me as well, but they also do them on their own. That's part of personal fulfillment.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Like I said, I grew up with modest beginnings and the Urban Leader I've been attracted to as an organization because it focuses on helping people from all walks of life be able to achieve economic empowerment. And the power to get great advice, to have tools and resources, receive coaching, can literally change somebody's life and their families for generations.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
And so my parents would always say I stayed pretty busy. So I drove a school bus. I ran track. I played basketball. I was the state vice president of the Future Farmers of America. So there was always something going on.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
And part of that is the feeling of how it's tied to our mission and purpose as a company at Bank of America. And part of it is about where and how I grew up. And if I'd had access to some of the information that I have today, what might that mean for people in my community or neighborhood from where I grew up 50 plus years ago? Right.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
I would tell you four things, but before I do that, I think an important comment is leadership is not a trait for managers or leaders only. I work with a lot of individual producers over the course of a career that have been amazing leaders in their own right. And it's that leadership quality or qualities that they demonstrate that have made them exceedingly valuable to the organization.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
And so if it's a personal choice not to be a leader, that's fine. But still demonstrating leadership makes you incredibly valuable. The four things that I would say in response to your question is, number one, be a continual learner and a continual practicer. So how are you leveraging the resources in the company where you work?
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
How are you leveraging resources online, books, wherever you get a source to be able to learn from? For me, a favorite was always before online and even since has been learn from people that are further down the road than I am or may even want to be. So for 20 years, I've read books by either really successful CEOs or those that are
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
provide strategy to them or build strategy with them because it helps get in the mind of how the organizations may unfold or think. And so key questions always, who or what sources are you learning from? The second is to deploy it. deploy what you're learning. Sometimes that's going to come from your own self-drive and looking for ways to do it. How are you influencing peers that you work with?
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Do you think about the organization first or are you only thinking about yourself? My encouragement would be to think about the organization first and the colleagues that you work with because your leader is going to see that. Let's say they're trying to decide between two people who have relatively similar performance. Maybe you're an A and there's another person who's an A plus.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
But if you're the person that's deploying skills for the organization, you're thinking about the org first, you make people around you better, I'd take the A player or even the B plus all day long because there's a multiplication effect to the way that that person thinks and operates. Third, I'd say make sure you reflect it. Reflect it in who you are and the way that you show up.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
You can be in a hurry, but be in what I would call a composed hurry. So don't seem frenetic that it's this role or this job at all costs. And this comes from those to reality from a couple of the authors that have read over time, like John Maxwell talks about leadership develops daily, not in a day. And so they have taken a course or read a book. That doesn't mean you're ready today.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
It was a lot of the way my parents talked about experiences and the ability to learn anything if you were willing to listen. study enough, replicate what you learned and took away. So it was events like being involved in the Boy Scouts, quite honestly, that was unexpected leadership opportunities along the way.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
But how are you using it and practicing it? Or Malcolm Gladwell talks about it takes 10,000 hours to reach mastery or ultimate expertise. And so that makes me think about all of the people that are around you that are always trying to get better. But reflecting it looks like somebody who has learned something or has received feedback.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
but has become known for being a really fast adopter and that executes consistently. And then the fourth one, I'd say when the race of one first meaning you, that person in the mirror, that's the person that's got to change every day. And so if you're not able to measure yourself against, am I better today than I was yesterday?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Am I better skilled this week than last week, this quarter than last quarter? And consistently challenging yourself, because by the way, everybody around you is, they may be external, they may be internal posting for the same role. There are other people sharpening their ax constantly. And so unless you're doing it,
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
You also miss the opportunity, which this will elicit as well, which is attracting advocates and sponsors along the way.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
I laugh because I join you in that. And in some ways, I'm also much better than my younger self. have tried to grow to be able to embrace that is to say, because people are different, am I being reasonable? And am I asking the person that I may be waiting on for something or engaging to be able to solve a problem, is that reasonable and why or why not?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Because then we may negotiate or it may be an obstacle that I can remove and still get it in the timeframe that I want. Or they may, because of their closeness to the problem, as long as they feel safe to be able to bring it up and tell me, well, you know, if we do this or it takes a little bit longer, we can get to a better solution for these reasons.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
And so those additional questions and being more of a scientist than an evangelist, if you will, interrogating something based on the facts arrives at the right decision. Or is a partial solution better for something that's going to evolve? So I may still need it when I need it, but let's evolve over time. But we've got to get to a better place sooner.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
It was experiences outside the norm that weren't necessarily something that was going on in the neighborhood, but whether it was a 50 mile canoe trip and it was spending time relying on other people and engaging with other people that may bring different experiences or different things that you could teach one another.
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A hundred percent. It's that finding out what's critical to people individually ultimately changes their outlook. It changes their engagement. It helps you understand where they're coming from and their perspective, quite frankly. You know, you made me think about, I'll jump back for just a second if it's okay.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
When we were laughing about just being really driven and working hard and demanding schedules, it also made me think about a mistake or a pitfall that that a lot of people can fall into. And I would tell you, I was in it at one point, but fortunately had a leader and a sponsor that I could have real conversations with.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
That would include talking about personal and things other than work that would ultimately affect work. And at the time, they gave me some of the best advice, I think, both for me, my family, but for other people whom I passed it on to, which was, They could tell where I was going and they said, you know, and they decided to use themselves as an example, which surprised me.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
But their example was that they wanted me to know they've never missed one of their children's events. And you can fill in the blank. I never missed an event that's important to my family, spouse, partner. mom or dad, child, what have you. And I thought about that for a moment. And then we engaged in a conversation and I start bringing up examples about what about this? What about that?
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Never miss one. You don't miss my words. I never miss one. And I began from that moment, two things. Number one, I always calendar this thing. So I went from keeping two calendars to one, no personal, no business. Everything's on my business.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Because what's on it gets done. And then I had a conversation with my children. I had two at the time. We've got a third one now.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Thank you. Which was, well, she's now 15, but yeah. But we had a conversation that said, I said, yes, dad travels a lot. I've always involved in stuff, but I will never miss one of your events. But here's the deal. You've got to tell mom and I, as soon as you know about it, And it had a benefit.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Number one, I knew about what they were, but it also forced my boys, especially my daughters, you know, girls and boys a little bit. They get organized. It forced them to get organized and communicate more regularly because. But what it also showed, the third thing was how big of a deal it was for them that I never missed them because you bet they told me.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
And I could plan my day and calendar around it. And I share it with my teammates because I don't want them to miss theirs. We can figure out another meeting that you need to miss or this or that other. There's time you won't get back. And it also changes your reflection of your engagement. And the work will never be the enemy in a personal situation because work can support and enable what you do.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
And it's important for all of us, individual producers, leaders alike to think about and continue to prioritize what's important because you will make time to back into it and get work done.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Thank you. I've enjoyed talking to you.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Mine would be probably twofold. Always focus on people, regardless of what the thing you're trying to solve is. Focus on the people first. And then second, where that intersects with career. Don't focus on the role, focus on the what. What are the things that you really want to be able to do? What matters? Brings a level of clarity and purpose from my perspective to what you're doing.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
If I'd have learned that sooner, that would have been priceless.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
No, not at all. I did not have an example in corporate America to follow in my family. And it was a lot about charting your own path to decide what did success look like for you? And ultimately, what did the opportunity to chart your own path in society mean?
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Very kind of you. The pleasure has been mine.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
I did a part-time job and began to advance from that point. And as I would share with people, you know, that was a commission job, but I've made a career ultimately out of helping other people get what they want. And so I even thought about that as a part-time sales associate, that if
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
My check would ultimately be a reflection of how many of my clients I was able to help meet whatever need, whatever goal or objective they had along the way. And that translated into ultimately leading people. And so the success of companies, of businesses, of teams ultimately come down to the engagement from the employees. Are they feeling like they're getting their needs met?
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Incredibly dynamic teams tend to collaborate better together, less about competing with one another, because in a company environment, there's one stock price at the end of the day, and the company's at its best when everybody's rowing in the same direction.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
If they are, they tend to take better care of clients and ultimately you deliver for clients and whether it's sales results, profits, it's a function of the people you're serving having their needs met or getting their goals and objectives achieved.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Yeah, I think initially for most people at that stage in life, you're following a manual of some sort, some standard operating principles and practice, but they're not necessarily always developing EQ or emotional intelligence along the way. But I think if you're feeding off of other people, you very quickly learn to
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
well, I can tell by a person's face or their body language became closed off that that didn't resonate. It wasn't the way that I said it. It was I'm not communicating well with them. And so the tenets of communication, emotional intelligence, engagement, responsiveness, the opportunity to begin to take ownership for things that don't go well.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
I certainly wouldn't have referred to it back then as psychological safety, but ultimately it's where you begin to practice the tenets of how do you create an environment where everybody is contributing to the solution ultimately.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Honestly, the first one was whether to come to Bank of America or not. I initially decided turn down the opportunity and try to pass the recruiter on to somebody else.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
And ultimately, I'm glad I didn't because ultimately what sparked my interest was how the company thought about its clients, the responsibility to them individually for companies of all sizes and to the community, the importance of good financial advice and the responsibility the organization took to be able to provide that to positively impact families, companies, the economy.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
But honestly, the biggest thing that made my decision in the factor to join the bank came down to the greatest asset in the company, and that's our people. And so through the process of interviews over the course of four months, I had an opportunity to engage with some 40 plus people outside the interview process, people that were- Wow.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Friends had introduced me to, and it was those people that love what they did as they talked about the organization, how open they were about the culture, that the values were more than words on the wall, and that they intended to spend their careers here. Well, that's when I knew. So that's ultimately what made my decision to say, this was the place for me to be.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
And here we are almost 21 years later. Only thing I wish is I'd have made the decision sooner or that I had an opportunity sooner.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Leadership is not a trait for managers or leaders only. I work with a lot of individual producers over the course of a career that have been amazing leaders in their own right. And it's that leadership quality or qualities that they demonstrate that have made them exceedingly valuable to the organization.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
100%. What mattered then is the same thing that matters today is certainly magnified in moments like the financial crisis or whether it was the years during COVID, communication and listening and your ability to do that on steroids during moments of uncertainty. Because at the end of the day, nobody wants to follow the leader that says, oh, boy, are we in trouble and I don't know what to do.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Right. That would be a problem for those people. And it's in those moments where if you were communicating twice a week that maybe it needs to become four or five times a week.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
And it's the opportunity to listen, pick up the phone, whether it's a roundtable or a call, understand what you're taking anecdotally from people and bring those learnings into a broader conversation to say, if five or six people are feeling this way, that's probably 50, 60 or 100 that are feeling that way.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
And your ability to outthink or what would come across as really being in touch with people is ultimately what it is. People want a sense of clarity, want to know what's happening. What do we expect to have happen? If something changes, is there a level of steadiness and trust from a leadership perspective that they can follow? And for us, that happens at all levels of the organization.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
I love that question. And the first one, from my perspective, is that you always treat people like adults. And so regardless of what someone does, regardless at what level or role that they have, we all largely want the same thing in life. We may or may not have a family that we're responsible for. We'd like a decent place to live and a safe community.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
You'd love to be able to advance or achieve career goals. Maybe you're in your dream job already, but at the end of the day, you have bills to pay. You may have a mortgage or rent. There's some commonalities and themes that regardless at what level someone may be at in the organization,
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
the way the organization runs, their understanding of it, their ability to recognize whether their voice matters or not is integral to all of those things. I tend to think almost anything, unless it's confidential information, that I can have, whether somebody is four levels removed from me, if they're a level above me or they're beside me, all need the same information.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
You may change the tone or tenor of it a little bit, but ultimately information is powerful. And having a habit of doing that usually creates the opportunity where people will trust you, that they know you'll always shoot straight with them, particularly when something's not good news. And I think that's okay.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Nobody wants to follow the leader that says, oh boy, are we in trouble and I don't know what to do. What are you doing to learn something new? There's resources like the LEAP Academy online. There's people that you can observe. Sometimes that's about what to do as much as what not to do.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
I think about three things. One, I think about my own personal purpose, which is about helping people change their lives by reaching their potential. achieving peace with their own decisions, right? So everybody's at different places.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
And I think to a great extent, that peace with your own decisions can impact negatively or positively where someone positions themselves, the way they think about the company, their role, their experience. So I'll give you an example on that one before I give the other two.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
I remember I used to tell a story to teams and different organizations, depending on what was going on, sometimes individual conversations about at one point in my life, depending on family circumstances, I'd made decisions. I was not mobile. And I knew that that meant that that would cause me to miss several opportunities along the way.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
but I had to personally be okay with that because that's not something the company did to me. That was the decision I made. That level of piece meant I would have to make sure that I was continually learning, preparing, because at the moment that changed, I didn't say I would never be able to move, but I said, for now. What did that mean I should be or could be doing at the same time?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Well, that story related to a lot of people on the way in some cases, maybe saying, well, as the company spotted missing these opportunities, but not thinking about their own self-imposed limitations and having a sense of peace and confidence in that.
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
I appreciate that. You expanded that very well. The second one really comes down to what is it that somebody wants? And think about working through things systematically. And I always encourage people, be willing to declare it, but then work backwards. And then you have a decision point. You have to decide, are you willing to do what it takes then to be able to achieve it?
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Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
So you may declare the goal and that may very easily change where they were headed along the way. And then the final one is a momism. And so my mom's always had this saying growing up for the three of us that was, you're no better than anyone else, but no one else is better than you. I think I landed on the three of us in different ways.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
I would tell you four things. Number one. Number two.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
But as I've gone through life and careers and managed careers, that's probably some of the most powerful advice I've ever gotten. Because what she meant by that is there will always be a skill level or a difference. But she also admit at the same time that those are all differences that you can control.