Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Bank of America's Bernard Hampton: The Leadership Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams | E104
Tue, 13 May 2025
Bernard Hampton’s journey from modest beginnings to Managing Director and The Head of The Academy at Bank of America is a testament to hard work, learning, and leadership. Raised in a middle-class family with a strong work ethic, Bernard’s early experiences shaped his leadership approach. From his start as a sales associate at RadioShack to leading over a thousand employees globally at Bank of America, he has always believed in the power of people and emotional intelligence. In this episode, Bernard shares strategies for transitioning into leadership, navigating crises, and the power of continuous learning in career growth. Bernard Hampton is a Managing Director and The Head of The Academy at Bank of America, where he leads global employee training and development initiatives for over 200,000 employees. In this episode, Ilana and Bernard will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:39) Early Experiences That Shaped His Leadership (07:17) Joining Bank of America (09:02) Leading Through Crisis and Uncertainty (12:42) Four Keys to Stronger Team Dynamics (19:31) The Power of Origin Stories in Leadership (24:15) Leading Talent Development at Bank of America (30:07) The Value of Career Mentors and Sponsors (33:40) Building a Culture of Learning and Growth (38:10) Empowering Your Community as a Leader (39:45) Four Steps to Unlock Your Leadership Potential (45:30) Balancing Leadership with Personal Life Bernard Hampton is a Managing Director and The Head of The Academy at Bank of America, where he leads global employee training and development initiatives for over 200,000 employees. He is also a member of Leadership Florida's Executive Class 12 and serves on the Board of Directors for the Urban League of Palm Beach County, contributing to efforts that promote economic growth and community development. Connect with Bernard: Bernard’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bernardfhampton Resources Mentioned: Bank of America: bankofamerica.com The Academy: https://careers.bankofamerica.com/en-us/career-development/the-academy Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness by Steve Magness: https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Things-Resilience-Surprising-Toughness/dp/006309861X Leap Academy: Ready to make the LEAP in your career? There is a NEW way for professionals to Advance Their Careers & Make 5-6 figures of EXTRA INCOME in Record Time. Check out our free training today at leapacademy.com/training
Chapter 1: What early experiences shaped Bernard Hampton's leadership style?
Bernard Hampton, Managing Director, Bank of America, heading the Academy, a team of over a thousand professionals supporting over 200,000 employees globally.
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.
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.
If somebody's listening, but maybe they didn't get a chance of leadership yet, what are some of the tips that you would give them?
I would tell you four things. Number one. Number two.
Bernard Hampton, Managing Director, Bank of America, heading the Academy, a team of over a thousand professionals supporting over 200,000 employees globally. His journey up the career ladder is fascinating. So buckle up, jam-packed episode. Bernard, thank you for being with me today.
That's a pleasure. Thanks for the invite.
I want to take you back in time. When you grew up, tell us a little bit of what that looked like. And did you already have that vision that you're going to be this big boss when you grow up? How did you grow up, Bernard?
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.
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Chapter 2: How did Bernard Hampton transition to Bank of America?
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.
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.
Amazing. So your parents in general taught you hard work, but they weren't necessarily with corporate titles. It wasn't about, I need to be an SVP, a managing director, like none of that came there yet.
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?
So you start basically from a sales associate in RadioShack. Did you start before that or was that a first?
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
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?
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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Chapter 3: What are the keys to leading through crisis?
Oh, my God. So I love what you just said. If I'm going to take good care of them, this is going to be basically the recipe for success. And then it becomes a win-win. What are some things that you needed to learn, though? Because you haven't been a leader yet. You just got to a leadership for the first time in Radio Shack and you're starting to climb up the ladder.
What are some things that you feel like you needed to learn and that shaped your leadership style? Or if there's specific events maybe that just, oh my God, I don't want to do this or I do want to do that.
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
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.
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.
At some point, you decide to move to Bank of America and you create a long career there and you just keep on climbing up the ranks. Probably a lot of the things that you do in leadership today are based on things that you learned along the journey, right? So share a little bit about some of these pivotal moments maybe that shaped you.
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.
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.
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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Chapter 4: How can one build stronger team dynamics?
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.
2004.
If I'm not mistaken, a few years later, there's a big financial crisis. How did you maneuver something like this? I mean, you're not new, you're not new to leadership for sure, but this has been, I'm sure, shaking the boats of everybody.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bernard, let me ask you something, because I think that's extremely relevant. Even now, a lot of companies are feeling, a lot of individuals are feeling fear. How do you as a leader balance between, on one hand, integrity and authenticity, and on the other hand, not freak everybody out? Because if you're going to freak everybody out, they're not going to be there, right?
So how do you balance the two?
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Chapter 5: Why are origin stories important in leadership?
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.
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.
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?
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.
This is worth waiting for a second because I think what you just said is so critical. And I want the listeners to hear this. You need to understand your must haves and you can have it all, just not at the same time, but you need to understand your own must haves. And it needs to be you, not what people think about you, not what society expects for you, not what your parents want for you.
It's what writes for you. And then you have that piece of these are my must have. This is what I need right now. And this is where I'm going for, right? So I think, Bernard, this is just so, so, so important. So I had to stop here for a second. Thank you.
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?
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.
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.
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Chapter 6: How does Bernard Hampton empower his community?
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.
And the side conversations that aren't just about business are also what happens to be able to elicit trust.
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This program helps hundreds a year and it will help you gain the income, influence and impact that will transform the second part of your life. Watch our free training today at leapacademy.com slash free hyphen training. The link is in the show notes. Now back to the show. Well, how did you share your origin story? Speaking of.
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.
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
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
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.
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?
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