Michael Hunter
Hello!
Welcome to Uncommon Leadership.
I’m Michael Hunter with Uncommon Teams.
Today, I’m talking with Rob Beachy.
Rob started out his career in the military and took those skills and transitioned into the civilian world as a technical support representative, network admin, IT consulting engineer, and ultimately to his current role as Chief Information Officer at Sturgis Bank and Trust.
Welcome, Rob.
Rob Beachy
Hi! Thank you. Thank you for having me. I’m glad to be here.
Michael
Happy to have you here today.
In your journey to seeing people as people and learning to leverage their unique gifts to best accomplish your goals, when did you first recognize this might be a valuable approach?
Rob
Throughout my career, from the technical perspective, you’re always dealing with individual problems. You’re going out. Trying to fix things.
Once I hit the level where I was managing teams, that individual approach really doesn’t work well trying to develop a team.
At that point, I learned the value of seeing people as people.
But it wasn’t until I had a really great mentor that I realized that seeing people as people means that you got to look past that they’re just your employee. Leading teams, you really have got to show some true interest in them as a person, get to know them, what interests they have in their lives, encourage them to really communicate openly with you, which will help foster a collaborative environment. In some respect, you got to make sure that your team realizes that they have your respect and that you can show some empathy towards them and understand what they may or may not have going in on their lives.
Doing that, you can bring all that together and the team can really accomplish some great things.
Michael
What has most helped you bring all that together?
Rob
A lot of that has to deal with the open communication. I like to keep an open door. People can come. I also like them to understand that failure isn’t failure.
If something happens where they don’t meet what goals they have or what goals a project may have had, that’s not a defining value for them. It’s a great way of learning things. A great way of learning from others.
And I often share with my team my own failures.
I have a story that I like to tell them about my first job when I got out of the military and how I really got in over my technical head, was fired from that job, which, in the long run, really was the greatest thing that could have happened to me because that woke me up and realized that there’s more to a job than just going in and being able to speak the language.
That helped me drive my learning, but it also helped me drive the fact that wherever you go with your career and whatever team you find yourself in, you can’t do it alone. You need good mentors. You need good team members. A good team, I’m telling you, a good team can accomplish some great things.
Michael
Yeah. There’s that famous quote by, I don’t remember who, if you want to go fast, you can do it alone, but if you want to go long term, then you got to go with a team.
Rob
Absolutely. I agree with that wholeheartedly.
Michael
Is there something that really stood out of when you, brought home to you the importance of building that open communication?
Rob
Yeah. Probably the biggest thing beyond just my life experiences and where I had come from within my career. A former boss, in fact, the boss that had brought me in. He developed that core value of that open communication with me.
He brought me in. I was probably 28, 29 years old at the time. And he had been in the banking industry for almost 30 years at that point. So he knew pretty much everything there was to know about banking. He brought me in and he really communicated with me in regards to teaching me about banking.
Never made me feel like my questions if I had to come to him were little. I’m sure all the questions that I had for him were minor questions to him, but the way he treated me was as if I was a trusted advisor. And in that particular case, I really was just as an employee. I was the first tech that they hired. But he treated me with that respect that he knew he didn’t know what I was doing.
That open communication between he and I, him teaching me banking and me being able to relate that to the technology field, really opened my eyes that regardless of who you’re working with, everybody brings to the table something unique. Everybody has their own skills. Everybody has their life experiences, which coming together, again, coming together as a team, will help dramatically improve the output of that team.
Michael
That’s really lovely that he was able to recognize and engage that knowledge of what he had that you didn’t have and connect that with what you had and that he didn’t have, and to do that in a way that brought you up to the same level as him. That’s pretty unique in my experience.
Rob
I agree. When you come up through your teams, we all have those mentors, but I think it’s a mentor like him. And if you get stuck with a mentor, that can also help you. You can learn what not to do in your career. I’ve had some mentors that really made me feel like I was strictly a number, that, “Here’s your project for the day. Go do it.” When I finish it, “Oh, here’s another project.” There wasn’t any feedback. There wasn’t any trying to get to know me or know what happened in that project. All they cared about was the project was done.
I have definitely vowed internally that I would be involved with a project from the standpoint of, it’s sad to say, but being a cheerleader for my staff. I’ve done some good things in my career, but I think I get more benefit and more enjoyment of seeing my staff succeed. That really was direct reflect on what I was taught and how I was perceived from my former boss.
Michael
How do you do that when you have an organization the size I’m guessing you have where you can’t really get to know each person intimately? How do you keep that open communication, help each of those people feel that they’re up at the same level as you are?
Rob
I have regular team meetings.
And during that team meeting we go around the room and just explain, in short, what each person’s working on, what struggles they may have, to get some feedback from the rest of the team. That helps me learn what they’re working on. It helps the other team members get to know that individual. And then you can touch upon little clues on what they say because I tried to make it a casual conversation.
A good example for that was today, we had a team meeting. And I noticed that one of my team members didn’t have his camera on, and I didn’t really notice he wasn’t even there, and I asked, “Is so and so going to be here today?” And he piped up, and he goes, “Yeah, I’m here, I just got a headache and just not feeling very well.”
I knew from past discussions with this individual that he has a history of migraines. So I was able to, after the meeting, then reach out to him and say, “Okay, how are you doing? Do we need to move you into another location that’s darker and quieter for you? If it helps, you can go home for the day.” Cause I know migraines can be debilitating.
So that open communication and even in a bigger organization, and we already about 230 staff members, and I only have about five or six techs. So it’s easier for me to have that one-on-one, but I think if a leader stays involved and has those, even those little meetings like that, and truly listens, active listening to a staff. And I say active listening as opposed to just hearing your staff. Really understand what they’re saying and try to take what they’re saying and turn that into something meaningful. Too many people turn conversations into either “I’m talking” or “I’m thinking about talking” and they don’t take time to actually listen to what their staff is saying.
Michael
What tools or techniques help you both to do that active listening and also, maybe more importantly, to remember to do that active listening when it’s so easy to fall into the thinking about what we’re going to say when the other person gets done?
Rob
Yeah, you make a great point, at least my experience, that thinking about doing it is something that you have to actively do. Over time, as you get comfortable with talking to somebody, you feel like you know what they’re going to say, and you feel like, okay, I’m just going to jump in there. So it’s a conversation style, and you really do, at least for me, have to think about stopping and listening as opposed to formulating a call.
And I catch myself quite often with my mouth going “…” as if I’m going to go ready to answer and say, “No, stop, let them finish, make sure you understand what they’re saying.” They may not be asking a question at all. They just may be making a comment. And I’m sitting over here saying, “Okay, I’m going to answer this question because I believe I know what they’re going to say.”
It’s hard to do. You have to think about doing it. You have to practice it, catch yourself and stop yourself when you see that you’re not actively listening and work on that.
For me, my practice is my wife. I go home, it’s you always get so used to talking to family members and you just talk over each other. That’s helped my relationship: actively understanding what it is she’s trying to convey. And you can’t do that if your mind is going a thousand miles an hour trying to rebut whatever she may be talking about.
Michael
What helps you keep the presence of mind and presence of body to remember to do this when you’re in those stressful situations with your team, your wife, someone random person on the street?
Rob
Sometimes I fail at that. Sometimes I don’t effectively do that active listening.
It comes down to catching yourself doing it. And the more you catch yourself doing it, the more you can recognize that it’s happening and actually making a concerted effort to stop and listen to what the person is saying.
Again, I don’t always do it. I’m still learning. I don’t think you ever get to a point where you master that.
My upbringing, my family, we actively talked over each other. And we had conversations like that and none of us really cared because that’s just how we communicated.
But, especially in a work environment, you just gotta have a conscious effort to notice what you’re doing and step back from that and actively listen.
I don’t think you always get it right.
I don’t think we ever get everything a hundred percent right all the time.
Anybody who can tell you that “I’m perfect,” open up your hands and see if you got holes in your hands because nobody’s perfect.
Michael
This is a great example of, I tell the leaders I work with all the time, that there’s nothing that we work on that you have to do a hundred percent. All that matters is, every time you do something the way you want to do it, you’re a little more likely to do it that way the next time. The more we focus on the times we succeed, the more that those snowball and turn into, get to the point where you are, where you get to do what you want to do a lot of the time.
As you said, there’s always going to be times where you don’t quite get there and that’s perfectly okay.
Rob
I definitely agree with that sentiment. Absolutely.
Michael
Is there something you’re struggling with right now around seeing people as people?
Rob
That’s really a difficult question to ask because every person is different. You will always have some sort of a struggle of dealing either with a personality or a person that might be having some outside conflict in their life and you really don’t notice it, but it’s affecting their internal struggle.
I think the biggest thing that I usually have difficulties with, especially in the tech arena, is overcoming the resistance to change. In the tech field, change happens all the time and you get so wrapped up in your day to day. And this is the way we’ve always done it. And it works. And why do I want to change when it works? Are you introducing more difficulty into my way of working?
You really struggle to overcome that. I try to encourage individuals to just step out of their comfort zone. And to teach them to embrace new things and new ways of working. And I think that’s an ever-going struggle.
Humans are creatures of habit. We get so used to doing something one way. And if it works, why change it? I try to tell my staff that where I agree with it: if it works, don’t fix something that’s not broken.
However, without that agent of change, do we really know we’re doing it in the most efficient manner?
If you don’t look at change and you don’t look at different ways of environment, you may not accept the change, but if you don’t at least become open to change, you’ll never know if there’s a better way of doing something.
Michael
Is change something you find easy for yourself?
Rob
I do now, but I can’t say that it’s always been that way.
Growing up and building a career, change wasn’t always a good thing. Take my first job out of the military. The military tells you what to do, tells you where to work. So, I was so used to being told what to do in my job. You really didn’t have to think about what to do next. They even told you what to wear.
So that first job out of the military, dealing in a civilian world, that change was difficult. Everything from telling time to how they dealt with dates. It was like relearning a culture, going from the military. That change was difficult.
I still find myself, from my management style at times, reverting back to the times that I was in the military. And I have to stop myself when I do that, because it’s really more of a militant style where I’m going to tell you what to do, I’m going to tell you where to go, and when you get there, you come see me. That doesn’t work in the civilian world. That’s just not how it’s structured and it shouldn’t work that way in the civilian world.
I do struggle with change. Even now, change is tough. You get used to it.
I was just talking to somebody earlier today about getting a new computer. And it really made me think that, I don’t like getting a new computer.
I know how to program a computer. I know how to set it up. I know how to install things, but I get things just the way I like them. And I don’t want to get a new computer or a new phone. I cringe when I had to think about getting a new phone. I’ve got ’em set up the way I want.
So change, that difficulty with change, I don’t think you ever get over and you ever get used to it.
It’s easier now because I realized that change is going to happen and with change comes improvements. So I look forward to the improvements and just realize in my mind that I know there’s going to be some struggles. I’ll deal with them.
There’s nothing that I haven’t done in my life with change where I didn’t overcome some of those struggles. So it’ll all work out in the end.
You find the things that you look forward to in the change and that helps you deal with all the rest of it that you may not be as comfortable with.
Michael
Absolutely.
Is that your primary approach to helping your team and all the people in the company that you’re inflicting change on all the time? How do you help them achieve that same comfortableness with change?
Rob
It goes through leading by example.
If you go into the change and you don’t approach it with, “I’m telling you this is where we’re going,” and help people become part of the journey. Involve them in decision making, involve them in looking at ways of doing different things.
I don’t have to dictate to my staff or the other employees. I don’t know how something should be done. I’m not in their job position. So instead of going to them and say, “Hey, this is the structure we’re going to put this in,” I’ll go to them and say, “I would like to do this for you. How do you feel about it? And do you have a different approach?”
Let them be part of the solution and not just another cog in it.
The more you include people, the more they get involved and that they feel involved and they feel they have a stake in the project, then they start wanting to do the job.
There’s a lot of interpersonal things in that as well.
If you can make somebody feel respected and feel that they have some responsibility in something. that does something for their psyche and how they approach their everyday beyond just a simple project.
Michael
A hundred percent.
That even works wonders with the resistors of the change, who they don’t want to be part of the change, they don’t think it needs to be done. However, if we can show them that we are listening to their experience, that we understand what they’re trying to tell us, and as you said, show them that we respect them and their experience and their opinions, that goes a long way to them being more willing to entertain the idea that maybe this is something that could be useful in some way for them.
What would you say is most valuable in helping you do your job today?
Rob
I’ve got a great staff.
From my position, as you go through your career, I fulfill more of a strategic role as opposed to the tactical role. From a tech perspective, we’re so used to coming up and we’re that lieutenant and we’re that captain on the battlefield and we’re going through and we’re fixing things.
When you reach a certain level and you have to transition to the strategic role, that sometimes hard. It was hard for me to transition to not being the day-to-day go-to person when you’re so used to that.
To fulfill my role today, oh, I would be lost without my staff. They are just awesome. They make my job easy. They make it so that I can focus on the things that I need to do from a corporate perspective while they handle the day-to-day, and they handle a lot of those changes.
For me, the most amazing thing with that is, is the things that my staff can do as a team when I bring them all together.
There’s something to be said when you bring multiple disciplines together and people with different skill sets, different life experiences, you bring them together. It’s amazing how they can transform and innovate some solutions that you wouldn’t normally think of by yourself.
I like to look at it as your team is like building a body. You might have one guy that has a great idea and guess what? That’s the head. And then another guy adds a small little thing. So now that head has a mouth and can discuss things and communicate things. Then you bring people in that might be able to attach something to that. So now you got arms. So now you can talk about it and reach out to people and help other people. And then you got the final people that are bringing things in and that’s like building the legs. So now you have a brain. You’re able to communicate it, you can reach to other people, and now you can walk to other places and expand on your message.
The team helps you in that respect, building that body.
Michael
I love that analogy. It’s maybe the most clear that I’ve heard of showing the value of each unique gifts that each person brings. A body with 18 arms and no legs, no head, can do some things that nobody else could do. In general, though, it’s not going to be as adaptable and as successful as a body who has legs and arms and a head and mouth and all the other parts.
Rob
I agree. I agree.
Michael
What has most helped you build this amazing team?
Rob
To start out, I got lucky. I hired my network administrator right out of high school. He had some certifications even within high school. We took a chance on him and he has turned into an absolute rock star.
From there, the culture the company I work for builds gravitates great people to us.
We tend to have an open door all the way up from the CEO [chief executive officer], all the way down to the frontline management, that we welcome your decisions. If you make a mistake, we’re not going to fire you for it. We welcome you making those decisions, learning from them and moving on.
That has drove several of my employees. One of my employees came recommended from his spouse who happens to also work here. Another great hire.
I have a great team and the fact that we built a culture of inclusion and a culture of accepting everybody for who they are and for what they bring to the table has made it easy for me to build that team here. I haven’t really had to struggle to bring in and maintain a good team because it’s built into this company’s DNA that everything that I’m talking about here, leadership wise, really is something that all of our leaders exude.
Michael
That’s great. I’m always happy to find companies like that, to learn that they exist and are actively engaging with their community because that is so much the world that I want us all to be living in.
Rob
Definitely a great place to be. I’ve been here for 23 years and it’s amazing to see how many employees that this company has that have been here 10, 15, 20, in some respects 30 and 35 years. You just don’t find that anymore.
A lot of people will work, they’ll get a paycheck, they’ll find another job and they’ll move on. People here really, they stay, and I don’t think they stay necessarily for the money. I think it’s the culture.
I try to teach my son that if you find a job, do something you love to do every single day, and you’ll never work a day in your life. And for the past 23 years here, it doesn’t feel like I’m coming to work because of the culture of this place. It really is a great place to work.
Michael
Yes. All the experiences I’ve most enjoyed have been times where I said that I was playing. It didn’t, like you said, it doesn’t feel like work, but I’m here having fun doing everything I love. And everyone around me is supporting me and I’m supporting them and we’re all really successful.
Rob
Success breeds success.
It goes back to leading by example.
Your staff and not necessarily just your staff, the employees and the people around you. If you’re a positive individual and you go about your day and you don’t necessarily try to hide things, people are going to see that and people are going to emulate that. People want to be you when you’re successful and you can exude that kind of stuff.
And I don’t do it alone. I learn things from my staff. When I hire, I look for people who are smarter than me. I want to hire people who are smarter than me. That helps me. So my staff teaches me things.
It’s definitely a win all around.
There’s a John Maxwell quote that I love that says that leadership isn’t about titles. It’s not about position and sport flow charts. It really is about one person influencing another.
Michael
Yes.
Which of your unique gifts, what do you feel has been most responsible for your success?
Rob
Humor. I don’t take myself seriously.
I know when I have to get a job done, but I laugh.
There’s nothing better than a good laugh.
That helps me get through some of those tough times, some of those changes that we talked about that are difficult to make. Just, life is what it is.
None of us are going to get out alive anyway, so have fun while you’re here. Whether that is your personal life or at work.
My humor and the way I approach things.
I know when to be serious, but for the most part, I try to have fun doing whatever it is that I’m doing. That easygoing personality has helped in a myriad of ways.
It helps my staff be able to communicate with me. It helps people feel comfortable bringing me suggestions because they know that I’m not going to sit here with a suit and tie on and glare at them as they’re talking. They’re going to sit down and we’re going to have a conversation.
The ability that others can have a conversation with you, and it’s truly just a conversation, is important to leading individuals and not just your team.
I get feedback from employees on how they would like to see things change that are important. It’s far beyond anything that my department has a direct interaction with, but they know they can have that conversation with me and they know that I can take that to people who can do something with their ideas.
The fact that they feel comfortable coming to me to be an agent of change for them for me is fulfilling.
Michael
That’s great. What else should I ask you today?
Rob
Maybe what I’m going to have for lunch.
Michael
What are you going to have for lunch?
Rob
I don’t have a clue. I find that if I eat too much of a lunch, I end up falling asleep anyway.
From my perspective, and for anybody who’s listening to this, if I could leave with anything, it would be respect your employees.
Everybody has a voice. Communication. I don’t think you can over-communicate. People are going to filter out the stuff that they don’t know, but for people to know the whys behind things and what’s going on prevents them from guessing, prevents them from making decisions based on assumptions.
Communication and truly show some empathy towards not only your fellow employees, your teammates, but people in general. Just be a good person.
Michael
Be a good person. You may have just given me the title for this episode.
If our audience would like to reach out to you and come work for you and your wonderful culture maybe, or learn more about how you approach leadership and how you build that open communication and trust with your team, what’s the best way for them to contact you?
Rob
A lot of my philosophies I usually post on LinkedIn.
I’m always open to people sending me emails at rbeachy@sturgis.bank. I love hearing other people’s examples, because that’s how I grow, is learning from others. So if anybody has questions or if anybody has a story to share with me, I’m always open to listening to other people’s experiences.
Michael
That’s great. I’ll have those links in the show notes.
Anything else you’d like to say before we wrap up?
Rob
I don’t think so. I would like to thank you for having me. I find it an honor that you wanted to interview me. We have talked before, but it’s always an honor when somebody that has your knowledge comes to you and says, “Hey, I’d like to have a sit down and talk with you.” So thank you.
Michael
You’re welcome. I’ve enjoyed every conversation you and I’ve had, and today has been no exception.
Thank you for being here, Rob.
And thank you audience for being with us. We’d love to know: what helps you build trust and effective communication with your team. Rob and I want to know.
Thanks, and have a great day.
Thanks for joining us on Uncommon Leadership today.
If you found these stories interesting, inspiring, and illuminating, sign up for my newsletter.
Use the form at the top of this page.
You’ll be the first to know about every new episode of Uncommon Leadership.
You’ll also discover how you can build uncommon teams.
Thanks so much!