Joe Bertotto -Building Enduring Significance through Your Strengths

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Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for. Their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And don't miss our one minute exit coach tip of the day on exitcoachradio.com. And now here's your host, the exit coach, Bill Black. Welcome everyone. Thanks for listening. I am excited about my next guest, and he is Joe Burtado, and he's joining us from my CU Services LLC in Middletown, Pennsylvania. We're gonna talk about building enduring significance through. Strengths and at My CU Services LLC they help credit unions and other organizations develop high care, high performance, and high accountability cultures. So Joe, welcome to the show and thanks very much for joining us today. Bill, great to be here. Thanks for having me. Hey Joe, tell me a little bit about your background and and about my, my CU services LLC. It sounds very interesting. Yeah, thanks. So we're a company located here in Middletown, and we provide services to credit unions and non-credit union organizations that include things like payment and technology services and consulting services, and that's really where I come into play. Um, in the consulting world, I focus mainly on leadership development, culture development, and strengths-based work, and I've been doing that work for about 25 years, working with organizations in all different fields, but really helping, helping leaders think about how do we create this kind of environment, this culture where people get to come to work every day, they don't have to come to work every day, you know, where they don't have kind of those Sunday night blues, but people are excited. When the alarm goes off on Monday morning, it's like, hey, I get to go to work today. That's really what we're after. So that's what we try to do and work with leaders to think about that. Yeah, that's great. So you're creating a positive environment for everyone and that starts with leadership. It makes a lot of sense. And so when you start to work with the company, what are some of the symptoms that maybe they see around them that they should give you a call and start working with you? Yeah, thanks. I mean, certainly a lot of negative energy when people All avoid each other. Don't talk to each other when there's more complaining about people, co-workers and people they work with than there is complimenting. If there's really just a low sense of energy and it feels like people are just kind of walking through the day and not, you know, not really coming in with intensity and energy and passion. Certainly a time to give us a call. To put a twist on the saying they've lost their way, have they kind of lost their way? Yeah, it's a great way to put it. You know, it's funny. A lot of organizations have mission and statements and values posted all over their walls and their website, but when you talk to leaders and employees, no one can name the values, let alone live them, and people don't know what the mission of the company is. And, and so those things all become pretty meaningless and So we try to help people kind of rediscover who they are and think about how then that can drive them forward. Yeah, so it sounds like in that kind of a circumstance the leaders have kind of let the vision, the clarity of the vision has faded away and and maybe it's time to pick that back up and it's a good time to get everyone in the in the company involved in in that vision statement as well, isn't it? It is, you know, to really kind of think about how do we cascade information through the company. I mean, certainly it starts with the leaders. The leaders are the culture carriers of the organization, so it does start with them. But, but it is kind of bringing everybody into that discussion and really having people involved in that process because that's really how you gain commitment was when you involve people. So involving people as much as possible is certainly the way to go, and people have strengths and weaknesses. So, you know, one of the things that you're talking about here is building enduring significance through your strengths. Uh, can you limit yourself by only playing to your strengths? Not really would be one quick answer, but, but I think what you don't want to try to do is cap yourself, right? So you want to kind of recognize those things that you're good at and and many times what you're good at can transfer to other things so you don't want to limit and cap yourself. You want to kind of experiment and try things and see if. You know, do I pick this up quickly? Do I get a kick out of doing this? Do I look forward to doing it again once I finish? When you start to get those clues that, you know, yeah, maybe this is something else that could be a strength for me, so you don't you want to kind of keep at practicing different and trying different things and then once you're, you know, you read your Clues then either step away from it recognizing that it's not going to be a strength or add it to your repertoire. Several times in my life I've taken these assessment tests and things like that that tell you a lot about yourself. Do most people recognize what their strengths and weaknesses are? I mean, do they know what the categories are to even measure those in? You know, they really don't. I mean, I am a certified, a Gallup certified strength coach, and we use the Clifton Strength Finder assessment. Actually, my wife and I are the first married couple in the world to be certified in the assessment, and you know, to us that is the gold standard of assessments out there, and it really looks at people's innate talent. So there's recurring patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that people use productively, and those lead to your strengths. They're kind of the raw material for your strengths. And it's interesting. I mean, I've given that assessment to literally thousands of people and worked with thousands of people on it. And you know, for some people it's, yeah, I kind of see this in me, but, but even when they see that there's such levels of complexity with, with your talents that people make discoveries all the time and then there are people who are shocked by the results. And so it's, you know, it's really helpful to people to kind of see things in writing about themselves and then think about how they take those talents and turn them into strengths because I think at the end of the day we're really kind of incredibly bad at recognizing the things we're exceptionally good at and we think sometimes, yeah, we think sometimes that geez, if I can do it, it's no big deal, it's nothing special, and you know we sell ourselves short sometimes. And so our, our hope is, you know, we keep getting people to think about, oh, you, you have just great ability in certain areas and you know, you want to recognize that and drive to that and give that to people. You know how when someone grows up in a very poor neighborhood and people go, Well, didn't you feel poor? They go, No, it's just the way it was. I, you know, it's my, that's my surroundings, that's my environment. That's what I am used to, so I don't know any different. And so when when someone else looks at your strengths or an assessment looks at your strengths and weaknesses, you may be saying, Well, I didn't know I was great at that. I just thought that's the way it is. That's the way I am. Yeah, and that's, that's a very insightful comment though. It's dead on. I mean, that's kind of what that's just what people feel like. Well geez, I just do this all the time and they don't recognize it for the great thing. That it is. And if they don't recognize that and they don't realize that there are weaknesses that they have, it's, it's hard to shine in something you don't know that you're good at somehow, you know, so the, so strength finding is much more than just saying, hey, you're good at this and you're, you're not so good at this. It's more about here's what you can do because you're good at this and here's what you can do more of, right? Absolutely. It's a great tool for awareness and really starting a rich discussion about here are the things that are naturally you and the best parts of you and how do we kind of take this and give it to the world, to your family, to your friends, to work, to anything you do where you volunteer. Your community in the best possible way and that makes you yeah a better a better human being now we've always heard and even back to school it's like you're gonna take all of these courses we want you to be well rounded in your knowledge we want you to be well rounded in everything that you do is is that a good idea or a bad idea? Yeah, I mean, it's a great question, and you know, I think it's a bad idea, frankly. And you know, so here's a quick example, and this is research based. So if, if a child comes home with a report card, and on that report card are 3 A's, 2 B's, and an F, what grades get in the most airtime at the kitchen table at dinner that night? Yeah, yeah, 77% of people would say the F. The problem with that is it gets the primary amount of attention. Now you can't fail. You have to get a passing grade. So you can't ignore the F. You've got to manage it and get your C, but the reality is you can probably work really hard to raise that to a C, and you're just going to be marginally better. You go from an F to a D to a C, but those A's and B's are really places where you have Just great ability for exponential growth. And so it's thinking about how do I spend my time leveraging those A's and B's and just kind of managing that lower grade. Because if you think about it, people are like a star, right? And so we're all born with these unique amazing gifts and kind of along the way it's, it's this theory of, well, you know, you're really good at these things, so just maintain that, but you've got these gaps in your stars, so let's start working on those gaps and fill those in, right? And so you, you go from this kind of unique powerful star to this common ordinary circle and it's all because we're trying to be well rounded. And the thing is we can spend a lot of time just getting marginally better at things if to be well rounded, or we can just take the points of our star and work on those and hone those skills and be exceptional at things and really spend our energy there and get a bigger bang for the buck. Now are you saying that we should ignore our weaknesses? No, no, yeah, it's a good point. You can't, right? So it's think of like a sailboat. So if a sailboat has a hole in it, you'd really be foolish not to fix the hole because you're going to sink, right? So that's your, that's the, the hole in the boat's your F. So you've got to fix that and you can figure out a way to manage it. Maybe you need to get, you know, in the world of work, maybe it's some additional training will help you get a little bit better. But maybe you can partner with somebody, right? So we've got a complimentary partner out there we can work with. Um, maybe we can look at our team and think about how do we, how do we shift work around to play more to people's strengths, but you've got to kind of manage that, that weakness, so you've got to fix the hole. But here's the truth if you don't For all those cells which are your strengths, you're still not going to go anywhere. So thinking about managing, yeah, managing but not not focusing on those, those particular weakness areas, right? Yeah, absolutely. What kind of results do you see from people, let's say 6 months and a year down the road? What do they, what kind of feedback do you get? Well, for most people, it is a lot about, I've, you know, I've got greater self-awareness, so I'm kind of more aware of what I'm good at and I'm more aware of what's not natural for me. And so I'm trying to do more to leverage those gifts that I have. The other thing is, and this is a huge payoff in a work environment for a family or a community, I'm, I feel much better about the people around me because now I'm starting to appreciate them because they're not the same as me and I know and understand why they're not the same as me. And so things they used to do that would irritate or bother me now I understand and accept and so, you know, a lot of times at work you can just put up with people and that does nothing for your right that does nothing for company um engagement or culture positive culture. And so when we can get people to kind of understand each other and then tolerate each other and then maybe appreciate each other, really good things happen. And then even better if we get people to kind of leverage each other. So hey, I know I'm not good at this, but you are. So can you help me with this? You know, that sense of I start to celebrate the other person and their gifts and how my strengths can help them and how their strengths can help me. You know, amazing things start to happen and energy and productivity start to skyrocket. That's phenomenal. So at the workplace, I guess I can see how an employer could certainly use this to build a substantial a team that represents each of. Let's say the sailboat, you know, the the sail the rudder. Workshops do employees really uh learn about each other. Yeah, absolutely, and so what we try to do with, with teams is really kind of hone in on those differences and start to explain those differences and. And, and many times, you know, we're able to kind of predict those differences once we kind of see people's results and so it's easy for us to kind of point things out to people and there are some like, yeah, you know, the feedback is like, oh yeah, that does happen all the time and so then we start to get people really saying well this is really just nothing more than the way I see the world and the way you see the world and it's different and So let's start thinking about how we can appreciate each other and leverage each other. I mean, it doesn't happen, you know, instantaneously, but as we continue to have those discussions, that thinking takes hold and it just reframes the conversation, you know, it changes it from why don't you do it this way to, well, you do it that way, and that's a really good way to do it and maybe you can help me do something of mine and maybe I can help you do something of yours. Yeah, it sounds fascinating and do groups like for instance you say you met you work with credit unions and other organizations do do groups that you work with find that over a period of time that this makes a big difference in the way they work together and the productivity and their and the cohesiveness of the. Teams, yeah, it really does, and it's significant, and I can give you just kind of a quick example where we saw 30% increase in results. We were, we were working with a large organization, but we were working with a team in a in a grocery store branch of a financial services institution and In the grocery store, you know, they work long hours and in many places a grocery store branch consists of 3 or 4 people and typically what you're expected to do is kind of walk through the aisles and talk to the grocery store customers and get to know them so that eventually they come to bank with you and most people in the branch feel awkward doing that. And so in this one office we worked with, there were 4 people and everybody would kind of take a turn. So basically one day a week, everybody would walk the aisles basically and, and talk to grocery shoppers and eventually try to get them to come into the branch to be customers. Well, after we did our strengths work with them, we found there was one person who actually loved to do it, where other people just did it because they had to and didn't feel really comfortable doing it. There was one person who absolutely loved to do it, and then there was another person who really liked to sit with people at a deeper level and get to know them, learn the history. Of their lives really try to understand them as people and build these deep genuine relationships. Another person really just wanted to focus on what can I check off my to do list today, you know, let me keep my head down and crank out work, and I feel really good when I get to the end of the day and and I have all these tasks kind of checked off. And another person loved to kind of administer loans. And so the work in the branch kind of reconfigured where the person who liked really loved to be out in the aisles instead of just spending 8 hours of a full work week, she ended up spending about 80% of her time in the aisles. The person who loved to build the deep relationships with people and get to know their story would sit at the desk. So when she brought people from the grocery store aisles into the branch, he would sit and talk to them at length and really get to know them. And then he would hand off all the paperwork to the other person who loved to just keep her head down and kind of get work done, and she was really terrific at kind of detail orientation, and she would take care of all the paperwork. And so they started this kind of new method of working and in the first quarter of working that way their results went up by 30% because people were doing the things that they were naturally good at and enjoyed and nobody really saw it like work anymore. They saw it as Wow, we're just all doing these things that we really like every day, so work was more like fun and play than it was a chore. What a difference and what a great idea. Again, back to that sailboat analogy, you don't need 4 sails and no keel and no rudder on a sailboat. You know, you need, you need a balance to make the team work. So it sounds like fantastic work and great results. Um, how do our listeners find out more about what you do and how do they get in touch with you? Yeah, thank you. So they can uh get to us through uh they can email me directly at Jertado, that's B E R T O T T O at my CU services dot com. Um, or they can give me a call directly at 717-985-5317. Excellent, excellent topic, and I really appreciate you coming on and talking about building enduring significance through your strengths and about Strength Finders. It's a fantastic. Offering and a great way to really understand who you have on your team now and how to best position them for success. So again, thanks. I'd love to talk to you about it some other time uh in more detail and get into Strength Finders and some of the nuances of it like the different characteristics that come in and, and, uh, you know, let's get a little deeper on it at sometime in the future, OK? Would love to do it, Bill. Thank you. Joe, thanks very much. Talk to you again soon. We're going to take a short break. We'll be right back after this, so please stay tuned. 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