GAC Keynote Carla Harris Shares 'Eight Pearls of Wisdom' to Credit Union Industry Leaders

Carla Harris (courtesy of America's Credit Unions)

By Lisa Freeman, Contributing Editor

Will the real Carla Harris stand up?

Would that be the Carla Harris who has been a credit union member since she was a 6 years old? Or the gospel singer Carla Harris who has preformed for sell-out crowds at Carnegie Hall? Or the best-selling author? Or the 38-year Wall Street veteran? Or the one who loves her pears?

Turns out, the real Carla Harris, Senior Client Advisor for Morgan Stanley, is all of those things, and while that doesn’t mean all of those things are on display 24 hours a day, she brings all of those Carlas to the table when she is doing business, because you never know which one is going to be the one that makes the connection to the other professional sitting across the table.

“There was a time when I didn’t want anyone to know that I was also a singer. I wanted them to think of me as the Wall Street professional. But my colleagues would always make sure to tell the client about my singing, and I’d be sitting there rolling my eyes…until I saw how the clients responded,” she told the crowd during her keynote presentation at America’s Credit Unions Governmental Affairs Conference.

After seeing how Carla the Singer could help Carla the Investment Banker make deeper connections with customers, it became the first of her “Eight Pearls of Wisdom.” Authenticity, she said, is making your distinct identity -- and all the things that make you you -- a competitive advantage.

“I bring all those Carlas to the table, because I don’t know which one is going to be the one that will allow me to make that connection,” she said, adding that when leaders allow their people to be their authentic selves, they out perform.

Pearl No. 2: Trust. Creating trust is how to gain and retain clients, how to gain and retain the best talent. So how do you create trust? “By delivering over and over and over again,” Harris said. “Think of who you trust,” she said, noting it may be the person who cares for your children or your aging parents, or the person who cuts your hair, or even your favorite restaurant where they make you favorite dish. Why do you trust them, she asked? Because they have consistently delivered what you wanted and needed, what you valued.

“People will always tell you what they value, and then you get to deliver on that value proposition, and that is how you build trust.”

Pearl No. 3: Create Clarity. “You have to define what success looks like,” she said, “That’s how you create clarity.” The hardest part, Harris noted, is creating that clarity even when you can’t really see -- but oftentimes, that’s when it’s most important. Harris related that when she created the Multicultural Fintech Lab (which is now called the Inclusive Lab), she would sit down with her team, and when they didn’t know exactly where they were going or how to start, Harris would say, “here’s the problem we are going to focus on today.” Setting that expectation on just one thing that one moment, was how she created clarity for her team.

Pearl No. 4: Creating Other Leaders. Too often, leaders get bogged down in execution, leaving them no bandwidth for creating. But one of the CEOs she worked for told her, “I focus on things that only the CEO can do. If there’s someone else who can do something, then I shouldn’t be doing it.” It can be hard for leaders, many of whom are, like Harris herself, “born executors” to let go of executing, but the best leaders are looking for those gems who can be the next leaders in line. “Become a kingmaker, a queenmaker. That’s how you build your impact and expand your footprint.”

Pearl No. 5: Diversity. The point of diversity isn’t to make sure you have a certain number of this or that ethnic group or gender, it’s about ensuring you have the greatest number of perspectives. “If you are homogenous, you have a market gap,” Harris said. “When I created that Multicultural Lab, I was very proud of how diverse we were,” she related, “until one day two years I woke up and realized we were definitely multi-cultural, but we didn’t have an ounce of testosterone. My entire team was women. And I realized that meant we were going to have gaps in our go-to-market strategy.” That is why it’s important to be intentional when creating diversity, she said.

Pearl No. 6: Innovation. “If you want to teach teams how to innovate, you have to teach them how to fail,” Harris said. “If you are afraid to fail, you won’t take the risk that leads to innovation. You have to learn to celebrate failure.” While it is important to acknowledge when a failure is a failure, the key is to extract the lessons from learned from that failure and then celebrate the try, she said. Only be celebrating the try do you keep people taking those chances and eventually finding the winner.

Pearl No. 7: Inclusion. “How to be an inclusive leader? Solicit other voices,” Harris said. She described going into meetings and kicking off the discussion and then asking someone else to add to that, then asking another person to add on to that, then ask the next person to play devil’s advocate and refute

that, then asking the next person to add onto that. By getting all of the different voices in -- and by inviting people to participate -- you ensure that everyone feels heard, and everyone feels valued. When you feel heard and valued, you get invested.

Pearl No. 8: Voice. “You have to be willing to call a thing a thing, no matter how bad that thing is,” Harris said. If your people already know there may be a reduction in workforce, give voice to it, she said. The harder a truth is, Harris offered, the more important it is to speak it.

And the strand that holds all these pearls together is courage, Harris said, noting it takes great courage to call a thing a thing, great courage to be your authentic self, to be willing to fail and learn from it, to let go of execution and all the rest. But that is how great leaders win.

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