Bernard Hampton
speaker
129 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Bernard Hampton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
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.
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.
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?
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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,
You also miss the opportunity, which this will elicit as well, which is attracting advocates and sponsors along the way.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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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