Digging out of a pile of should
By Sarah Snell Cooke
One of my guilty pleasures is playing an app called Solitaire Tripeaks. The level of gamification is incredible, obviously designed to keep you playing for hours. For some, it’s Netflix binging or whatever it is that you do to keep your brain busy and not focused where it needs to be. (I’m writing this recalling my last year of college when I heaped on 22 credit hours, pledged a sorority, worked 30+ hours a week, headed up our delegation to the Model UN, founded our chapter for the Society for Collegiate Journalists, and more that I can’t even remember now to avoid feeling the unpleasantness that year was for me.)
We think playing games or watching all the episodes of Stranger Things in one weekend is how we rest, but it’s really avoiding resting because all the whizzbangs and hoopla are enough to feed the cortisol-fueled anxiety that keeps you from setting you free to feel. I know it’s not great for me, but I do it anyway. We all do things we know are against our self-interest.
Why? Because it provides a false sense of accomplishment. Because we are avoiding an activity – or lack thereof – we know is better for us for a fear of failure. Or a fear of success.
Whether you’re running a credit union or driving sales at one of the many business partners or managing your household, you’ve made decisions against your own best interest because you’ve fooled yourself into thinking you feel comfortable. Like spending too much time playing a silly game when you know there’s a mountain of laundry you should be folding or not taking the step with your business/job/relationship you know you should take. We get bogged down in a pile of should.
Because people are human. I know, that’s a real revelation, right?
In professional settings, like your credit union, we can sometimes forget. Or we can be the one at the top setting the tone for the entire credit union.
People have feelings about their work. They have feelings about their careers. About whether they should ask for a pay increase. About getting behind on a project that should be completed already. About not knowing everything they think they should know for their next career move.
Working in B2B communications, I see a lot of companies try to ignore acknowledging feelings in their marketing, public relations, social media, etc., but even though it is more logic-based, people don’t check their feelings at the door just because they’re working. This affects your business on micro and macro levels. Shoveling all that ‘should’ generates fear that shifts our lizard brains into a fight, flight, or freeze mode. That can happen on an organizational level, too.
Here's how your credit union can deal with what it needs to and hold back the anxiety-inducing shoulds:
False sense of accomplishment
We’ve all been there. Things are humming along fine, so why rock the boat? Membership growth is fine. Loan growth is fine. Capital…you guessed it. But fine isn’t going to keep your credit union relevant. We have to push ourselves to do more than appease the regulators.
The – arguably – clear lines that regulators place around credit unions are a sense of comfort. We can’t do what we should do because they say so. Let’s try coloring a little bit more and a little bit more outside those lines. I’ve heard a couple of credit union execs say that if a credit union is a CAMEL 1, it’s providing the optimal return to its members – the people we should serve to feel a true sense of accomplishment. But they’re messy. There are no mostly clear lines to stay within. Every time we try something with them, we take a risk, which leads me to…
Many of us, particularly Type As, are perfectionists. Perfectionists can work and re-work your butts off, but you’ll never be happy with the end result. While everyone is complimenting your new beta service (or haircut), you’re fixated on that one piece that doesn’t go quite right. And you fiddle with the details while your competitor has already started offering it with great success. Things don’t need to be perfect to be really darn good. In truth, we want it perfect, because we’re just afraid to fail, which often leads to a lack of growth because we can’t take that chance.
Fear of success
The ultimate in not working in our best interests. If you succeed, you might be expected to do it again. That is understandably daunting. In this scenario, we’re forecasting what could happen before anything has happened at all – before we’re even successful the first time. So, we ‘hide our light under a bushel.’ Sound familiar credit unions? Because…
We often feel we might not be as good as we think we are. Or we aren’t anything special. Or if we just keep our heads down and do our work, no one will notice us. Squeaky wheels get the grease and we’re not going to make a single squeak, because what if we’re wrong? What if we’re not worthy? What if we’re not good enough?
We need to look at the facts and separate them from our feelings. The fact is credit unions – and I’m betting your individual credit union – are doing extraordinary work. SkyPoint FCU has been digging into its CDFI status to further expand its services, recently earning the credit union a $7 million investment from the Treasury Departments Emergency Capital Investment Program. American First Credit Union recently awarded $50,000 to the winner of its savings challenge, promoting thrift! Great Meadow FCU began offering high-yield checking accounts with no minimums and no monthly fees for its members. More than 20 credit unions when through the grueling process of becoming Community Development Financial Institutions, a certification that means they’re already living the people-helping-people philosophy and serving the underserved, but now they have access to more resources to reach more of our most financially vulnerable people. Separating the facts from our feelings about situations makes them more manageable because facts just exist and ground us.
I should conclude this post
Consider this: Run a war game with your credit union. Look at all the angles. How should your competitors come at your credit union? Role play the possibilities. That could create some fear. What are you going to do with it?