Insights
Leading with heart matters
Heart-based leadership rests on the passion to make a difference in people's lives while still delivering bottom-line results.
Heart-based leadership rests on the passion to make a difference in people’s lives while still delivering bottom-line results.
Heart-based leadership rests on the passion to make a difference in people’s lives while still delivering bottom-line results.
Leading change is an art. There is no exact formula for staying innovative while driving change across an organization. Even so, when a leader leads with heart, you can expect results that exceed expectations.
One example is Ray Davis, CEO of Umpqua Bank, whose exemplary leadership humanized the banking industry and eventually gave banking a human touch. He started by acquiring Umpqua, a small community bank with five branches based in Roseburg, Oregon. The bank was worth $20 million, with $140 million in assets. Today, its headquarters are in Portland, it has 300 branches across five states, and it holds $25 billion in assets, with a valuation of $4 billion.
Davis changed Umpqua’s culture to reflect a one-of-a-kind relationship with customers, repositioning the bank as “the world’s greatest bank.” He reinvented the dull, predictable banking experience with offerings that appealed to all five senses—organizing book clubs, running yoga classes, serving coffee and tea, and opening storefronts for local merchants. Umpqua branches became gathering places for local businesses and communities.
This gradual change was grounded in a single philosophy: leading with heart matters. Why? Because what changes is not the organization. It’s the people. And people have hearts.
According to Tommy Spaulding, author of The Heart-Led Leader: How Living and Leading From the Heart Will Change Your Organization and Your Life, and founder of Spaulding Companies, heart-based leadership rests on the passion to make a difference in people’s lives while still delivering bottom-line results. The logic is simple: the more people love what they do, the more money they make.
In the case of Ray Davis at Umpqua Bank, there are at least three lessons to draw.
First, start and sustain incremental change.
Great change is built from small changes. Multiple large changes reshape the entire organization and move it to the next level. Start by shifting mindset and philosophy—these must be established before external changes can follow in sequence. Umpqua Bank employees began answering the phone with “Thank you for calling the world’s greatest bank,” the first small change needed to set the rest in motion.
Second, treat human beings humanely.
The bank’s customers are human, and so are its employees. So create an environment where people can be themselves while enjoying what they do. Davis believed that banking culture could be changed, and he proved it simply by being human. When people are happy, they are more willing to spend—or, at least in this case, trust Umpqua enough to deposit their money there.
Third, it’s not about what you’re doing, but about who you’re being.
John Lennon once said, “It’s not about what you’re going to do, but about who you’re going to be.” By treating both customers and employees as living human beings, business activities flow more smoothly alongside everything else. Remember: happy customers are repeat customers.
In conclusion, while there is no formula for leading change, leading with heart may be the closest thing to one. In the end, we are all human beings who care about happiness and being ourselves. So when that realization is paired with a philosophy of leading with heart, revenue will follow.
____
Jose Ruiz is Chief Executive Officer and Managing Partner at Alder Koten.
Insights
Domains Of Competence: A Simple Way To Put The Right People On The Right Work
Clarity on the Domains of Competence helps leaders stop confusing present skill with future potential. By separating Ability, Capability, and Capacity, organizations can staff roles accurately, scale without losing coherence, and govern decisions across time horizons.
The Progression Of Meaningful Response: Sense-Making Before You Solve
A practical guide to Sense-Making as the first discipline in the Progression of Meaningful Response—aligning reality, meaning, frames, and solutions to execute with clarity across Levels of Work.
The Three Management Horizons: A Simple Way To Run Today And Build Tomorrow
The Management Horizon Framework helps executives align today’s performance, tomorrow’s transformation, and long-term Stewardship as one operating system. By mapping Levels of Work inside each horizon, leaders can match decision time span to role design, governance cadence, and accountability—so reliability, renewal, and identity reinforce each other.