4 minutes
The Credit Union Leadership Challenge of Our Time
To say the credit union industry is experiencing rapid change is an understatement. Between shifting member expectations, accelerated digital transformation, growing regulatory scrutiny, and ongoing challenges to preserve credit unions’ tax-exempt status, leaders are navigating more complexity than ever before. While the industry has always faced challenges, the need for strong, modern leadership has never been more urgent.
As new generations have entered the workforce over the past few decades, evolving employee expectations and values have raised the bar for leaders—requiring a higher level of emotional intelligence skills, a stronger focus on relationships and connection, and a more advanced set of competencies than were required in the past. While the need to evolve from transactional management to a more relational, modern leadership approach has been building for some time, it is now more urgent than ever.
The rapid pace of change, rising employee expectations, technological disruption, and increasing demands for flexibility, purpose, and wellbeing have transformed the workplace. Today, modern leadership isn’t just a competitive advantage, it’s a business imperative. Organizations that fail to elevate their leadership approach risk not only falling behind but struggling to survive.
To compete and thrive in today’s environment, credit unions must not only have the agility to navigate complexity and change with confidence, but also cultivate high-performing leaders equipped with advanced skills to lead effectively in a landscape that demands more from leaders than ever before.
Despite these challenges and ongoing uncertainty, the credit union industry has a powerful opportunity to show up as a trusted, solid financial partner. As not-for-profit, member-focused organizations, credit unions are uniquely positioned to provide critical support during difficult times and offer stability, trusted guidance, and personalized service when people need it most.
But we can only succeed with leaders who have the advanced skills to think strategically, communicate effectively, navigate change, and foster high performance through engagement.
Amid so much change and complexity, leading successfully as a manager today requires embracing new mindsets and evolving your approach. Here are four important focuses for managing effectively in today’s environment:
1. Shift from Managing Tasks to Coaching People
Today’s managers must go beyond delegating and supervising—they need to actively coach employees to develop skills, critical thinking, and confidence. Exceptional managers focus on coaching, asking powerful questions, and empowering employees to solve problems and own outcomes, rather than being the fixer or bottleneck. In short, managers need to shift from fixing issues to facilitating results.
2. Build Connection and Trust to Create a Thriving Team
Employees today want more than direction, they want to feel valued, heard, and supported. Exceptional managers intentionally build trust, create psychological safety, and prioritize meaningful connections with their teams. This is especially critical in hybrid and remote environments, where connection doesn’t happen by default. In addition, managers need to develop employees intentionally. A manager’s main focus areas should be creating clarity, caretaking the culture, and facilitating results.
3. Stay Agile and Lead Through Uncertainty
The pace of change requires managers to adapt quickly and guide their teams through ambiguity. Exceptional managers stay flexible, communicate transparently (even without all the answers), and help their teams pivot without losing focus or morale. Managers must be equipped to guide their teams through continuous change, shifting the narrative from seeing change as a temporary disruption to understanding it as a constant and essential part of growth and progress.
4. Align Daily Work with Purpose and Strategy
In a complex environment, managers must help employees see how their work connects to the credit union’s mission, strategy, and member impact. Exceptional managers continually connect the dots between day-to-day responsibilities and the bigger picture, reinforcing meaning and direction in the work. Regularly communicating organizational goals during team meetings, providing context when assigning tasks or projects, and creating structures to facilitate results are important elements for ensuring the team’s work is making an impact. By weaving purpose and impact into everyday conversations, managers foster greater engagement, ownership, and clarity to ensure employees understand not just what they do, but why it matters.
In today’s fast-changing environment, strong, forward-thinking leadership is no longer optional, it’s essential. Credit unions that prioritize developing skilled, agile leaders will be best positioned to navigate complexity, engage their teams, and deliver meaningful impact to their members. By investing in leadership growth and fostering cultures of accountability, adaptability, and purpose, credit unions can not only meet today’s challenges, but emerge stronger and more resilient for the future.
The strength of the credit union movement begins with leadership, and now is the time to revolutionize leadership practices for a stronger future.
Laurie Maddalena, MBA, CSP, CPCC, is a professional speaker, leadership consultant and founder of CUES Supplier member Envision Excellence LLC in the Washington, D.C., area. Her mission is to rid the world of bad management practices and help organizations create cultures where people love to come to work. Maddalena facilitates management and executive training programs and team-building sessions and speaks at leadership events. Prior to starting her business, she was a human resources and organizational development executive at a credit union in Maryland. Contact her at 240.605.7940 or laurie@lauriemaddalena.com
