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Thought Leadership From Childhood Lessons | Dr. Troy Hall
Thought leadership From Childhood Lessons.
An interview with Dr. Troy Hall about the lessons learned from his mother that later became a book and his work at a major credit union.
Today’s guest is Dr. Troy Hall Chief Strategy Officer for South Carolina Federal Credit Union, and the lead consultant for SCF Solutions, LLC. He is the best-selling author of Cohesion Culture and his newest release Fanny Rules.
Troy shares the heartwarming story of his mother’s leadership that makes up the lessons that in his book Fanny Rules. He explains how these childhood lessons are suitable for both the home and office.
We discuss how Troy has developed the consulting and executive coaching division for South Carolina Federal Credit Union. Troy reveals how that position allows him to work with leaders who want to grow, advance, and develop while focusing on the internal culture of their organization.
Finally, Troy gives advice for burgeoning thought leaders. He shares how if you believe something you have to speak it and become your truth now not someday.
Three Key Takeaways from the Interview
- The earliest lessons in our life can become the basis for our thought leadership.
- Developing thought leadership for an organization requires trust that both sides are working towards the same goals.
- Transformational leadership involves focusing on the needs of others before yourself.
If you need a strategy to bring your thought leadership to market, Thought Leadership Leverage can assist you! Contact us for more information. In addition, we can help you implement marketing, research, sales and other aspects so you can devote yourself to what you do best.
Transcript
Peter Winick And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. And you’re joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Dr. Troy. Dr. Troy is the author of the bestselling title Cohesion Culture Proven Principles to Retain Your Top Talent. He’s coauthor of the best new released Mission Matters. World’s leading entrepreneurs reveal their Top Tips for Success and his upcoming 2021 release, Fannie Rule’s Nine Lessons Behind the Making of a Leader. So before we dive in, any more of other highlights is Dr. Troy has been on the Today Show, on business radio show, a bunch of other places, and he has been a global leadership and entrepreneurship expert for quite some time. So I’m excited to have you on today.
Dr. Troy Hall So thank you. Thanks. It’s great to be here.
Peter Winick Thanks. So you and I were chatting a while ago, were not that long ago about the new book, which was really interesting to me because it gives you got into your backstory and your whole history. So tell me the fanny story and your growing up and how all this came to be because it was really, really warming story.
Dr. Troy Hall Well, great. Thanks for that opportunity. So the book, Fannie Rules Nine Lessons Behind the Making of a Leader is a tribute to my mother’s leadership and the leaving a legacy of what she provided to me. So I grew up in a small rural town in West Virginia that at one time had had a little bit of activity around coal mining. And then when the coal mining industry tended to dwindle, so did the town and the jobs and the opportunities. I was from a very poor family. We barely had two nickels, so rubbing anything together would not necessarily be.
Peter Winick There’s nothing to rub your name in. You aspired to have the two nickels to rub, right?
Dr. Troy Hall Exactly. And so in that concept, what I mean and by the way, I still have friends and people back in my hometown, but the nature of what it was 50 some years ago was basically about 60 years ago was that and there was little opportunity for commerce. Education was not prevalent. As a matter of fact, there were no schools in our local town. Those who got any schooling were bussed somewhere between 45 minutes to an hour away. There was limited commerce. I think there was a gas station in the area and it sold some groceries. So you had that kind of thing, but you had to go 35 to 45 minutes away for you to have any kind of a big city experience. So health care and all of that. So when I was 12, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. And for us then living in that environment, we basically thought mom was going to die because 50 years ago what happened is most people who had a prognosis of cancer didn’t have a great rate of survival. So, so much work has been done, obviously, between mom and dad. So my sister, nine years older, had already moved away and moved out of the town, moved out of the area. She kind of was a little bit at that particular time. She was pursuing her own life and so therefore, she didn’t have any connection with our life during that time. I was the oldest, my brother, three years younger. And so what happened is friends took my brother so that I could focus at 12 and help mom with what needed to occur at home to prepare for what might eventually be her death.
Peter Winick And a lot of responsibility for a 12 year old at 12.
Dr. Troy Hall Right. So in that so mom and dad made the decision to hold off mom’s surgery until school was out. But from like December, January until the school was out, like around in May, because at that time, schools didn’t go cleared or June. It was sometime in May, school was out. And mom prepped me by even giving me more responsibility. So I learned how to clean. I learned how to write my first check and balance a checkbook. I learned how to really get up to an alarm and make sure that I was packing Dad’s lunch and getting him off and about. My mom and dad always spent from 6:00 in the morning until 10 to 7 that 15 minutes at the kitchen table actually discussing their what they what life and what they were going to do with those types of things. So mom wanted the experience for dad to be uninterrupted. Sure. And I remember as a small child hearing those voices, sometimes when I wake up in the morning, you hear the voices and it was like, Wow, I’m getting in behind the curtain, you know, to do this.
Peter Winick The adult table to the big.
Dr. Troy Hall Sort of adult. Yeah, kind of grown up. And I go from the little table to the big table, but certainly didn’t want to have to do it because of the fact that she applauded. So with all of those activities, learned how to do that so that I could really handle the household. Mom made a very critical choice. What she her choice was that she was not going to be defined by circumstance, but that she would be defined by the choices. So her character is defined by choices, not circumstance. And so she chose to be a person who was not going to whittle away and just die. She wasn’t just going to go out without a fight. She was going to go down tooth and nail to make sure that I had as much knowledge and information that I could pass along to my brother and support my dad because she was going to count on me, every person left over.
Peter Winick So that’s forward, though. 45 years, whatever it’s been since that time. And now so you’ve written other books. Your thought? Leader one Right. You’re. You’re an expert in global leadership and entrepreneurship. And now it all sort of comes full circle to say, actually, what mom taught, because you probably weren’t using words like leadership, development, accountability, you know, responsibility, effective communication. But all these things like how did how does that come full circle to your. Actually, I was in the hippo program in my house. Right.
Dr. Troy Hall Right. Well, that’s what I mean. Like, we were we were practicing cohesion. I didn’t know that was the term. And again, it was all based on how you treat people. And all those great leadership things you have. So the leadership attributes that are part of the Cohesion culture book, but then also, you know, filter into the fanny rules. So the Fanny Rules book is written around teachable moments. And I made I created rules because I sort of felt that although not everyone has a great relationship in their families, always with their parents, most people do. Most people have a good relationship. And so sometimes for me it was like, so how did this person miss any of the teachings that their parents may have given you? So and I want to also just say this as a disclaimer upfront. I had a great relationship with my mom and dad, both of them. And so and my brother, when I explained to him about writing this book, he said, don’t leave that out. I said, Well, I promise you dad won’t be left out, but the book is going to be about mom’s leadership because she was the nurturer and the caregiver and the educator Dad was the protector and provider. So there is a chapter in the book called Stepladder Space Pants and Honking Horns. And dad’s section is space pants. So that one was dedicated just to him. So he’s the audience tease you a little bit. But, you know, when you kind of get an opportunity for the book and kind of read it. But all of this coming full circle, all based from this perspective, mom said you can be anything you want to be, just be the best at it. She said we were poor, but that is a condition of the pocketbook, not the heart nor the brain. So you can so you have to decide what you want to be and make those choices of. Accordingly. You don’t get permission to not be successful because you have been somehow feel like you’ve been destined to some something less than the greatness that you want.
Peter Winick Well, that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you’re enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you’d like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave us a review and share it with your friends. We’re available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps as well as at Thought Leadership Leverage dot com. Forward slash podcasts. I want to I want to transition for a moment to you know, we’ve talked about the content and the backstory and how it all ties together. Tell us a little bit about sort of the business model, because you have a little bit of a unique or nontraditional sort of business model, if you will. Right. You’re not the traditional out there keynoting and all that sort of stuff. So tell us about sort of the business world or the business models that are underlying Dr. Tori World.
Dr. Troy Hall Sure. So I am currently the chief strategy officer for South Carolina Federal Credit Union, where a $2.2 billion financial cooperative headquartered in Charleston, South Carolina. But we serve in the five major markets within the state. And so we have a subsidiary. So the good news is, as you know, in most companies, you have a parent company and you can have a subsidiary. And in our subsidiary, I run the consulting and executive coaching division. And so I have this opportunity to work with people. And because of my affiliation with the World Council of Credit Unions, the National Credit Union Foundation and others. And because my Ph.D. is global leadership in entrepreneurship, I put that to work. And so I have this unique opportunity to work with people around the globe to do this. And I do this for hire. So I have clients that I do salting work on specifically about culture and leadership strategy and change. So I do executive coaching with individuals to help them. I work for leaders who want to advance and want to grow and develop while at the same time are focusing on the internal culture of the organizations in which they live. And so for that, my opportunity here is to inspire leaders to build occasion where people have a sense of belonging, are valued and share in mutual commitment.
Peter Winick So that’s what’s fascinating about that from a from a model perspective is typically and this is atypical in a good way, someone with your background could hang their shingle and say, I’m going to be a consultant and do the type of things that I do. I could go work in a consultancy and do the type of things I do, the traditional development type consultancies or academia. But you’re sort of this interesting business unit embedded inside of a financial institution for credit union. So it’s unusual, but it’s not that unusual. So it’s pretty cool that you’ve got the mothership and you also have the freedom to do the type of work that’s really cool consulting work. And obviously I’m sure you’re helped a pal and all the fun stuff that the rest of us are. How did that did you start that role in the organization or how did that evolve? Because I think there are a lot of people sitting in an organization going, Jeez, I got to make a choice, or I think I have to make a choice. I got to go hang my own shingle or go work for a consulting firm. But you’ve got this there’s third path, which is, wait, maybe you can do it in the place That seems not obvious.
Dr. Troy Hall Right? And I will say this. It’s not always fun to run your own company and have all the burdens and the headaches that come along with you having to, you know, gain the capital, do the payroll, do all that.
Peter Winick I mean, there’s a lot there’s a lot of pieces of it that aren’t what we signed up for in terms of exactly.
Dr. Troy Hall And we don’t.
Peter Winick Payroll compliant and all that stuff.
Dr. Troy Hall So for me work so realistically how to do it is it’s really it’s all about strategy, right? And it’s about scalability. And so it’s an opportunity to say, well, what do you want to do and look at the options that are available to you. You’re right. I could have left the organization and said, I can go. I have a very strong social media following. I build all that up. I mean, I could go out on my own today, but the question for me was, why isn’t wouldn’t there be another opportunity? And so, again, most organizations can create a subsidiary and they could run that through. So there isn’t one person listening out there who couldn’t make this happen for themselves. What you have to be comfortable with is this is that you have to agree on a salary. This is the best way for it to work. You agree on a salary, so I get paid a salary regardless of what business I work, but I work the business to meet goals and objectives and desired outcomes of the organization and what we agreed to, which is no different than what happens in any organization where a person gets paid, they have sales goals or they have whatever, we just work out, what does that look like? And then I work to make that happen. And a four.
Peter Winick Year entity though. So I so I love that for you because that makes total sense for the entity other than and maybe it’s own. I would think there might be two reasons they would agree to allow this type of a practice to flourish inside in a nontraditional way. One would be, Wow, it’s such a moneymaker that how would we say no to it? The other is, yes, it is profitable, you know, but it’s a differentiator. We’re providing incredible value to our client base that enables them to grow, which helps us grow. How does the if I were to ask the powers that be or the board or whatever their how would what would they say? Like the reasons that we do what we do dot dot.
Dr. Troy Hall Well for a large part of it is trust. So the organization trusts that I’m not out to just gain it for myself, but that I am truly thinking of both of us. And so I subscribe to and what I promote within all of my books is transformational leadership and transformational Leader says that I will focus on the needs of others and then handle self. I don’t leave self out. I just handle the focus versus on others. So for me, I the servant leadership part, it’s my. Yes. And this organization has been great for me. And so why not do this? And here’s the other thing that happens. What you would also do, I would recommend, is that you create this brand that you can then take with you when you do choose to exit. So for me, it was very easy because within the next 3 to 4 years, I’m not going to be working in a traditional company anyway. So it’s kind of like my exit strategy. So if you kind of think about it from a thought perspective and go, Wow, what would be the stars that have to line up, first of all, 40 years of working in it, you know, within the financial services industry. So you’ve got that background of 25 years plus in the C-suite, 15 dedicated years to an organization where they have seen time and time again you giving to the organization in the organization when they give back to you and you want to stay there and you want to be a part of that, then those are some of the things that align to make this model actually work. But I also say to that, if you don’t have some of those things, I never give up. What I coach and teach people to do is look, what are your goals, dreams and aspirations? And you have to work toward that, right? Because the reality is this you will never be a victor of your future if you’re held captive by your past. I would never have had the opportunity to have had a degree in business, an MBA and a Ph.D. if I would have said that my past, which was living in a town where I was poor and had limited opportunities and said that was my future. But no. The mom helped me do. Which is why her legacy is so important, is to say, you can go beyond that. You are your own limitation to the things that actually happen. And so for me, even if you don’t have the perfect stars that align, there are great conversations. You can have to align those stars. And sometimes it’s the actions you need to take to align those stars. And they will not happen with what you knew before. They have to be on what you’re going to experience now and what you are going to be open to get there. And one of the things that I teach in all of this is you don’t have to know everything. It just need to be teachable. And when the leader is teachable, the leader’s mind opens up to new possibilities and new things, and they’re not restricted. You can be teachable. You start to embody what I call a learning organization. And Peter Sage in the 1990s talked about that. I think it’s about being generative. Will I regenerate myself? Do I take knowledge and hoard it? Or do I take knowledge and apply it? And when you take knowledge and apply it, you then create wisdom. Up until then, it’s just.
Peter Winick Knowledge, transformative and an individual level, the team level and an organizational level. So of course we wrap here. Troy, any last thoughts or I mean, not only an amazing story, but incredibly inspirational as well. And any last spots, the folks that are out there specifically in a situation like you are maybe in a nontraditional home, having that itch to sort of take it to the next level. Any advice or counsel?
Dr. Troy Hall Well, I guess I basically say that I’ve been told I’m a sound bite waiting to happen. So I wouldn’t say this to, you know, pressures that those that we’re listening is this is that if what if you want something to speak it. So part of what I teach and part of what I coach is the truth is in the I am not the someday I will be saying you declared today what it is that you want and you put it out there in the present tense because to get to your future occurs from your present, not from your past. And so I would say speak life to it and how you incorporate your life. I have a very positive attitude. As a matter of fact, I’ve written an article that my life is a postcard and I don’t make any apologies for it because it’s how I build my life. Everything I speak contributes to the positive and the forward moving that if I spoke negativity and down words in and not really saying that I’m good enough, and even though I’m still learning, I get I know that I don’t know everything, but I’m in it in a mindset going, no, I’m moving forward and I’m going to have thought leaders around me, I’m going to do something I call influence thinking that I cover in the book, which deals with your mind and the influence of trusted voices and also the actions that you take. So I would just say that’s what you want to do. Claim it today. If this is something you want, say I am going to be independent but a part of a bigger company. And that’s the Im statement. And you don’t wait until the someday that the perfect opportunity happens because the pursuit is in performance, not perfection.
Peter Winick Let me get a couple of sound bites there. I told you last night. So thank you so much for your time today. Troy. This has been amazing and thank you for sharing your story, your journey, and best of luck with any role.
Dr. Troy Hall So thank you. Thanks, Peter. Thank you.
Peter Winick To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. To reach me directly. Feel free to email me at Peter at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.