PODCAST: Women’s leadership in CUs

Be clear. Be consistent. Be courageous.

To Stacey Hanke and Brandi Stankovic, these characteristics are key to developing and fostering leadership skills.

“It starts with getting comfortable with being uncomfortable,” says Hanke, leadership expert and founder of Stacey Hanke Inc.

As a leader, the optimal time to grow is when you are vulnerable, she says, and that builds trust and credibility with your teams.

Being uncomfortable means taking action and executing different concepts, adds Stankovic, senior partner at Mitchell Stankovic and Associates. “Get up. Get it going. Let’s make it happen right here,” she tells the CUNA News Podcast.

“If it were easy, everyone would be leaders,” Hanke says. “Anything rewarding is not easy.”

Stankovic concurs: “If you talk to any successful leader anywhere, it did not happen alone, and it did not happen without tremendous hardship.”

The two discussed discovering and developing a persona during the Women’s Leadership Workshop held in conjunction with the CUNA America’s Credit Union Conference.

Stankovic realized that her brand was affected by online components. “People are walking into a room with a thought of what they found digitally before I had a chance to create the experience,” she says.

Hanke notes that even in email, your reputation enters your readers’ inbox before you even hit the send button.