John M. Turner, President and CEO of Regions Financial Corporation | Terry Leadership Speaker Series

You know, I would say I read a lot of things. I'm not sure that I could point to any particular book that I have read in the past that would have impacted my career necessarily. Mostly what I have learned over time is from working with other people, and so we'll talk maybe a little bit about mentoring and the importance of people that you work with. I think reading and learning and trying to develop your knowledge throughout your career is really important, so there's a variety of ways to do that and I encourage you to read everything that you can. I've picked up a new book I'll have to tell you, haven't read it yet, called 'FAQfulness'? Actually, was at a dinner with Jamie Dimon and it's one of the things that he has recently read. I read that Bill Gates also read it sometime in the last six months. I think it has to be worth reading, we'll see.

So I was my parents were divorced when I was very young. I was raised by a single mother who coincidentally as a bank teller ended up becoming a CPA and running a big medical practice. So I was influenced early on by my grandmother, who had a very important role in my life. She was a very positive, outgoing person, she met people easily, and I remember her saying to me, amongst many other things, 'People like to hear their name.' And so as I began to develop my career in the service business, one of the things that I remember from her was that people do in fact like to hear their name, and that's a really descriptor of how you might engage with others. My father-in-law was somebody that had an impact on me. He had a great amount of horse sense, he was very thoughtful, he was very balanced, and was a great, great leader. And then I'd say throughout my career that I've been associated with three or four people who really took an interest in me. And when I think about young people developing a career, and we talked about this a little earlier this morning, I think it's really important that you associate yourself with people that you like to work with, you associate yourself with people that are going to take an interest in you. It's about, I often say, it's about the team you're on that really will define your career and how you develop. And so I would encourage all of you as you begin to go to work to find the right team, find the right people to work with, and if you work hard and they're invested in you, it will really have, I think, great results. It certainly has for me.

I went to work one summer, actually the summer after my sophomore year, for Trust Company Bank. I was hired to be a bank teller. Went to work on a Monday morning and they were short-handed on what we then called the platform, that was where we opened accounts and greeted customers. And so I was put behind a desk and my job was to try to understand what the customer's particular service need was, and I ended up from there learning how to open accounts, learning how to take loan applications, and by the end of that summer I was filling in as a sort of assistant branch manager of sorts. I never worked behind the teller line. They hired me back that Christmas and the following summer, and so that was how I got started in banking and learned that I liked it. I liked the service aspect of it, I liked the variety of kinds of things that I got to do, loved helping customers, working with customers every day, and so that really intrigued me. In 1983, as they got ready to leave school, they offered me a job and I was excited to have that opportunity and have not looked back since.

Well, I think and we talk a lot about this at Regions. Honesty, integrity, trust are really important. Leaders need to be authentic. I think leaders need to be humble. It's important leaders be good listeners and good communicators. Often when asked what I think is the greatest skill a leader can have, it is to be a good listener, and I think that's true about lots of aspects of our life. But in terms of values for our company, honesty, integrity, trust, put people first, and do what's right. And not only do what's right, but do the right thing the right way. It's not enough to end up with the right result if you didn't get there the right way, and we think that's really, really important.

Probably during the Great Recession, I would say. I mean, over the course of your career you encounter different periods of time where you have challenges, you are in situations where you really have to lean back on your values. During the Great Recession it was a chaotic time to be in the business. Most of you were quite a bit younger, and so you may have seen that through your parents' eyes, but to be in the business was challenging. And so that caused me to have to rely on my values, oftentimes making judgments about just what we would or wouldn't do. I think, you know, it's certainly a period of time as a CEO of the company. You know, I try to make as few decisions as possible, and that may sound strange, but when you become CEO, one of the things you learn is that you really can't run the business. You have too many other roles and responsibilities to operate the business every day, and so you really try not to have to make decisions. And so when you're called on to make a decision, they're usually pretty meaningful, they're pretty important. And I think it's as a result of that, the decisions you make impact the company oftentimes very broadly, they impact people that you work with, and so it's important that you make values-based decisions. And so I'm oftentimes falling back on, if I put people first, you know, what's the right decision to make here?

Yeah, I think two aspects of leading a company I found to be challenging: delegation is one, and the other is influence. You know, how do you, you can't always order people to do something, you can't always tell people to do something, or sometimes you can, but it may not be the best way to get something accomplished. So how do you influence others to do the things that you would like them to do? And I think between delegation and influence, those are two important skills that we all can learn and continue to develop, even in my role it's important for me to do what...

Well, you know, I think to be successful in business, you have to be a hard worker, you have to be able to work well with others. It's an important skill, and I suspect that many of you get an opportunity to work on teams and so you see how teams work and interact. As we think about hiring young people to come to work in our company, our questions often are: Have they demonstrated they're a hard worker? Have they demonstrated that they can work well with others? Do they meet people easily? And I think those are attributes that I've long had, tried to stay in the moment, so always focus on the job at hand, do it the best that I can do it, and surround myself with people that I like working with and that have an interest in me, and then work well with them. And I believe those are the things that I've done over time to give me the opportunity. Then you have to have a little luck, you know, things have to sort of go your way. I was working at Whitney Bank in December of 2010, I was the president to be the CEO at some point in the future most likely, and the bank sold. So I was 49 years old with four children, and the path that I thought I was going to take suddenly changed. In June of 2011 we sold the bank, and I was lucky enough to go to work at Regions, but it was still an uncertain time. There was no guarantee that I would get what sort of opportunity I might get when I went to Regions. I just knew it was a good company with a strong brand, and it was well thought of, it was important to the communities it served, that was important to me. And I was lucky to have, in my judgment, to have that opportunity at that period of time, and obviously that's turned out pretty well.

I got to work with Bill Lee and felt lucky. Yeah.

Yeah, I think thinking about that and just advice that I might give all of you: you find yourself in different situations as a leader. Each of you probably in your careers, as you work, will get a chance to manage people that are older than you are, that are more experienced than you are. You'll get an opportunity to manage things that you don't know anything about. In 2014 I was asked to lead our capital markets business and our corporate banking business, including our investor real estate portfolio, and quite a bit of that I didn't know anything about. The particular aspects of the business I understood very broadly, but I didn't know it technically. So I was leading people that knew their business very well and I didn't. And I think those are real challenges. But the way that I've chosen to lead through that, and I think successfully, is to come back to this notion of being authentic, being humble, acknowledge what you don't know, and be a good listener. Give those people that you're leading an opportunity to tell you what they know and how they do it, and figure out how you can support them to achieve the things that they would like to accomplish. And if you do that, I think you can overcome what is a pretty intimidating obstacle when you set out to try to lead a group that is more experienced, more knowledgeable, that may be doing something you just don't know much about. That makes a lot of sense.

Well, I followed my predecessor, Grayson Hall, who did a great job leading our company through the financial crisis during a really challenging time. And his leadership style, very humble, servant leader. I often say the strength of our culture is a reflection of his character, and I believe that. We've got a very strong culture founded on honesty, integrity, and trust. We are very focused on people, and that was Grayson's tape. And so I was very honored, and very honored today to lead a team of 20,000 associates who are committed to doing a great job taking care of our customers and continuing to build a really great company. But also acknowledge the significant responsibility that I had as CEO in leading that 20,000 people and their families depend on, and over 4 million customers depend on. So it was sort of a wild moment for me, you know, as well.

Well, people again. I think we have a great team. I often say our plan is not very complicated. Our industry is changing a lot. Technology is impacting our business at an ever-increasing rate. If I asked how many of you have written a check in the last six months, I bet there are not very many people going to raise their hand. They're probably all right down here in the front. So as we think about our business, how do we continue to invest in technology and at the same time acknowledge that the business is still about people? It's still about providing advice and guidance to customers. Over 55, almost 56 percent of our customers still come to a branch every 30 days, and yet we have customers who are increasingly using the bank in a variety of different ways: the mobile application, the online application, they call the call center, they use an ATM. How do we balance all that? And it is those opportunities to invest in technology, to continue to grow and develop the business while still remaining focused on people that really excites me. And we think we have a really, really solid plan and a great opportunity to deliver nice returns for our shareholders. So those are some of the goals you have for Regions moving forward.

Well, I'd like to leave the company better than I found it. I have a desire for Regions to be thought of as a great bank. That means being really good risk managers, that means being good focused on taking care of customers. I also want to be thought of as a CEO who was a great steward of the company and who invested in people. Again, I think our ability to recruit, retain, coach, motivate, and develop people is really important. So we've done a number of things over the last now nine months: increasing our starting wage, increasing our 401k match, improving our family leave policy, all oriented toward investing in people and human capital. And you know, I'd like to be thought of as a leader who continued the legacy of my predecessor and built a company that was people-centered and did a great job of taking care of customers.

Well, I have those almost every day. I get to see, yesterday I had a chance to call on two customers here in Athens. I got to have dinner with our bankers from Athens and Gainesville in Northeast Georgia area. And it is about the team, it is about the people. It's the letters that I get from customers complimenting our associates on the quality of the work they do. It's seeing our associates thrive in their jobs and serve customers, seeing them get gratification from what they do. That I enjoy the most. I draw my energy from people, from customers, from associates, and so that's what most excites me.

Hope to make tiny first of all, no. I think the 'put people first' notion and being very people and customer-centered is the way I want to be thought of as a leader. I certainly also want to be thought of as a leader who was really grounded in the values of honesty, integrity, stewardship, a servant leader. I think that's how I'd like to be remembered.

Well, it's an exciting time, and you know, I think I was asked earlier this morning what was my experience leaving the university and going to work. And I had had the benefit, as many of you have, of having an internship of sorts, so I had some idea of where I was going to work, who I was going to work with, and that was helpful. But I quickly learned all the things that I didn't know when I got into the workplace. And my advice would be the same as I've mentioned earlier: it is just to work hard and to stay in the moment. I think sometimes we get a little ahead of ourselves looking for the next opportunity when if we'll just work hard and work with people that we like doing something we like, working with people that we think have an interest in us, and work hard at it, then I'll be amazed at the doors that will open over time. It really is about being around the right team, with the right team who have the same values that you do and have an interest in you, and enjoy it. I think it's a great time of life and it goes by awfully fast. It's hard for me to imagine, though I have to face the reality of the fact that it's been, I guess, 40 years since I was here as a freshman, which is really incredible.

It's amazing. You know, the quality of the programs, the faculty, the facilities are just tremendous. I walked around campus. I've been on campus one time in the last three or four years, but before that had been a very long time since I've been back to campus, and it's just awed by all that's been accomplished. We actually employ right at a hundred people at Regions who have graduated from the University of Georgia. I'd like to make it two hundred and three hundred. So the great, they do a great job. Students do, or graduates, and they range from all ages. Bill might be the oldest, I'm not sure, I'd be second oldest. So anyway, but it's phenomenal what's going on here and the quality of the programs. Terry really enjoyed this morning getting to learn a little bit more about ILA and the impact that students have on the program.

No, you know, companies have to grow to be successful, and I do see us continuing to grow. We operate across fifteen states in the Southeast and Midwest. The bulk of our business is in seven states in the Southeast and Texas: Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas is where the bulk of our business is. And we'll continue to build that business out. We're a full-service bank, we offer all the capabilities that the largest banks do, but we think we deliver them with the same feel and touch that a smaller bank does. We call that our Regions 360 needs-based approach to banking, very focused on meeting customer needs and working together as a team. And we have a great recipe to continue to grow our business over time.

Sure, happy to. Go back to the Great Recession. Sort of out of that financial crisis, people were wondering if you're working at Regions, how are we doing? It's a difficult time. And so we asked customers, we asked our bankers first to focus on customer service, because you want to, in a crisis, ambiguity is very difficult to deal with, and you want to give your team something to do that is tangible that they can focus on. And for us that was customer service. So as we began to come out of the crisis, we saw sort of an evolving picture around where the industry was headed. We thought it was important, rather than to focus on pushing product, to talk about meeting customer needs. We didn't want to sell a product to a customer that they didn't need, want, and understand. And so we developed this concept of Regions 360, which was a needs-based approach to banking. We encouraged our teams to work together, so every customer has a banker, and the banker is encouraged to team with others around the bank to show the whole bank to the customer. So if they have a wealth need or they have a business need, or if their business has a cash management need, how do we provide that entire bank to the customer and do it in a way that is seamless so that we come across as one team working well together? And that's evolved over the last five or six years, and I think the way that we team together today and focus on meeting customer needs is a real differentiator for Regions.

Well, the bike was so AmSouth and Regions merged in 2007, and we had to think about how do we, one bank was sort of a forest green and one bank was a blue, and we needed to come up with a new color. We decided to keep one name, which was Regions, and we needed to come up with an image that sort of conveyed what we thought was freedom and sort of a lighthearted approach. Sometimes we bankers take ourselves too seriously, and so this was the image that we came up with to brand Regions. And I think it's been pretty successful. So we're going to give away a bike today at some point to one lucky participant, and hope whoever wins it will enjoy it. It's definitely our most popular giveaway.

Well, you know, again I mentioned being humble, being authentic, focusing on others, being a good listener. I think all those things are important. And you know, throughout our career we should enjoy ourselves. We should be doing something we like, we should be doing it with people that we like, and I think never taking ourselves too seriously is important. Absolutely have to be able to laugh at yourself from time to time. I have a lot of opportunity to laugh at me.

You know, I hate to repeat the same thing I've said, but I don't think it's very complicated. It is about how well you work with others and how easily you meet people, how genuine and authentic you are, and it's about working hard. So you know, getting into the environment you're in, figure out what your role and responsibility is, work hard to build relationships with others. I think you don't want to resist the temptation to be competing with a teammate, and instead just do the job well that you're asked to do, always look for other opportunities to take on responsibilities as they present themselves, and be a good teammate. And if you're a good teammate, I think whoever you're working with will likely recognize that, and you'll see your career develop and advance.

Well, you know, I think as you, one of the things that we take a lot of pride in at our company is how well we work together and how well we team together. And before being made CEO, I had six co-workers. We all had very important responsibilities. In other companies I've seen sometimes those positions begin to sort of compete with each other for resources, for talent, for time, for the CEO's attention. And we have just resisted that. And I think one of the things that makes Regions' culture all the way down through the organization so compelling is that at the top of the organization, everybody works well together. We listen to each other, we challenge one another respectfully, which is really important to challenge but also to do it respectfully. And then we come to decisions that move the company forward, and then importantly we hold each other accountable for whatever it is we decided to do. And I think that respect that exists has been really key to our company and to my career. I have always sought to try to understand the other person's position and perspective and to respect that as long as they were conducting themselves in an appropriate manner. But I think that is, I don't know that I have a specific example for you, I think we actually confront that every day in the way that we operate.

I think culture is huge. We spend a ton of time on culture and think it is really, really important. Our culture, we have a concept we call shared value, which is this idea that business is only done well when all parties benefit: our customers, our shareholders, our communities, and our associates. If we're in a transaction and one of those parties is negatively impacted in some way, then it's not a good transaction, it's not good business. And that idea of shared value, of creating shared value, of doing what's right and doing it the right way, have been really important to us. The idea of honesty, integrity, and trust is earned and shared by everybody on the team. And if you lose trust, somebody once described it: think about trust as a glass of water. When you pour it out, it's all gone, and you have to earn it back really a drop at a time. Trust is hard earned and easily lost, and so for us it's a really important aspect of our culture.

I think you'll have opportunities to take shortcuts in your work. Don't. You'll have opportunities to do things that are hard and you might not do them fully or completely. Don't. I think again, go to work, work hard, work well with others, be respectful, and you'll earn your co-workers' trust.

We're so, we're very focused on communities. It's a great question. I'd say there are some differences but there are also some real similarities. So the differences are in small communities, you're really often really important to those small communities. Your customers are very visible typically. There are only a few banks in a community, and so what you do there impacts the economic health of those communities. Typically those customers in those communities like to come into the bank. They're oftentimes less technology savvy. We find on the other hand, they still want a relationship. And what we find in larger cities is, while they're more dense and more customers are using technology, they still also want to have a relationship with a banker when there's something important in their life, whether to get a mortgage or someone in their family passed away and they have to open an estate, or maybe it's the first time they're opening a checking account. They still want to have a relationship with a bank or a branch. For reasons we believe every community is important. We do business across a very diverse, we're at 173 distinct MSAs and 90 counties that don't have an MSA across our 15-state footprint. So it's a very diverse, broad geography. We believe every community is important, and so we're focused on how do we continue to improve the health and welfare of those communities because we believe our business can only be as good as the economic health of the communities that we serve. If we're in a community and it's not doing well, then our business is probably not doing well either. And so we're continually focused on communities.

You know, I guess I've always been a people person. I think I got that from my grandmother earlier. I think my mother by contrast is very shy, and my grandmother was not. And so that sort of outgoing nature was a natural skill or a natural attribute that I had. I've always drawn energy from people and from working with people. And so I guess I have an advantage in my business in that way. And because I've known that, that's what I've leaned into. Now other people have different skills and they lean into those skills and try to optimize those to help their business. For me, it's just always been something I've enjoyed to do. So whether it was in high school being active leading a sports team or being involved in some sort of organization, or in college being active in my fraternity or in an organization on campus, and then when I went to work, I've always sought leadership opportunities because I enjoyed working with people. Thank you.

Oh, you know, I'm not great, that's not a great answer I'm afraid. I do like to read but I'm not very well-read, I should say. And you know, I think there are just a world of books that you can read and experiences you can have, and all of those continue to add to your knowledge base and help develop your thinking. And your style will evolve over time. So what you believe today will probably be true thirty years from now, but it will be enhanced and broadened and evolve as you go through your career, and you'll have a lot of opportunities to read things. I'm afraid there are no panaceas.

Yeah, great question. You know, I think it's really important to understand if you're a leader, it's important to set expectations and to consistently provide unemotional feedback to your team. One of the things that you find is different people need different levels of feedback, want different levels of feedback. But being able to set clear expectations and then give candid and constructive feedback in an unemotional way is a real important trait for a leader. So as a leader, as you think about your career, I encourage you to think about that concept. The unemotional part and candid is really important. I think if you're going to work, what you really want to understand is what are the expectations, what does your leader expect of you every day, and how are they going to evaluate your performance. And then amongst your teammates, again, it's important to be able to address issues by giving some candid feedback to whoever it is that you may be working with that's a disruption on the team, but to do it again in an unemotional way, which is the hardest part.

Yes, so you know, effective teams have lots of different skills. One of the things that we've been working a lot on is diversity and inclusion at Regions. We actually hired a diversity inclusion officer now about eight or nine months ago, with a focus on how do we build more diverse teams, how do we build more inclusive teams. And diverse teams are not just about gender, they're not just about race, you know, they're about background and perspective. Inclusive teams, diversity inclusion is very different from diversity. You can have a diverse team but if it's not an inclusive team, it may not be an effective team. And so as we think about building teams and having different skills, I'm not particularly technology savvy, in fact that would be an understatement. So I have a chief operating officer who's an important member of our team who loves technology, he is very innovative. I'm not very innovative, and so he's been the catalyst for driving a lot of our innovation. He and I were actually both candidates to be the CEO, and so it was important for me to build a relationship with him early on. We were asked earlier about situations where I might have been competing with someone. We never saw ourselves as competitors, we were just both working together to better the company, and we understood one of us might be chosen to lead. Once I was given the opportunity, it was important for me to win him over because he was going to be the catalyst for innovation and for technology in our company. And he since hired two or three people working for him that do a great job in helping us develop our technology. On the other hand, we have a group of bankers who are on the same team, and they have to be part of the team as well, and they have to work together to integrate how we think about technology. So it's technology that is the part of our business that is changing the most, it's the part that's most exciting, and the way we address it is to build the right team so that, because everybody can't work on it, you've got to have the right people doing the right things. We still got to run the bank and business while we're thinking about technology.

I told the story last night, Paul Finebaum asked me that question not too long ago, and I said it was difficult. And I later ran into Coach Kevin and he said I did a terrible job of answering the question, I should have said it was awful. So anyway, it is very challenging. No, I like to play golf, I like to hunt, enjoy being on the water. And it is, being the CEO of a public company today is an all-consuming job. There aren't very many times that you can turn it off. I will tell you that now about five months ago, I have 11 direct reports and I suggested to them that we would not send emails to each other from 6 o'clock on Friday night until 6 o'clock on Monday morning unless there was some sort of emergency. The idea being that we would try to keep from talking about business all weekend long and people would have an opportunity to spend a little time disengaging. And hoping that if we would all do that, it would sort of trickle down through the organization. I don't know how far it's trickled down through the organization, but it has worked for me. Now watch out at 6 o'clock on Monday morning because the emails just come through. But that's been, I think, a good stress reliever for everybody.