Kevin J Ralofsky Of Verve, a Credit Union: 5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective C-Level Leader Of A Bank
An interview with Kieran Powell
Build your team of experts. As CEO, you never want to be the smartest person in the room because all that means is that you haven’t successfully assembled a dynamic team of people that know their craft way better than you. You’ll be a stronger organization for it, and it will give you room to continue to learn and grow.
In today’s rapidly evolving financial landscape, the role of C-level leaders in banks is more critical than ever. These leaders must navigate complex regulations, drive innovation, maintain financial stability, and foster a strong organizational culture. What does it take to be an effective leader at this level? We had the pleasure of interviewing Kevin Ralofsky, President + CEO of Verve, a Credit Union.
Kevin J. Ralofsky is the President + Chief Executive Officer at Verve, a Credit Union. He brings more than 25 years of experience in business, financial, and executive management, and is a leader in the areas of culture and change management, mergers and acquisitions, team member engagement, strategy and branding, and servant leadership.
Ralofsky came to Verve from a diverse background that includes corporate banking, syndicated finance, and management consulting in both the financial and medical services industries. Additionally, he was the majority shareholder and CEO of a medical start-up providing urgent care, wellness, and diagnostic imaging services, which sold to Meridia Hospital, a part of Cleveland Clinic Hospital Foundation.
Ralofsky currently serves on the board of directors of the Greater Oshkosh Economic Development Corporation, The Boys and Girls Club of Oshkosh, and Business Lending Group. He lives in Oshkosh with his wife, Nancy, and have three children, Noah, Kyle, and Celia.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I’ve always been an entrepreneur at heart. In 7th and 8th grade, I used to put gumball machines in barbershops around my hometown, and then on weekends I’d run around and collect $300 a week in quarters and give the owner his cut. I’ve always loved to try different things — dream up initiatives, put them into action, make adjustments along the way, get creative, solve problems.
In college I got my bachelor’s degree in pre-dentistry and psychology and spent a few formative years working as a social worker. And what I discovered is that I love working with people in general. I just loved the human element of whatever I was doing. That carried over to my next job in finance. It’s ultimately about helping people.
After my first son was born, I left banking and started my own business operating urgent care medical offices and MRI centers. I liked it because it was entrepreneurial. I got to be my own boss and build the business. And I really liked leading people. We built several locations and sold them 6 years later to the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio. Shortly after I sold the business, one of my friends pointed me toward a local credit union that was looking for a CEO, and I’ve been in credit unions ever since.
Wherever I have gone in my career, I take little bits and pieces of every role or job that I’ve had. Everything that I’ve done in my past has built up to this position. I get to be very entrepreneurial in my role, very high-level thinking. And I get to lead people and serve people the way that I know best.
Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
I really enjoyed reading the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. I love the concept of “thin slicing,” which he describes as someone’s ability to use very limited information from a finite experience to draw conclusions. His theory is that spontaneous decisions oftentimes result in similar results, or even better ones, than carefully planned out decisions. He argues that a person’s unique experiences, prejudices, and stereotypes can consciously and unconsciously corrupt their decision making.
It’s all very fascinating to me. As a CEO I am constantly taking in vast amounts of disparate information from many sources and from varying situations. To make good decisions, I rely firstly and primarily on facts and data, but when facts and data are limited or where gaps exist, then a certain amount of gut instinct comes into play. Reading this book has made me much more cognizant of trusting my instincts. That said — and I can’t emphasize this enough — the higher the risk, the more I lean on facts and less on gut feel. When the stakes are high, I need to be sure.
None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person that you are grateful for, who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
My dad. 100%. He always emphasized the importance of fairness if you wanted to effectively lead people. He’d say, “You don’t have to get everybody to like you, but you always have to be fair.” Even if people disagree with you, if they believe that you are trying to be fair, then you can move forward together from a place of mutual respect. I think about that lesson every time I’m preparing for a hard conversation, with my kids or with my teams.
How do you define leadership? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
We are huge proponents of servant leadership here. To us, an effective servant leader makes the people around them better and more productive. It’s not just a role: It’s a mindset and a way of life. Here are a few foundational pieces we have in place:
- Celebrate each person’s unique value. People need to feel like they are doing good work for a good cause. They need to feel valued to add value. Empowered people are engaged with what’s in front of them and with those around them. It’s an amazingly joyful way to experience work and life. From the moment new team members come on board, we want to help them identify their Top Five Strengths and craft a patch value declaration that lets the team know “Here’s what I value and here’s how you can count on me.”
- Take action. We’re going to skin our knees. We’ll take risks. Sometimes it will pay off; sometimes it won’t. But we’ll learn from it and move forward. It’s not that we want to skin our knees less. We want to skin them better.
- Multiply energy. Managers control resources, but leaders multiply energy. People want to do awesome work, right? We’re not effective leaders if we let things slide, and so communication is absolutely critical. The question is, even when you deliver tough news or facilitate hard conversations, can you do so in a way that multiplies energy? We like to say that we are judged by our impact, not our intention.
- Be purpose driven. What we do and how we do it is guided by why we do what we do. Here’s Our Why: We challenge the status quo to better serve the needs of others so we can all live fuller, richer, and more impactful lives. Our Why makes our collective work meaningful.
Can you share an example of a challenging decision you faced as a C-level leader and how you navigated it?
One of the more recent examples would be our move toward hybrid work schedules since 2020. The fact that we started putting our culture pieces in place in 2012 turned out to be a huge benefit to us when the pandemic hit because we were already in a good position to navigate the suddenly necessary world of remote work. Turning obstacles into opportunity is about getting the right pieces in place, and for us those right pieces were coaching and team member wellbeing/engagement.
Our leaders are coaches. Coaches, not managers. There’s a difference in the two. Words matter, right? Span of care, not span of control. So now instead of managing or micromanaging team members working remotely and everybody feeling the weight of work that needs to get done and the frustration of unclear or unfair expectations, our leaders connected with team members — on an individual basis and on a team basis. They worked with them, coached them up, checked in with them, put them in a position to succeed. It was about communication and clarity and care. Our leaders nurture the wellbeing of their spans of care. And when team members’ wellbeing is nurtured, then they and their work can thrive. Engaged working and engaged living.
As the pandemic became more manageable and we returned to the office, we’ve taken a flexible approach to hybrid work. It is highly informed by the input of coaches and the conversations they’ve had with their team members. The operative word there is highly informed. Some personalities and some positions are well-suited to in-office work, others to remote work. Our leaders and their spans of care help us figure out which is which.
So how has hybrid work affected our culture? We believe it has strengthened in two really specific ways. One, because it reinforced the strength of the culture we already had in place. It works. It’s a strong foundation that can weather storms and on which we can continue to build. It’s reassuring and confidence-inducing. And two, it unlocked innovation and relationship-building and collaborative opportunities that we otherwise maybe wouldn’t have explored.
How do you balance the demands of regulatory compliance with the need for innovation and growth within your bank?
In the business life cycle, there are times when we need to adhere much more strongly to regulatory compliance and slow innovative practices. I think it all depends on where we believe the economic environment is and will take us, how strong our balance sheet is, and what our appetite for growth is. In general, it is unrealistic to be 100% compliant. There are diminishing returns as you continue to spend more on compliance, so there must be a balance on how we approach risk management. Over the last several quarters, it has been abundantly clear that operating a strong business and preparing for the unknowns are paramount to unbridled spending in innovation and growth initiatives. I believe we can take our best risks with innovation and growth when we know there is a strong foundation with risk management and compliance practices, because that is what will help to cushion the blow when we run into challenges and obstacles investing for the future.
How do you foster a culture of ethical behavior and integrity within your organization?
You have to hire the right people. We have a rigorous hiring process that usually roots out those sorts of issues, but in those rare instances where we discover a team member lacks integrity, we show them the door. We draw a hard line there. We have to. I once heard it described in terms of recruiting a college football team: If you want a talented player but they choose to play for your rival, they’ll only beat you once a year. But if you get the wrong player on your team, they’ll beat you every day. Ethics and integrity are non-negotiable.
What strategies do you use to stay ahead of industry trends and ensure your bank remains competitive in the market?
As a CEO I think Peter Drucker said it best when he talked about what only the CEO can do. When a CEO can focus on a few key strategies, the organization can continually be ready to pivot to external forces and respond strategically, and not react.
I focus on:
- Consistently defining the meaningful “outside”, which is determining which external constituency matters most to our business;
- Communicating effectively to our team members and our target market what core business we are in relative to our competitors, and ensuring that our core competencies support that strategy;
- Continually balancing yield today with investments for tomorrow. Balancing short term investments with investments and resources needed for Verve’s longer-term future is integral to our success; and
- Making it my highest priority to shape the values, standards, and culture of the organization.
What are “5 Things You Need To Be a Highly Effective C-Level Leader of a Credit Union”?
- Plan the work. Work the plan. Pray confidently. I actually have this saying on a plaque in my office. As a young entrepreneur, I had the good fortune to find a mentor in Fr. Dave Nuss, a parish priest and Marquette Business School graduate who was fascinating and whip-smart and had tremendous business acumen. This is one piece of advice he’d come back to again and again as I navigated my early, struggling years as a CEO, and so it’s really stuck with me. Here’s what it means to me: Plan the work means to have a vision; you have to be thorough and thoughtful in your planning and leave no stone unturned. Work the plan means you have to execute. It’s about hard work and stamina and getting the right people on board so you can collectively turn thoughts and ideas into action. Besides the spiritual implications, pray confidently means I’m discerning through the process of how things are going so that I can take information and then pivot and adjust accordingly as the plan is being executed. In other words, the more prepared I am, the more effectively I can improvise and fine-tune along the way.
- Be confidently vulnerable. An effective CEO must be confidently vulnerable if you want your team to approach you, confide in you, and be honest with you. Confidently vulnerable means breaking down the barriers of title and meeting with those I serve on an equal level as individuals, eye-to-eye, heart-to-heart. Everyone falls short sometimes, everyone gets stuck, and cultivating an environment in which it is acceptable and encouraging to be honest about those challenges maximizes the time we can put toward developing solutions together. That’s the definition of teamwork. And it goes in both directions, by the way. If I want my team to be confidently vulnerable with me, I have to be willing to be confidently vulnerable first.
- Find your Leo McGarry. Fans of The West Wing will understand that reference, but for everyone else, suffice it to say that you need at least one person in the organization that you trust explicitly to tell you like it is. This person knows the strategy, understands the culture, and is a strong leader that people know and trust. You need to develop a strong relationship with this person because they are going to help you stay grounded and realistic when the stuff hits the fan. It’s not that they tell you everything and keep you apprised of the scuttlebutt. And they certainly don’t tell you what you want to hear. They tell you what you need to hear. You need someone who would be willing to come to you and say, “Hey, this company needs a CEO today, and you’re not acting like one.” And then you need the wisdom to say, “Okay, tell me how.”
- Build your team of experts. As CEO, you never want to be the smartest person in the room because all that means is that you haven’t successfully assembled a dynamic team of people that know their craft way better than you. You’ll be a stronger organization for it, and it will give you room to continue to learn and grow.
- Enjoy the ride. If you’re not energized and enthusiastic to go to work every day, who will be? Do what you need to do to remind yourself what a gift it is to lead, to make a difference. Perspective is everything. Take a step back from time to time and remember that it doesn’t last forever. You get to do this specific work with this specific group of people for a temporary amount of time. Don’t discount the small interactions with your team. The check-ins, the celebrations. You’ll do better work if you’re genuinely enjoying it. Learn how to get to that space, to live in that space, to lead from that space. Your team and future self will thank you.
How can our readers further follow your work?
Check out Verve’s website at verveacu.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn.
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
About The Interviewer: Kieran Powell is the EVP of Channel V Media a New York City Public Relations agency with a global network of agency partners in over 30 countries. Kieran has advised more than 150 companies in the Technology, B2B, Retail and Financial sectors. Prior to taking over business operations at Channel V Media, Kieran held roles at Merrill Lynch, PwC and Ernst & Young. Get in touch with Kieran to discuss how marketing and public relations can be leveraged to achieve concrete business goals.
Kevin J Ralofsky Of Verve, a Credit Union: 5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective C-Level… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.