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FEATURE

Perspectives on

Leadership

O ne of the most popular sessions at IBAT’s annual convention in October was

Perspectives on Leadership: An All-Star Banker Panel. IBAT President Chris

Williston asked our panelists to share their thoughts on leadership styles
and traits, culture and strategy, and challenges facing community bankers.

J. Pat Hickman Robert Hulsey Darla Rooke Brad Tidwell
Chairman and CEO President and CEO President and CEO President and CEO
Happy State Bank & American National Bank of Junction National Bank Citizens National Bank,
Trust Co. Texas, Terrell Assets $60M Henderson
Assets $3.3B Assets $2.7B 11 employees Assets $1.8B
700 employees 560 employees 1 location 400 employees
35 locations 25 locations 33 years in banking 28 locations
42 years in banking 41 years in banking 33 years in banking

As an organization gets larger, it’s Hickman – Culture has always been we take care of our shareholder. If we
harder to keep the culture in place. our primary focus—if you focus on cul- do that, then it really drives everything
What do you do, as a leader, to keep ture, profitability comes…growth comes. else we do. How do we take care of
this from happening? It’s a constant focus on doing the right those groups? It starts with taking care
thing and doing things well. If you ask of the employee, and we have three rules
Hulsey – Back in 1989 we started
doing culture surveys in our bank, and we our employees what stands out, 80 per- that we repeat often: 1) we want folks
continue doing them every two years to cent of them will say, “At Happy State, to work hard; 2) we want folks to do
measure our culture and how effective it my family comes first.” A lot of employers the right thing; and 3) we don’t tolerate
is. We’ve been able to watch it in terms say that; at Happy we really mean it. jerks. Focusing on our culture has proba-
of scoring to improve over the course of Tidwell – We keep it simple. We have bly gotten a little easier as we’ve grown,
the years. Sometimes strange things will four key values: we take care of the partly because there are more leaders to
happen and the culture surveys point employee, we take care of the custom- communicate it.
them out. er, we take care of our community, and

24 The Texas Independent Banker