SAN JOSE, Calif.–You never know who is going to eat your lunch, but if you can always keep that in mind while mastering three areas of leadership, success will follow, according to Bob Dougherty.
Sharing his insights with CUToday.info’s The Corner, Dougherty, vice president of business development at Calyx Software, said he has learned lessons around management vs. leadership, what it means to drive innovation, and much more.
CUToday.info: What intangibles of leadership are most difficult to convey or prepare for?
Dougherty: There are three areas of leadership I feel are very important; however, they are often not conveyed to the team a person leads. Executive maturity, presence, and self-efficacy are soft skills every leader should possess but are often absent in leadership.
Having the ability to have high emotional intelligence while managing your feelings is hard to prepare for, since every tough situation is a little different. However, if you can exercise executive maturity, and understand your own emotional patterns and triggers, you create a stable and safe environment for the people you lead.
Presence is important on a day-to-day basis in leadership. If you are found to be aloof, or appear to be uncaring, people will not trust you as a leader. Leaders often find their days packed with meetings but clearing time for valuable interactions with the people you lead is crucial in creating wins for your organization.
Finally, I look at self-efficacy as a lost art. Leaders often like to play it safe and not reach for their objectives due to not believing in themselves. This, in turn, leads to boorish results, accomplishing very little and barely moving the needle. A phenomenal leader distinctively exploits their competencies to reach their and their organization’s desired objectives.
As a leader, if you can master these three areas of leadership, you will find yourself on a quick path to success.
CUToday.info: Are you a fan of a management book or books? If not, why not. If so, which have resonated with you and why?
Dougherty: I am not a fan of management books. However, I am a fan of leadership books. Why would someone want to manage people, when they have the opportunity to lead them? As a leader, you create value, not count value. As a leader, you influence people and empower them, not manage them through power. As a leader, you motivate and enable others to contribute to the good of the cause, not control, cajole, and demand results for your cause.
One of the best leadership books I have read is The 8th Habit by Stephen Covey. After reading this book I find that people understand that they can lead from anywhere or any position within an organization. I have shared this book with several people I have had the opportunity to lead and it always results in exceptional conversations.
Against the Grain by Bill Courtney is another great leadership book. Courtney’s tenants regarding service leadership, commitment, and the drive to excellence are conveyed in a way that will create pause in your life and make you want to be a better leader. I recently taught an MBA course at a university and included this book in my curriculum. My students loved it and several students said this was a book they would re-read in the coming years due to the leadership skills they learned from it.
CUToday.info: Innovation: four syllables getting all the attention. Deservedly so? If so, can you really drive innovation? Or is it coming at the cost of implementation and delivery?
Dougherty: Some might say innovation in mortgage technology has stalled, but we are seeing a great deal of innovation—with the most publicized and well-known being point-of-sale platforms (e.g., Rocket Mortgage).
Loan origination systems are innovating too in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Rules on ATR, QM, LO Comp, and TRID (which clocked in at 1,888 pages), the updated HMDA data collection and reporting requirements, and the recently finalized TRID 2.0, have highlighted the importance of tracking and retaining data to stay compliant. The focus on regulatory compliance over the past few years has siphoned resources away.
When does one have time to innovate when the regulatory landscape is ever changing? On the flip side, it has also actually spurred innovation through the development of highly configurable, cloud-based, data-driven (as opposed to form-driven) LOSs which can accommodate change much more quickly and efficiently.
Going forward, compliance, accuracy and transparency will still remain the priorities; however, the balance between compliance and innovation will ideally be a 50/50 split.
CUToday.info: If you could go back and talk to you on the first day on the job, what advice would you share?
Dougherty: To take a famous line from a summer reality show, Big Brother, I would tell myself to, “Expect the unexpected.” Like many other business verticals, things are ever changing. I believe I have a “change artist mentality,” but in the software business the landscapes often change on a dime.
Some companies pop up overnight and create the buzz of disruptive innovation in this space, later fizzle out and are never heard from again. Other times the buzz is real, and the company begins to consume market share in places you never dreamed it would have an impact.
The moral of the story: You never know who is going to eat your lunch–expect the unexpected!
CUToday.info: My Keeps-Me-Up-At-Night concern is? Why? And My-Let’s-Me-Sleep-At-Night optimism is?
Dougherty: I often wonder when the compliance machine is going to slow down. When will we have time to focus a greater amount of time on innovation, integration, and deployment? At Calyx, we are committed to fulfilling the expectations of the CFPB, the GSEs, and, most importantly, our customers – all of which pulls us in different directions. While we expect regulations to continue to evolve for the foreseeable future, it would be nice to bring it down to a dull roar!
With that said, I can easily sleep at night because I work for a company that has been successful in this industry for more than 25 years. We have the team and the know-how to bring innovative products to market. We continue to stay abreast of the changes within the lending industry, and are dedicated to listening to our current and future customers so we can deliver technology that helps them succeed in their businesses and exceed their expectations.
About Bob Dougherty
Bob Dougherty is Vice President of Business Development at CalyxSoftware, a leading provider of comprehensive mortgage origination software solutions for banks, credit unions, mortgage bankers, wholesale and correspondent lenders and brokers.
Dougherty has more than 20 years of operations and business development experience in the mortgage industry. Prior to joining Calyx, he was Vice President of Mortgage Operations at Merchants Bank where he led operations and secondary marketing functions for its mortgage banking division. Dougherty was also Executive Vice President Boom Brother Commercial Capital LLC, a consulting firm that facilitated commercial financing for commercial/multi-family buildings with a specialization in difficult to fund loans, where his primary role was project identification and management and loan placement.
In addition, he was Chief Executive Officer of Timberland Mortgage Services, Inc., a multi-branch lender and underwriter of residential mortgage loans in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kansas and Colorado. In this role, Dougherty was responsible for risk mitigation, relationship management, talent acquisition and retention, mortgage warehouse oversight and general business management.