Wisconsin YP Network

Wisconsin’s young professionals made a splash at Convention this year in more ways than one.

Tom Young from Pioneer CU and the other CU leaders were great sports with our dunk tank fundraiser!

For starters, our dunk tank in the Exhibit Hall and 50/50 raffle helped to raise more than $1200 (!) for the Wisconsin Credit Union Foundation. We want to extend many thanks to our credit union leaders Jack Gill (First Community CU of Beloit), Tom Young (Pioneer CU), Colleen Woggon (Oakdale CU), Tammy Williams (Best Advantage CU), Dean Wilson (Focus CU) and Tim Tranberg Co-op CU) for donating their time to sit in the dunk and be great sports to help a good cause. Also, thanks to everyone who stopped out to dunk our brave volunteers!

Our Crash event went AMAZINGLY WELL and the feedback we’ve gotten from our Crashers confirms that. We had some really good small group discussions with our Crashers and Brett Thompson (League President/CEO), Pat Wesenberg (CEO of Central City CU and CUNA Board Chair), Harriet May (an amazing woman and CU hall of famer from El Paso, Texas) and Tim McAlpine (President and Creative Director of Currency Marketing).

Big thanks to Sonny Schaar, Premier Financial CU and David Murphy, Marshfield Medical CU for being our Crash Mentors and for their leadership and help in coordinating the event. David and Sonny both had great things to say about the group and I wanted to share some of their thoughts here:

“We had a great group for this year’s Crashers.  All the crashers had great insight to offer as to their own experiences within their own credit union, and we had many great conversations.  We also bonded as a group as we learned more about each other outside of the credit union.  I’m happy to have been able to spend the convention with a great group of Young Professionals, and I hope that all the YPs in attendance were able to grow their personal networking web.”  - David

Harriet May and our 2013 Crashers

Aside from the Crash, we also did a few events for all YPs in attendance. Our YP Network Advisory Board held a networking breakout session for YPs on Friday morning and we also held a “what are we going to do now?” session on Friday afternoon. For the latter, we held a discussion about takeaways from Convention and what kinds of things YPs can do when they get back to the office – we’ll talk about that in another blog post soon.

But to a bigger point, I had the chance to talk with many CU presidents and managers at Convention who shared their appreciation for our YP program and the contributions our Wisconsin YPs are making to our movement. It’s hard to see because change is sometimes slow, but we are really making an impact through our Crash events, through our Boot Camps and through the ways that YPs have become more engaged within the movement. And the best part is — we’re just getting started.

Make sure you have a decent pair of sunglasses handy, because the future is looking bright.

Crash events are designed to reward deserving young CU staff with a chance to experience in industry events they normally typically be able to take part in. This year, the following 12 YPs have been selected for the opportunity to Crash The Wisconsin Credit Union League’s Annual Convention, thanks to our generous sponsors CUNA Mutual Group, W.C.U.L. Services Corp. and Money Mission:

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Nathan Weiland, Branch Manager

Blackhawk Community Credit Union, Janesville

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Sarah Abrahamson, Member Service Rep.

Central City Credit Union, Marshfield

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Robert  Cribb, Branch Manager

Educators Credit Union, Racine

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Sarah Fegre, Member Services Rep.

First Community CU of Beloit, Beloit

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Kate Pahl, Consumer Loan Officer

Govt Employees Credit Union, La Crosse

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Stacie    Neuman, Team Leader/Financial Architect

Best Advantage Credit Union, Brillion

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Nicky     Hammernik, Accounting Team Lead

Northwestern Mutual Credit Union, Milwaukee

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Jessica  Reynolds, Member Service Specialist

Park City Credit Union, Merrill

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Katie      Karls, Branch Manager

Premier Financial Credit Union, New Holstein

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Mary     Moore, Senior Member Service Rep.

Prime Financial Credit Union, Milwaukee

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Nicole   Christensen, Acting/Interim President/CEO

Racine Municipal Employees Credit Union, Racine

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Jennifer Rundle, Financial Specialist

UW Credit Union, Madison

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This will be the third year The Wisconsin League has hosted a Crash event and as in years past, this year’s group of Crashers will gain the full experience of attending Convention and also participate in group activities that include small group discussions with some of Convention’s biggest names.

If you see them at Convention, make sure to say hi!

Happy Thursday YPer’s! Does everyone have big plans for this “Spring” weekend?

I wanted to share with you this article from Lisa Cox of NAFCU (National Association of Federal Credit Unions).

In summary, here are the 5 lessons she outlines:

1. Hire those who know more than you

2. Work thoughtfully and slowly

3. Mentor and be mentored

4. The Art of Woo

5. Think of others first

So, you fellow Generation Y peeps, do you agree?

Have a good one!

Elyse

Wisconsin’s own Mitchell Michiels (Best Advantage CU) and Danielle Frawley (Fort Community CU) - along with 17 other CU young professionals – were selected from a national pool of applicants to Crash the CUNA Government Affairs Conference in DC in February. The Crash experience included nearly a week’s worth of education, networking and project work that focused on helping credit unions to better serve the needs of  small businesses and cooperatives.

Danielle was kind enough to share some thoughts about her experience:

“We stayed in a hostel. We were on the sixth floor and I could have carried on a conversation with someone on the sidewalk without opening the paper thin window. We woke up early to ensure that there was still hot water left in the community shower room. However, even without all of the comforts of home, I was happy that I was staying in a dorm-style room with five of the other “crasher” ladies.

At night we could come back and talk about our projects, share ideas to take back to our own credit unions and form a bond around the craziness of what we were taking part of. You might be wondering what I’m referring to with projects. As part of the crasher group, we were challenged by Brent Dixon and Theresa Hilinski to come up with ideas of ways that credit unions could help small businesses. While everyone else was enjoying their breakfasts, lunches and breaks, we were sitting in Salon F at the Washington Convention Center, learning about design thinking, brainstorming, applying our ideas, breaking them down, and rebuilding them.

In between our project work, we had the opportunity to have different “mentor sessions” with much admired credit union professionals including Bill Cheney. While everyone else saw him speak in a room of 4,200 people, we were in a room of about 20.

Needless to say, it was an incredible experience. However, the most prominent memory I will have from this experience is how often I heard my fellow crashers say things like “Wow-Wisconsin is where it’s at!” or “Everything awesome about credit unions comes from Wisconsin!”. All of this being said while Pat Wesenberg was appointed CUNA Chair and Paul Kundert was appointed Filene Chair. I’ve never felt more proud to be a credit union professional from the cheese-head state.”

CUNA Mutual Group was also on-site and provided some video coverage featuring interviews from Mitch, Danielle and several other Crashers:

James Marshall from the UK was also one of the Crashers – he joined us during some of our Wisconsin hill visits and shared his experience on the CUNAverse blog.

So make sure Crashing the CUNA GAC is on your radar for next year! And don’t forget to check out the Cooperative Trust, who made this Crash experience possible!

Last week I posted a You Tube video about leadership lessons that we can learn from the “dancing guy” on the YP Facebook page. Here is the transcript of the narration of the video:

If you’ve learned a lot about leadership and making a movement, then let’s watch a movement happen, start to finish, in under 3 minutes, and dissect some lessons:

A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. But what he’s doing is so simple, it’s almost instructional. This is key. You must be easy to follow!

Now comes the first follower with a crucial role: he publicly shows everyone how to follow. Notice the leader embraces him as an equal, so it’s not about the leader anymore – it’s about them, plural. Notice he’s calling to his friends to join in. It takes guts to be a first follower! You stand out and brave ridicule, yourself. Being a first follower is an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire.

The 2nd follower is a turning point: it’s proof the first has done well. Now it’s not a lone nut, and it’s not two nuts. Three is a crowd and a crowd is news.

A movement must be public. Make sure outsiders see more than just the leader. Everyone needs to see the followers, because new followers emulate followers – not the leader.

Now here come 2 more, then 3 more. Now we’ve got momentum. This is the tipping point! Now we’ve got a movement!

As more people jump in, it’s no longer risky. If they were on the fence before, there’s no reason not to join now. They won’t be ridiculed, they won’t stand out, and they will be part of the in-crowd, if they hurry. Over the next minute you’ll see the rest who prefer to be part of the crowd, because eventually they’d be ridiculed for not joining.

And ladies and gentlemen that is how a movement is made! Let’s recap what we learned:

If you are a version of the shirtless dancing guy, all alone, remember the importance of nurturing your first few followers as equals, making everything clearly about the movement, not you.

Be public. Be easy to follow!

But the biggest lesson here – did you catch it?

Leadership is over-glorified.

Yes it started with the shirtless guy, and he’ll get all the credit, but you saw what really happened:

It was the first follower that transformed a lone nut into a leader.

There is no movement without the first follower.

We’re told we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective.

The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.

When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.

This video was a very amusing way to show how leadership can work. I found the end message to “courageously follow and show others how to follow” refreshing. Sometimes the best thing we can do as leaders is follow other leaders and support them.

So when you see someone trying to do something great, think about the dancing man. Do you have the guts to be the first person to join in to create something great?

Have a good one, YP’ers.

Elyse

It’s that time of year again and we’re gearing up for our Wisconsin Credit Union League Annual Convention, May 8-11 at the Kalahari Resort in Wisconsin Dells! To sum it up, it’s going to be 4 days of incredible speakers, great networking opportunities and plenty of entertainment (oh, and water slides, if you’re into that sort of thing). Check out full event details here.

For young professionals, Convention can be a very beneficial and rewarding experience to take part in and we at the League do everything we can to make sure it’s easy and affordable for you to attend. Over the past three years, we’ve been able to increase our young professional attendance at Convention by double and we want to keep that bar high!

So we have two ways to help young professionals make it to the Dells in May:

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1) Crash The Convention! Includes sponsored conference registration, hotel and access to exclusive events

Crash events are designed to reward deserving young CU staff with a chance to experience an event they normally wouldn’t be able to take part in. Read more about 2012 League Annual Convention’s Crash here. This year, 12 YPs will have the opportunity to attend Annual Convention at minimum cost to their CU (registration, hotel and most meals are covered, thanks to our generous sponsors). This will be the third year The Wisconsin League has hosted a Crash event and as in years past, this year’s group of Crashers will gain the full experience of attending Convention and also participate in group activities that include small group discussions with some of Convention’s biggest names.

To Crash, YPs under the age of 35 will need to: 
1. Obtain manager’s approval to attend Convention.
2. Be a registered member of the YP Network.
3. Submit an application by March 26. Applications will be reviewed anonymously by peer leaders and all applicants will be notified no later than April 3.

OR……

2)Discounted Registration for Young Professionals

All YPs will have the chance to attend the Annual Convention at the discounted rate of $99. In addition to the basic Convention schedule, they will also be invited to attend the following: 

• Special networking event just for YPs.
• Breakout session specifically for YPs.
• Meet and Greet event with the YP Network Advisory Board.

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If you have questions about any of these items, you can respond on this post or give me shout at chleminak@theleague.coop.

We hope to see you in May!