By Nate Anderson
President & CEO
rekindle
The Control Conundrum
My local community hosts a Tuesday night “running group.” They run together, then go out for drinks and food afterward. Every week they do this.
I’ve known about this group for over a year and have yet to go despite genuinely enjoying running. Outside of the time away from my family, the downside to going is near zero. I intellectually know that the upside of meeting new people and engaging with the community is high.
So why not go? What’s getting in my way?
Why Sharing Can Be Challenging
Whether it’s fear of ridicule (“Why do you run so slow, my guy?”), general introverted tendencies, or social anxiety—there are many reasons why this is legitimately difficult, and I won’t downplay them or pretend to understand them all. These are complicated subjects—so I’ll just focus on myself for this example.
For starters, look at the way I framed this topic. “Upside” vs. “Downside.” Pretty clinical, right? I do that because, for me, the entire issue is around control.
As much as I’d like to think it’s that family time holding me back, it’s likely a more insidious set of issues—a long series of justifications keeping me from going. Things like “I have my own cultivated running schedule, I have enough friends, I’m an introvert, and this will be exhausting,” etc., all based on my needs and on how this experience would disrupt MY life, without considering that sharing myself with new people in my community could be a massive win for my well-being.
It’s just plain easier for my brain to keep the element of control front and center. This “new” experience, where I literally have to share myself, is unknown and uncurated and may create issues I haven’t planned for or considered.
The safety of the illusion of control in my life has kept me from trying something that would almost certainly be good for me.
Why Share? Because It’s Literally Good for You.
Harvard’s Robert Waldinger and Marc Schultz are the director and associate director of the longest study on happiness in U.S. history. It started in 1938 and tracked the lives of 724 men (their spouses and over 1300 descendants) for over 85 years—eventually chronicling it in their book “The Good Life.” In a 2023 appearance on Derek Thompson’s podcast “Plain English” they effectively summarized the entire project in one statement:
“The people in our study who had the warmest connections with other people stayed the healthiest and were the happiest.”
Some of you don’t have this concern in your personal life—you’re incredibly gregarious and the entire idea of sharing yourself easily, but have you considered its impact on your work life?
How do I start?
Ramit Sethi is the author of the book “I Will Teach You to be Rich” (I clearly haven’t done all the steps right yet), but there’s a concept he deploys that is apt for our sharing conversation: Money Dials.
When budgeting, he suggests you allow yourself to spend where it matters most. Are you a car person? Turn that dial up. Obviously, you can’t turn the dial UP on everything, so the inverse is how the concept actually pays dividends. Do you like staying at home? Turn your travel dial way down.
How Does this Work for the Credit Union Industry?
I constantly hear about resource constraints in our industry, whether capital, time, or attention, due to small staff sizes. Inherent in that is “I don’t have the ability to go to run club. I have to tend to the fire in my own house!” Which is often true—but it can also be a convenient excuse to avoid the vulnerability of sharing.
Using the money dials concept, look at your credit union values and determine where the control dial should be set highest; consequently, give yourself permission to allow areas where it can be lower. Will your mission allow for fewer face-to-face interactions with members? Perhaps not. But might it consider sharing the creation of policies you need to help those members?
So, Why Don’t All Credit Unions Share Things?
I’ll bet most do!
How much and to what degree are the differences, but if we want to go back to my own shortcomings in trying new things, the one place holding some folks back is the element of control.
Once you decide to share, you then have to relinquish the grip you have on process and outcomes. You have to accept the community’s foibles as your own, and you have to fit what you want into what the community wants. No easy thing, but when/if you decide to do it, some cool things will start to happen:
- You’ll have new credit union friends whom you trust
- You’ll have newfound freedom to think about and tend to your mission/values instead of all that other stuff you used to have to think about
- You might even save some expenses along the way
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I’ll be attending my first run-group session as a result of writing this. I will thank the industry I’m in for cajoling me, but if you see me on LinkedIn, please ask how it went!
To learn more or connect with rekindle, please visit their website at https://www.rekindlecuso.org/.
About the Author:
Nate Anderson
President & CEO
rekindle
Nate is the President & CEO of rekindle – a CUSO dedicated to helping small credit unions thrive through shared knowledge and services. Before joining rekindle, he held a strategic seat for the birth, growth, maturation, and exit of the ticketing start-up PatronManager–now part of Leap Technology. Nate holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and a Master of Business Administration from Boston University’s Questrom School of Business.