Ingram's April 2023

Q&A ... W ith P eter de S ilva The former CEO of UMB Bank and newly minted author assesses modern leadership challenges, recent developments in U.S. banking, and how compromised values can threaten entire organizations. Thought Leader Insights: Leadership

Q: Your new book, Taking Stock , views your leadership in financial ser vices through the prism of personal and professional challenge and growth. What inspired you to become an author? A: I wrote this book for current and aspiring leaders who want to hear real-world, practical lessons from someone who has been on the leadership front lines for more than 35 years. If you invest the time and energy to consider the ideas in this book, you’ll walk away with important lessons about the true nature of leadership, including a set of lead ership principles you and others can easily understand and put to work. Q: Looking back to your own early steps into corporate leadership, how has the task of organizational leadership today been complicated by economic, regulatory, tech or societal factors? A: There are several factors that make the task of being a leader more complicated today than in the past. The pace of change has rapidly accelerated, driven largely by rapid advancements in technology. From Chat GPT, machine learning and artificial intelligence, to cyber security, the internet of things (IOT), and nanotechnology, these rapid advancements are having extraordi nary implications on the face of business and leadership. Today’s leaders must consider the moral and ethical implications of these pow erful new technologies even as they consider their business impacts. It is not possible to be a successful leader in these times without considering the effects of technology not only on the business, but on humanity. graphics are causing leaders to reassess both the composition of their work force along with how to attract, develop and retain top talent. The composition of a company’s work force needs to be representative of the composition of the communities a company serves. It is more important than ever that Q: And on the demographic side? A: Rapidly changing workforce demo

organizations take a very deliberate and thoughtful approach to building a workforce that will serve their constituents well. Q: COVID introduced certain chal lenges, too, did it not? A: Out of necessity, the COVID pan demic has made remote work a part of the culture of “work.” Never before had leaders been forced to wrestle with how to build and instill purpose, and culture, and develop strong working relationships with a fully or partially remote work force. Entire new leadership practices had to be developed on the fly. It will take some time for leaders to adjust to this new reality and to inculcate new practices into their lead ership approach and style. tion has made it more difficult to plan for the long term. When you are not sure if the rules of the road are set, or about to change, it makes it more difficult to make long-term strategic decisions. Companies are more willing to deploy capital when there is stability in rulemaking and in the laws that govern their actions. Leaders are asked to make key decisions today in the face of more uncertainty than in the past. Q: So you have all these business side inputs, but they aren’t occurring in silos. A: Leaders today need to be con cerned not only with what happens within their company, but what is occurring in society at large. The large push for ESG accountability is a good example. Whether you agree with the concept or not, you can’t ignore it. Today’s enlightened leader needs to consider the views of all stake holders before making critical decisions. Q: What’s the bright side of all this? A: Today’s leaders have an array of tools, technologies, processes, and con- Q: What role does regulation play? A: The pace and sweep of regula

temporary leadership thought at their dis posal. These are distinct advantages over prior generations of leaders. When I was first coming into the business world, we used fax machines to transmit data, there were no cell phones, no Internet. The IBM XT computer, and early generation two-way pagers had just been created. The tools that leaders have access to today enable them to make much more fact-based and informed decisions than was true in the past. A: All of this has accelerated the speed of decision-making and improved the overall quality of decision making. That said, decisions are still made by people, not machines. The machines can churn out the data and turn it into usable information, but it is the leader with their unique knowledge and wisdom and understanding that must in the final analysis make the decision. Great leaders assimilate the quantitative data and combine that with the relevant qualitative considerations to make good decisions. Q: You dedicate a full chapter to the theme of an emerging crisis in lead- ership, one driven by expediency, un- realistic performance expectations and personal aspiration. Can you elaborate? A: We live in a fast-paced world in which patience is considered more of a character flaw than a virtue. Leaders engage in real-time communication and quick decision-making just to keep pace. The business landscape is littered with examples of people and organizations striv ing for expediency. The desire for it can compromise a leader’s ethical framework to achieve short-term outcomes. Q: What about unrealistic expec- tations? A: The push for expediency and short term profits can lead to relentless pressure to perform. In performance-oriented Q: What are the practical impacts of that for leaders?

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April 2023

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