Top Ten Lessons from Nii Amankra-Tetteh

1. Leadership & Followership. I am a product of incredible leadership (intended and unintended) and amazing followership. I have had the privilege of working with some really incredible people.

2. Positivity. I struggle to see a bad experience in any place where I have worked. Every workplace served a good purpose in getting me here.

3. Learning from followers. I learnt from colleagues like Peter, Farian, Charles, Bridgette, Jeff and Margaret. My four-hour experience in a teller enclosure with a team member taught me patience, routine and deepened my respect for tellers.

4. Calmness. I am calmest when the heat is highest. It’s come from years of watching others deal with challenges. A firm gets its signals from leadership. When you panic, it could be costly.

5. Impact-focused. I am a challenge person; not a title person. I focus largely on what impact I can make on a role and the opportunity to learn and grow. That is why I transitioned from Bayport MD to Executive Director at UMB Ghana.

6. Connections. When people feel they can connect to you with their hearts, they sacrifice beyond the call of duty.

7. Failures. I once used time as an excuse not to complete an MBA Programme and lost £7,000 as a result. Interestingly, on a far busier role later, I made time for a similar programme.

8. Trust. Many are skeptical about banking because of past experiences. Stronger regulation has been positive with stringent rules on directorships. Banking is a lot more transparent today and less mysterious.

9. Consumer’s Market. Banking is now a consumer’s market and no longer a banker’s market. Many banks have raised the bar with real-time measurement matrices and strict rules about customer service quality.

10. Service Guarantee. Technology is the enabler of service quality, measurement and decision making.