I am rereading Warren Bennis’s On Becoming a Leader. It is not a book about management. It is a book about character.
Bennis writes that leadership requires understanding the context of your industry—not just the surface metrics, but the history, the structure, the unspoken rules that shape how work actually gets done.
So I asked myself: What is the context of banking?
Most people would say: interest rates, regulations, risk models, compliance.
Those are real. But they are not the whole picture.
The deeper context is this: Every person who walks into my branch is carrying something. Fear about retirement. Shame about a financial mistake. Hope for a child’s education. Confusion about a fee. Trust that has been broken before.
Banking, at its best, is not about moving money. It is about meeting that person where they are and staying with them until they feel safe.
That is the context.
I am also rereading The Opening of the Eyes, the gosho that Nichiren wrote during his exile on Sado Island. Daisaku Ikeda expands on it as a teaching about perception—seeing reality as it is, without delusion, and still choosing to create value.
Nichiren was not writing about banking. But the principle applies.
A client hands me their phone and asks, “Is this email real?”
The reality: They are frightened. They do not understand phishing. They trust me to tell them the truth.
The delusion would be to rush them, or to assume they should already know better.
The value creation is to slow down, look them in the eye, and say: “You did the right thing by coming in. Let me walk you through this.”
That is not a transaction. That is presence.
This week, I had a breakthrough with my banker.
We have been working on communication—on making sure that every client leaves feeling understood, not confused.
Something shifted. We started treasuring each client. Not as a number. Not as a cross-sell opportunity. As a person.
And the clients feel it. They stay longer. They ask more questions. They say thank you in a way that sounds different.
My banker is operating at a level I have not seen before. And my job, my only job, is to keep clearing the path for him.
Bennis writes that leaders make other leaders. Not followers.
I am not trying to make him into a copy of me. I am trying to help him become more fully himself.
That is the practice. On the cushion and in the branch.
Here is what I am learning:
Context is not abstract. It is the retired couple who drove fifteen minutes because an email scared them.
Perception is not mystical. It is seeing that a client’s frustration is actually fear, and responding to the fear, not the frustration.
Leadership is not a position. It is the daily, quiet choice to treasure the person in front of you.
I am not a perfect leader. I am a practicing one.
And this week, with my banker, I got a glimpse of what is possible when you stop managing transactions and start keeping promises.
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