[piano intro] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein.

Welcome to ""Side by Side"."

My guest today is the Chairman CEO of one of the largest financial institutions in our nation.

He's a purpose driven leader and a highly respected banker.

We're talking about Truist Financial Corporations, Chairman CEO, Bill Rogers.

- [Narrator] Funding for "Side by Side" with Nido Qubein is made possible by.

- [Woman] Here's to those that rise and shine, to friendly faces doing more than their part.

And to those who still enjoy the little things, you make it feel like home.

Ashley HomeStore.

This is home.

- [Woman] For over 60 years, the everyday leaders at the Budd Group have been committed to providing smart, customized facility solutions to our clients and caring for the communities we serve.

[soft music] - [Man 2] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally, thanks to our teammates.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.

[upbeat music] ♪ - Bill, Welcome to "Side by Side".

I am delighted to have you here today.

I gotta ask you this question.

How does it feel to run such a massive organization with 50,000 employees, footprint that really runs pretty nationally?

You must have a lot of stress in your life.

[laughs] - First, let me say, it's an honor, actually, to run an institution like TRUIS, to be the leader of a purpose driven organization, to represent 52,000 teammates and the work that they do.

It's an honor, and that quite frankly, that sort of negates the stress, if you sort of stay focused on the purpose of what we do.

- Well, you've been a banker for a long time.

You are a tar heel.

You were born in the state of North Carolina.

Your career has been quite celebrated.

You went on to become the Chairman CEO of SunTrust in corporate headquarters in Atlanta.

And then you helped bring the BB&T and SunTrust together.

- Right.

- And have a merger of equal now called Truist.

How did the name Truist come to be?

[Bill laughs] - You're not the first person to ask that question?

- [Nido] Yes.

- Well, it starts with, I think there were about 300 million companies in the world.

So there are a lot of names that have been used.

And then we started a process.

We used a company to help us with this process, find a name that would represent who we are, find a name that can be protected, you know, a name that you can live forever.

Find a name that's not mean something else in another language.

You've gotta go through all that process.

And then the name Truist sort of came up organically.

Different people see different things in it, which I love.

The T at the beginning, the T at the end, come together for our logo.

So the concept of, technology and touch equal trust, you know, as a concept.

There's a U and the I in Truist.

So, you know, we and I are represented in that.

There's a concept of trust.

So there are a lot of elements in the name, but at the end of the day, the brand's what you make it.

There are a lot of names like, Apple, Amazon, whatever it may be, and what we talk to our teammates is, it's the brand that we make it, the actions that we take, the things that we do, that's what's gonna represent our brand.

- The values that you represent - The values that we represent every day.

- You speak a lot about purpose driven leadership, purpose driven corporation.

What does that mean?

- I think at its core, it is focused on the, why, not focused on the how or the what.

If we start talking to teammates about how or what, I think we've sort of lost our way.

We talk about, "Why?

Why are we here?

What's our purpose?

What are we trying to accomplish?"

We define our purposes as, to inspire and build better lives and communities.

So we start with better lives for individuals.

The work that we do helps our communities.

We add the word inspire.

That means we gotta be first.

We have to be bold.

We have to do things that are in a leadership position.

And we ask our teammates to talk about their own personal purpose.

Why are they here?

Does the work matter?

You know, what it is.

I think people wanna work for companies that do something meaningful.

I think people want to do business with companies that do something meaningful and trying to bring all that together.

- Mm hm.

Speaking of leadership, Truist has the Truist Leadership Institute.

- [Bill] Right.

Exactly.

- From afar, I watch all the good that you do, both in schools, with leaders, corporate leaders, school leaders.

Tell me a little bit about, what does it do, and why would a bank have a leadership institute?

- Yeah, I think it is a good question, but it actually is a great parallel, because at the end of the day, leadership's what matters.

I mean, we're sort of driven by leadership.

And you can't be a purposeful organization, we can't achieve what we wanna do without great leaders.

And great leaders aren't necessarily born.

They have to be trained and we have to do the work.

And we have to invest in leaders and we have this Truist Leadership Institute.

So we have this physical facility, which is fantastic, but what we do inside the building is so important.

- What is it?

Is it a center?

- It is a center in Greensboro.

- [Nido] Is it conference rooms?

- Conference rooms, hotel rooms, all geared, in a fantastic setting.

So when people come there, they have a different feeling.

They know what they're there to do, accomplish something great.

They put the phones away, they put everything away, get accomplished on- - You have your own faculty there?

- We have our own faculty there.

And so we not only train our own leaders, which is really critical, but we work with our clients and our clients have their, work with them on their leadership.

And we work with, and you mentioned public schools.

We work with principals of public schools.

I mean, there's no better, more important investment that we can make in the leadership of a school.

And so we invite principals from around the country to come to our leadership institute and learn sort of the basic principles of leadership and have that involved and be the ripple effect for what they do as students every day.

- That's awesome, Bill.

That really is awesome because, you know, if there's any, we're talking about financial capital in a bank, but there's also relational capital.

- [Bill] No doubt.

- With your clients and with the leaders in any community.

And the footprint of Truist is not just in the eastern seaboard anymore, is it?

It's across the country.

- Well, think about, you know, we don't think about a footprint in it necessarily, but we have branches in 17 different states.

But our footprint, meaning our reach, the things that we do, are nationwide.

Absolutely.

- And international?

- [Bill] And international.

Yes.

- Yes.

So, um, give me some stats, like, how many branches, how many employees, how many, what do you call 'em, service centers?

- Right.

- Operation centers?

- Right.

There are lots.

[laughs] - There are lots of those, aren't there?

- There are lots of those.

There are about 2,000 branches, about 52,000 teammates, as we refer to our employees, 'cause that's an important concept of where our one team- - Teammates.

- Exactly.

And then we have operations centers all across the country and in different locations.

- So if someone is asking, "How does a bank work?"

We write a check or today we electronically process payments, and so on.

I remember the old days, Bill, when I went in a bank operation center and you saw those hundreds of people sitting there, and you see these trays of checks and they're actually, I guess, encoding or decoding, whatever the word is, these checks.

It doesn't work like this anymore.

- It's completely different.

It's completely different.

But at its core, what we do for communities and how we help businesses start, how we help people get their first car to drive to their first job.

I mean, how we put somebody in their first home with their first mortgage, that fundamental of our business hasn't changed.

And that's so critical to what we do.

- The purpose of the- - The purpose.

I mean, the fundamental, the why, I mean, what we do and how important it is.

Who doesn't remember their first mortgage?

Who doesn't remember their first car, and what they did with it, and how it helped them grow and prosper So those things are fundamental to what we do.

But you're right, in terms of the physical interactions and what's changed, it's dramatic.

- [Nido] Digital bank?

- Today, just take an example, you talked about your checks and deposit.

You think about the physical, you know, we go to the bank, we deposit the check.

Two thirds of all deposits today are electronic.

So fundamental change are done digitally so that, take the picture on the phone and deposit the check.

- I watch my wife do it.

[Bill laughs] The check comes in, she takes a picture, bam, within one second it's deposited in the checking account.

I don't know that I have the capacity to fully understand that.

- I'm 100% sure you've got the capacity to understand it.

And clearly what happened in COVID, for example, is a lot more people adopted digital technologies.

So even those who maybe had some resistance, you know.

- By necessity.

- Just by necessity.

And what happened is they really liked it, you know, said, "Hey, this really works."

And our concept is to though, is to marry the digital, marry the technology, with the touch.

We never want to lose the touch component.

We don't want to just be a digital organization.

We want to have the touch and for the technology and the touch come together.

In other words, if maybe in the the digital transaction, you wanted to talk to someone physically, can you do that interchangeably?

So can you create that touch and create that experience?

- [Nido] High tech, high touch.

- High tech, high touch.

And we think that's the formula that equals trust because ultimately that's the relationship we want to have with someone, is it's predicated, its foundation has to be on trust.

- Technology and trust, the T at both ends of Truist.

- The T at both ends coming together.

Yeah.

- I remember the days when economists and futurists all predicted with a high degree of confidence that the 5,000 or so banks in America will become no more than five or 50, that the branches in the neighborhood will all disappear, there will be no such thing around.

That had hasn't happened, Bill.

- No, that's right.

Well, there are fewer branches.

I mean, there are fewer banks than they were, but the concept of an ecosystem of banking is still just foundationally strong, you know, community banks, credit unions, large banks.

We think we're a large community bank.

We think we actually bridge both of us, but that concept's still alive and still important.

And I think we'll continue to be an ecosystem as long as we have what we talked about earlier, as long as we have that foundation of trust with our clients.

- And that's all based on human connectivity and human communication.

- Exactly.

- Relational capital.

- Human connectivity, right.

And being active in communities, being shoulder-to-shoulder, you know, elbow-to-elbow with people who are trying to build those communities.

You just can't do all that digitally.

- Mm hm.

How does a leader, capable, experienced, confident, like you, purpose driven, bring together two organizations, with large population of teammates, and merge and purge, nurture and nourish the culture in a way that it becomes one?

Of course it takes time.

We get that.

But that has to be a very difficult thing to do.

- In the construct of the physical things, very difficult.

In the concept of the foundation of purpose, actually quite easy and quite focused.

We set out a course that we wanted to build something different.

And we wanted to build a company that was actually built on purpose, that that foundation would be deep, it would be deep pillars into the concrete and build it on, predicate it on purpose, that we would start with that as a foundation.

So when we start with that, the other stuff becomes sort of easier.

It drives the decisions.

If you drive them all from the why, "Why are we here?

What are we trying to accomplish?

What's the North Star?

", things that seem like they're desperate to come together.

I have a leadership value that is simple.

I like to keep things very easy [laughs] and it's to bring clarity from complexity, and purpose to the work.

So the job's not to make it harder, it's to make it easier.

Nobody wants to understand how hard it is.

They want to understand how easy it is and they want to understand their role, is their purpose to the work.

"Why am I here?

Does my work matter?

This report that I'm generating, am I generating a report or am I generating a report to help build a better life for someone?"

And I think when we make that connection, that makes the glue that creates the flywheels.

I mean, all the concepts of creating a purpose driven company.

So it is complex in one sense.

But in the other sense, it's very clear.

- Because humanity has commonalities.

- [Bill] It does.

- We all have fears and aspirations and goals and needs.

And so if you... What I hear you say is, you appeal to the person.

You make sure the person understands their important role in an organization.

Then they're willing to come together to make good things happen.

- Well, we ask every teammate in our company about their own personal purpose.

So we have our company's purpose, but we ask all 52,000 teammates, "What's your personal purpose?

Share that with us.

Share that with your teammates, why are you here?"

- How does it matter that you live?

- How does it matter?

What do you want accomplish in your life?

And invariably, what happens is that personal purpose has a connection with the company purpose.

That Venn diagram almost always overlaps.

It doesn't overlap at all, maybe it's not a right match, but it almost always overlaps, some cases just right on top of each other.

And when that happens, that's the flywheel effect.

When someone sort of feels, "Wait a minute, my personal purpose, what I want to accomplish, is aligned with what the company wants to accomplish."

Then all of a sudden, it's not a job anymore.

I mean, the job goes away.

It's a, "I'm purpose driven.

What I do is so much bigger than just a job."

- It becomes a partnership.

- It totally becomes a partnership.

- Yeah.

Let's talk a little bit about workforce.

I mean, you hire a lot of people.

You have to attract them in the first place.

You have to develop them, grow them, nurture them.

Then you have to retain them.

The world is changing.

Young people today have different aspirations, different mannerisms for doing work.

Tell us about the one or two things that you, in your career you have seen happen, in terms of changes and transformations in the workforce.

- Everybody talks about different generations, we have Z and everybody talks about different generations.

I think it's about people.

It's not about generations.

It's not about putting people in buckets and defining them by when they were born and their expectations are different.

They want more from companies.

I think they want to work for companies that stand for something that's meaningful.

I think they want to do meaningful work.

And I think that's a great aspiration.

And I think they should challenge companies to provide that.

I think they should demand more from us, and different generations are doing that.

But exactly what you said.

So we have to be attractive.

We have to be the employer of choice.

We have to be a place where people want to come.

And then we talked about earlier, about the leadership institute, then we have to develop it.

We want people to have meaningful careers at our institution.

People talk about wanting to do a lot of different things.

I've had seven or eight careers, I've just had 'em at one company.

So we do believe in the fundamental concept of, you can have a lot of careers, but why not have it at one company, and investing in their leadership and investing in their development and doing that in partnership with them, what's important to them, what do they want to learn, what are their aspirations?

And we can provide that within our own four walls.

- When you look at college graduates today, and I know you attract a lot of 'em in the leadership development program, and so on, that you spoke about.

What frustrates you the most and what do you celebrate the most?

- I actually don't have a lot of frustrations 'cause I celebrate.

'Cause I think students are coming outta colleges today.

They're coming out much more clear-eyed about what they wanted to do.

I remember when I started, I had no clue.

- And you went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel hill.

- I did.

Let's not attach those things being no clue.

[laughs] But I didn't know what I wanted to do with a career.

I thought I'd start in banking.

Then I'd learned some other things and go do something else.

And I found that, "Wow, this really aligns with what I wanna accomplish."

But I think students today are much more clear eyed.

I think they're much- - Are they prepared for business and life?

- I do think they're better prepared for business and life.

And I think the university systems have done a really incredible job, 'cause they've asked the questions, "What do you want?

What are the life skills that you want to attain?

How do we help you along that journey?"

Most students now have had a variety of internships across this process.

So they come in fairly clear-eyed and I think that's a really, really positive.

So I'm a cup half-full person.

[laughs] So I don't think about the frustrations.

I just think about, it's a great group of students that are coming out of our universities, but they are demanding more, as I said before, they're demanding more of us and we have to live up to their standards as well.

And I think that's a great back and forth.

I think that's a- - It's a two-way street.

- It is a two-way street.

- Yeah.

We live in an age of technology, clearly, and you've already spoke about digital banking and how it changed measurably.

It must demand enormous investment, both human and financial to make that possible and available.

But also with it come this whole concern across society, individually and corporately, about cyber security, about misuse of these services.

How does an organization as large as Truist manage that process?

It is scary when you think about how the financial spectrum internationally is so interwoven, it scares individuals like me and others that governments or individuals who mean ill and who are adept at playing with technology.

How do you manage that, overcoming that fear in a way that does not render an organization impotent?

- A couple of things.

One of the reasons that we merged was to create the capacity to invest in technology, both, I would say offensive, in terms of with our clients.

But also defensive and protection of our clients, because the stakes are just, as you said, the stakes are going up and they're substantial.

I think you have to start with a framework of, "It's the client's data, not ours."

I think that's sort of a fundamental place that you have to start from.

And then we have a fiduciary obligation to protect that data for our clients.

So we start with that as a premise and that's foundational in everything we think about.

And then we test, we're constantly testing.

We have people who are trained to attack us internally, so to our own teammates, we hire third parties to try to accomplish that.

We hire third parties to help evaluate us, our regulators do these horizontal reviews.

They look at us relative to everybody else.

So it is a continual focus.

It is an absolutely arms race to make sure that we're investing in the right level.

So the bad guys will go somewhere else, not with us, the concept of really, really protecting that client data and constantly, constantly testing.

I think that's the real framework, is you just literally can't rest any day, because unfortunately, the bad guys are also investing a lot and we have to make sure that we're one step ahead.

- So Bill, you've lived a life that's full.

- [Bill] No doubt.

- In terms of your professional pursuits, in terms of your community involvement, you've been involved in many, many community leadership positions, you have set the standard for stewardship in the communities.

You've spoken about Truist being engaged in the communities where you do business, that you have a responsibility.

One of those that intrigues me and inspires me is that Truist actually has programs on financial literacy for children in schools.

Is that right?

- Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, we have a number of programs for children in school, both on financial literacy and we also have some gamification for children for reading.

So it is foundational for all of us as a society.

- How does that work?

- How do you do that?

Do you simply fund it or do you work through school systems?

Do you have advisory boards for it?

How does that- - Yes, yes, and yes.

- Four yes's.

- Yeah, it's all those things.

So we work closely with school systems, we work closely with students.

We work closely with advocacy groups to make sure that we're designing systems and capabilities that are relevant.

We work with school systems to make sure that they're in the systems and it's amazing.

I mean, children who come through some of our sort of core foundational, financial literacy programs within sort of a... And kids love it.

They love the gamification, right?

That's how kids learn today.

It's totally different.

- [Nido] Through games.

- Oh, exactly.

We need to adopt to- - Computer games and so on.

- Exactly.

We need to adopt to how they learn.

So kids who take it initially, different people have different financial foundation.

They've learned from different places.

But once they go through the process, their learning just goes up exponentially, just with sort of one quick review of a process that adopts and adapts to how they want to learn.

- So if you were talking to your children and they ask you the question, "Dad, your life has been a life of an achiever.

You are the Chairman CEO of perhaps a fifth, sixth largest financial institutions in the United States of America.

This is a serious achievement.

And you've done it on merit and by design."

And they say to you, "Dad, what are the two or three lessons you've learned in life, that influenced your thinking and impacted your living?"

What might you say to them?

- Did my children ask you to ask this question?

[both laugh] - They asked me the question.

I didn't know the answer.

So I'll ask you that.

- I'm very blessed to have four children and 16 people in our immediate family, seven grandchildren, so I have a strong group around .

And it really goes back to the same foundational thing, is to live a purposeful life.

And I think if you start with that as a concept, and that's what we talk about as a family, is live purposeful life, not what the job is, not, the things you have to do on the career ladder.

But if you live a purposeful life, if you stay focused, if the why is important to you, the other stuff sort of happens and comes along.

And then the scorecard is about living a purposeful life, that I help people.

- But some people don't know how to do that, Bill.

- I think, yeah.

But I think I agree with that.

And I think that's why it's important to have the conversation and to ask people, again, back to our personal purpose, asking teammates of "What is important to you?

What do you want to accomplish?"

And then you figure out whether the career things and all the other pieces come together with that.

And if the goal is to live a purposeful life, as the goal is to make a difference in the community, or the world or whatever your sphere is, that I think the other things sort of come together and you'll do the things.

You'll train.

You'll invest in yourself, because you're gonna want to do more.

You're gonna want to help more people.

You want to have a bigger influence.

I talk about my personal purposes, take care of my corner.

So it's sort of an easy- - Take care of my corner?

- My corner.

So it's an easy concept because everybody has a corner.

Your corner could be really small.

It could be my family.

It could be the people I work with it.

It could be my church, could be my synagogue, could be anything in your corner.

But is your corner better because you were there?

Did you make a positive difference?

- And you define a corner as a, it's not a physical space?

It's a... - Right.

And everyone has a corner.

And if the concept is, if everyone in the world took care of their corner, thinking about the concept of the whole world as a corner.

My corner today is much bigger than when I started my career.

It was very small, but I have a much bigger, much bigger corner in terms of responsibility.

So I wake up thinking, "Am I making a difference?

Because I was here, was my corner better?

Did I have a positive influence?

Did I help people along the way?"

- You know, Bill, it's wonderful to hear, when someone thinks about a leader of a financial institution, we think economics, fiscal literacy, we think about issues and matters and regulations, processes.

- [Bill] All that's important.

- It's all important, but it's wonderful to know that you frame all that with foundational thinking that takes us places.

Thank you for being with me today on "Side by Side."

It's a pleasure knowing you and it's a pleasure hearing you talk about these subjects.

- Thank you for having me.

[inspirational music] ♪ - [Narrator] Funding for "Side by Side" with Nido Qubein is made possible by.

- [Woman] Here's to those that rise and shine, to friendly faces doing more than their part, and to those who still enjoy the little things, you make it feel like home.

Ashley HomeStore.

This is home.

- [Woman] For over 60 years, the everyday leaders at the Budd Group have been committed to providing smart, customized facility solutions to our clients and caring for the communities we serve.

[soft music] - [Man 2] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally, thanks to our teammates.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.

[upbeat music]