Podcast | 05.13.26

BISA Portfolio Podcast: What Sports Teams Teach Us About Financial Leadership

by: BISA Staff

In this episode of the BISA Portfolio Podcast, guest host Dawn Goldbacher of Franklin Madison talks with Pamela Dawson of U.S. Bank, Kelly Lytle of Proformex and Leslie Anderson of BMO about how lessons from sports translate into leadership and teamwork across financial services. Recorded live at the BISA Annual Conference in Tampa, their conversation explores building trust with teams and clients, leading with care and transparency and why collective success matters more than individual stats — on the field and in the office.

Tune in to learn:

• How sports experiences shape servant leadership, resilience and accountability in wealth management and insurance.
• Why caring, vulnerability and intentional communication are essential for building trust during uncertain and volatile markets.
• How great leaders “prepare to be ready,” creating multiple game plans to support advisors and clients through market cycles.
• What Dawn, Pamela, Kelly and Leslie see as the core traits of winning teams — and how to apply those principles inside your own financial institution.

Listen to the episode below or listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple.

Transcript

Dawn Goldbacher  
Hello everyone, and welcome to this episode of The BISA Portfolio Podcast recorded live at the Annual Conference here in Tampa. I'm Dawn Goldbacher, guest host for this episode. I played competitive softball when I was younger, and now lead teams across marketing, communications, sales and relationship management at Franklin Madison. Playing sports has definitely shaped my approach towards delivering results, and I was inspired so much by last night's keynote speaker, Coach K, here at the Annual Conference. I'm excited to talk to our guests today about the connection between sports participation, leadership competencies and teamwork. Before we get started, though, I do want to encourage you to please subscribe to this podcast on the app you're listening to now, and if you enjoyed it, share it with your network. Pamela, Kelly and Leslie, it's great to have you guys here as guests. Would you mind introducing yourselves?

Pamela Dawson  
Sure. Thank you, Dawn. I'm Pamela Dawson. I work for the asset management group within US Bank. I've been in this role about eight years, but in the industry over 30 I've been part of the BISA for the past 20 years, and actually am a past recipient of the Circle of Excellence Award, which I'm very proud about. So that's me.

Kelly Lytle  
My name is Kelly Lytle. I am the chief commercial officer at Proformex, and this discussion is near and dear to my heart. So I've grown up in and around sports my whole life, playing them growing up, I ran track in college, I was fortunate enough to have had a father who played running back for the University of Michigan, and then seven years in the NFL, so I've been surrounded by sports and the lessons that we can take from them and what it means to commit to a team since the day I was born. And I've also enjoyed writing two books on the subject, so I'm happy to share and discuss with everyone today.

Leslie Anderson  
Good morning. My name is Leslie Anderson. I am the head of insurance distribution for BMO, and like my panel members, I have been embroiled in sports probably my entire life as well. I've been at BMO for 23 years, in the banking industry for 33 years, but this is my first entree into insurance and leading insurance distribution. But I've managed teams all over the bank, and I think I've brought really great lessons from that, and so I'm really excited about the path forward, and this is a way to kind of top off my very first BISA conference as well. So thank you for having me.

Dawn Goldbacher  
Well, thank you for being here and thank you all. Let's go ahead and get started. Pamela, why don't we start with you? Coach K often talks about speed to trust being the foundation of any great team. When it comes to wealth management and insurance, trust is also your currency. How do you intentionally build and maintain trust, both within your team and with clients, especially in times of uncertainty?

Pamela Dawson  
That is a great question, Dawn. And I think trust is really built when you truly care about the people on your team, right, and they know that you you're not in it for yourself, that you're really in it for them, and you have their back, and by doing that, they then will follow you. And you know that's how you build trust. You have to care about the people, and truly care. I don't know about you all, but you've had leaders in the past that don't necessarily walk the walk, so to speak, like they care more about themselves. They're going up, versus really caring about the people around them. And I've been doing this for a long time. And actually, one of I think one of the things that I'm most proud about is when I was running a broker dealer, and I had a lot of advisors who worked with me. I never like to say 'for me,' but worked 'with me.' They're now at US Bank, and because of the trust that I have built over time, they sell my stuff. And I don't even have to work that hard at it, because I already had built that trust, right? So I think that's that's really what it's all about. It's about truly caring about people.

Kelly Lytle  
Pam, I love that you use the word care, because that is the a number one thing that I was thinking about with this question, because I think that ties back to one of the great lessons that sports can teach, and that's being on when you're on a team, and what it means to be on a team. Is are you able to care for that team more than you do yourself as the individual, and work for the good of the team and sacrifice for the good of the team? Put egos, as Coach K said last night, bring egos into the room, which I loved, but also put them aside or put them under one team umbrella, and it starts with a leader who is genuine and is authentic. And shows that they care, and shows up by demonstrating that depth of care across their team. I thought Coach K really did a great job of showing, you know, the individual conversations that he would have amongst the team to drive by and drive accountability. And I think that highlighted his depth of care as well. And so I think that is absolutely the biggest thing. When you're building that trust, you show you care genuinely, authentically, and you show up every day to do it. 

Leslie Anderson  
I want to double down on that a little bit and then take it a little bit farther. So I do think it is really important to show that you care, but I think there's a there's an opportunity of transparency that I think is very important. An interesting story. When I took over, I spent some time in technology and operations at the bank, and I took it over in March of 2020, and I had teams both in the US and in Canada. And so I had, I was tasked with a really challenging position of building trust with people that I probably wouldn't see for the better part of a year, and one of the things I shared with them was not only what I thought I could bring to the table, but my vulnerabilities that I also had and my expectations for creating space for people to show up with their best self and fill in those spaces, that I'm not great at. A lot of people came to me after that speech to say, Oh my God, I've never seen a leader who actually said, 'I'm not good at this and I need you.' But that is the essence of a great team, being able to understand each other's strengths and weaknesses and fill in for each other, so that the win is collective.

Dawn Goldbacher  
Those are all really great insights. And you know, I know each of you touched in different ways on the concept of teamwork or being a good teammate, so that's really where I was planning to go anyway, with my next question. On a team, collective success is equally as important as individual performance. Kelly, let's start with you on this one. I know you've got a good story for this. What does being a good teammate mean to you?

Kelly Lytle  
Yeah, I'll share a little bit of a personal story. So my dad was a running back for the University of Michigan in the 1970s. He passed in 2010 and a few years later, my family and I were at an event at Michigan honoring him and several of the players he played with. Several of his former coaches, many players who played decades later at Michigan, came up to me and they said, Kelly, I want you to know that your dad is the single greatest teammate in the history of Michigan football because of what he sacrificed for the team. And so you can imagine I'd heard all of these stories my whole life growing up, and at this point, I was into my 30s, so I was older, but just how awe inspiring that is. And to have been for my life, so fortunate and so blessed to be surrounded or to have a father who was immediately able to teach those and pass those types of lessons on to me, because he lived them, right? And so he had those experiences. And so much of it goes back to showing up every single day for your teammates, whether it's a sport, whether it's a work environment, holding yourself accountable, showing others that you're holding yourself accountable, and then also holding them accountable to those team goals, and then that component, the self sacrifice, right? What will you do to help the team today? Because at the end of the day, it is always about the team, the team, the team, and how can I help that team? And I was just so fortunate my whole life. Those were messages and lessons that I heard every single day. So I'm grateful for that.

Leslie Anderson  
I guess I'll add on to that. So when I think about collective wins, people that win, and it's interesting, my dad always made sure that I did sports that were team sports, so I didn't do things that were very singular, because he wanted me to understand the value of pulling on the broader team. Individual wins are most likely episodic. And I get a lot of flack for this statement, but one of my fights that I have with my husband is that I think that LeBron James is a showboat on the court. He also has been phenomenal on the court, so don't get me wrong, but when you start to pass the ball like a Michael Jordan, not only are you seen as great, but your team gets how many rings again? So it is important that if you want to win long term, you've got to be able to help each other win as well. It can't just be about you. And so that's the one thing that I have oftentimes leaned on. I remember when I shifted into leadership, in particular, I had to think about winning very differently. 

Pamela Dawson  
Interesting. I didn't grow up playing sports. I was more of a theater singing that sort of thing. And then, actually, just recently, and how I met Dawn, was on the pickleball court, because we play pickleball in Henderson, and we have this indoor site that recently opened.

But you know, playing pickleball really is all about teaming, and it's interesting, because depending on who your partner is can determine the outcome of your success, right? And when I play with better players, I tend to be a better player. And when I play with people who are not as good, I tend to, you know, my game isn't as good. So it really is all about the team, and when you gather the right people together. And actually, I missed our national championship for our team, that happened last night, and I wasn't there, but we lost, unfortunately, because I wasn't there. No, seriously, I don't know that it would have mattered anyway, but you know, it is all about the team, so a rising tide raises all boats.

Dawn Goldbacher  
Coach K also emphasizes that leadership's not about the leader, it's about elevating others. I know we spoke a little bit about this, but more so in the context of financial services, how do you model and encourage servant leadership in a high-performance, metrics-driven environment? Leslie, do you want to take this one?

Leslie Anderson  
Sure, this was a really important lesson for me, because oftentimes leaders want to lead how they feel comfortable leading, not how their team actually receives information. And so I've actually been preaching this to my rising leaders for quite some time, that you've got to actually, which requires you to understand the people that are on your team and play to their strengths. And it doesn't, like I always say, that if you're giving a message that's critically important and you don't give in a way that it can be heard, it's a wasted message. And so I am very intentional about spending a lot of time getting to know my people on the team and understanding what's important to them and understanding what drives them, so that when I lead, I lead from a vantage point that they can hear me and they can receive it. And I think that inner 'get it' goes back to the comment about caring. So when you care enough to really lean in and understand what makes me tick, I start to trust you, and it allows a followership that is really enduring.

Pamela Dawson  
Absolutely, I totally agree with that. And you know, it's all about asking the right questions, like the lady who just spoke at conference was talking about the important questions that you want to ask to make sure that you do understand where that person's coming from. So you're on the same page, right? But again, we're in a relationship business. People do business with people they like, and when people like you, they will do business with you. So it's it again, it goes back to the caring, and that's, you know, really setting yourself up to be, to be a leader, but not necessarily leading that you're you're just elevating them to be their best self, right?

Kelly Lytle  
Yeah. I mean, I love all of these responses, and this is so good and just such a meaningful subject, and something we think a lot about at Proformex and Leslie, you hit it with the intentionality of getting to know your teammates right, whether you're in a leadership position or not, getting to know and understand what makes them tick. What do they care about? How do they best respond? How are they best? How do you help put them in the best position to be led and to grow? And I think all of that is so important. And you know, we think a lot at Profromex. How do we put our team in, each individual into the best position possible for them to succeed inside of the construct of our team and our company? And that takes a lot of work, because you're thinking about each individual. And how does it work, you know, inside the kind of organism of the company and the team and all of that, and you have to be very intentional with it. And I think as a leader, it's very important to show it, right. It's not just, you don't just tell it. You just don't say it to people, but you model it every day, and you show up every day by showing you care for your teammates, asking, how did the day go? How did the weekend go? How are you doing? And then, you know, embodying all the things that you know, you hope they take forward too.

Dawn Goldbacher  
Thank you, Kelly. One of the things I reflected on that I wrote down during yesterday's session was Coach K talking about, well, of course, you have the will to win, but it's really the will to prepare that matters. And so we all know elite teams can't just prepare for the next game. They have to prepare for the unexpected. So I'd love to go around to each of you and ask, what practice or practices have you put in place to strengthen resilience, decision making and communication across your teams during volatile market cycles? 

Leslie Anderson  
I'm going to start with a story. So one of my clients was the CEO of a major payroll company, and when I brought him on as a client, he wanted to, he sat me down and said, so let me just tell you, the scariest moment is when your weekly payroll, your monthly payroll and your annual payroll end up on the same day, the last day of the year. It gives you absolutely no room for mistakes. And I was just like, Oh my god. How do you kind of navigate that? And he's like, 'yeah, we got to prepare. I need you, Leslie, to have a plan A, a plan B, and Plan C.' Just call me, because you can't plan for everything. So it is, have preparation in terms of, how do we respond if the things we know could happen happen, and then how do we connect when what we don't expect to happen happens? So that we can navigate together. And he always said that clients don't really -- llike everyone expects, he said, banks to screw up, to fail, to drop the ball, but that's not what clients remember. Clients remember how you got them through. And so that is what I share with my leaders all the time. You can't prepare for everything, but you can create an environment that has preparation at the front end and engagement and communication throughout so that you can navigate anything that comes up behind you. So that's my answer.

Pamela Dawson  
Wow, that's a fabulous answer.

And actually, you know, as part of the asset management group, that's what we do, right? We prepare white papers like just yesterday, with all the uncertainty that's happening in the world, in the markets, whatever, we help prepare our advisors to have those difficult conversations with their clients. And so I think it comes down to also education, so really understanding and educating the people to be able to tell the right story when we have uncertainty in the world and in the market. So that's just one of the things that we do to add value to our advisors.

Kelly Lytle  
I think from our standpoint, as we think of, you know what, what do we put into practice? And I love that word practice, because it is right, everything you know, you're always practicing, and it all starts with the things we've already talked about here. So if you've created the type of environment that fosters healthy communication, where leaders and all teammates show that they care and hold each other accountable, but do so in a respectful way. Then when inevitably things go sideways, or plan A doesn't work out and plan B doesn't work out, you trust each other to say, hey, we'll roll up our sleeves and figure out plan C together if we need to. And do so without judgment and without critique, knowing that you're working toward that end team goal again. And we try to, you know, practice for that. You know, we'll say, here's our strategy. What happens if x happens? Okay, then we're gonna have to think about, you know, doing something different, or what happens if this ends up being the result? And, you know, try to play out the same way that you would in a sport where it's like, okay, are we losing by two points in the fourth quarter and, you know, we're taking the ball out under our basket, you practice plays like that. And so do the same thing, whether it's a sales presentation or a demo or, you know, some, you know, big annual meeting, you know, you rehearse and you practice and you prepare for as many of the contingencies as you can, and then trust you have a great team to figure it out when it inevitably goes awry.

Leslie Anderson  
So as you were talking, it reminded me of a book that I read by Joseph Metcalfe, and part of the comment that came up was, 'trust isn't built in the good times. It's revealed in the hard ones.' The book I'm referencing is called When in the Dark, by Joseph Metcalf, and it says, 'Some think you shine under the bright lights, but the bright lights only reveal your work done in the dark.' And I say that really is about trust and culture and relationship and really pouring into your team when you do this right. And hard times come, it is inevitable that winning is on the other side of that.

Pamela Dawson  
Can I just add one more thing, as I think about, you know, think about 2020 in COVID, who thought, right? And I, you know, I travel for business, right? Pretty much every week I'm on the road, and all of a sudden there's no travel. And if somebody had said to me, you're not going to travel for two years, I probably would have. I don't know what I would have done, but it would have been ugly, but, but my point is that when something like that happens, it's called, you've got to pivot, right? You've got to pivot so instead of, you know, being physically with someone, now I'm on a screen in front of them, but it's pivoting and really being flexible and nimble when things don't go the way we think they're going to go.

Dawn Goldbacher  
Wow. What a way to wrap up this conversation. Such a reminder that the biggest wins, whether they're on the court or in the office, rarely come down to individual talent alone. They come from trust. They come from communication, shared responsibility, whether it be from teammates who do the small things consistently and or leaders who are building a culture where people support one another and stay aligned to the mission. If there's one takeaway from Coach K's legacy, it's that great teams are not just a slogan, Kelly, as you mentioned, they are a daily practice and championship cultures are about one teammate at a time, and with regular practice, you don't just deliver better results, you build something that lasts. So again, I encourage everyone to listen to and subscribe to the portfolio podcast on your favorite app, until next time. I'm Dawn Goldbacher,