This is part of a new ongoing series featuring North Shore Bank’s Emerging Leaders Group members.

Community Engagement Manager Ray Guardiola was an original member of North Shore Bank’s Emerging Leaders Group, which formed in late 2019/early 2020 as an employee-led volunteer group for individuals growing their careers with the bank. Ray served as the first chair of the ELG’s Core Team. The group was brand new at a challenging time—right as the COVID pandemic hit. But despite the obstacles, they kept it going and developed bonds between members. Today, the group has 27 members throughout the bank. 

The following is a lightly edited interview with Ray about the ELG and how it has helped him forge new relationships across the business. 

What positions have you held with the bank and Emerging Leaders Group?

North Shore Bank: Personal Banker, Branch Manager, Area Manager and Community Engagement Manager

ELG: Served as the first Core Team Chair, then a Core Team member, and now an ELG member

What connections have you made during your time in ELG that contributed to your success/professional growth?

We became closer with Senior Vice President – Retail Banking Sue Doyle and Chief Human Resources Officer Molly Schissler because they are both executive sponsors. They’re very open people and would discuss with anybody anyways, but I think to an employee, you know, the head of HR and the head of retail banking—that’s not somebody you’re going to email casually! We raise our questions to them and have discussions. 

One of our events was our Senior Leader Showcase, where we spotlighted different leaders across the bank. It allowed us to understand their stories, what steps they took in their careers and the advice they’d give us. ELG is a platform to learn from some of our upper management and understand what they do, how they impact and the steps they took to get to where they are. It’s confidence-building, too. 

Also, we get to know each other very well, everybody who’s active in the group. We now know people across departments. We do get that day-to-day anyway, but it’s a deeper level because we’re communicating with these other departments apart from “I need your help with this check” or “I need your help with this item.” We learn more about the other person and their responsibilities. So that way, we come to a better understanding of how the bank functions.

What skills do you feel that the group helped you to develop?

I would say that I developed some leadership skills from it. In taking on the Core Team, developing ways to implement new initiatives, and working through some of the challenges we faced early on. You have to go through it to learn how to handle some of those curveballs.

What ELG programming/events have had the most impact on you? 

One of the top ones is the Senior Leader Showcase because you hear about the challenges that company leaders face. It wasn’t just an easy walk, and you can relate that to what you deal with on a day-to-day basis. Utilize some of the tips they gave on overcoming things and implement them in your career. Hopefully, you will have a little easier time since you have some guidance.

And I would add that I like any of the volunteer stuff we do, anytime we’re giving back to the community or helping out at anything in that realm.

How has internal/external networking impacted you since you started with the group?

I think this goes a little hand-in-hand with the Community Engagement Manager training I did.

I think it helped me being in the Core Team leadership role. It’s given me some insight now that, as CEM, I serve on several community boards. How did I implement things with the Core Team? What caused me challenges or tension there that I could face here with the volunteer groups? 

ELG is volunteer, like the community groups, so understanding how we utilize our time with each of these groups will be different, and the importance of each initiative will be different for each volunteer.

Occasionally, the ELG gets together for a fun team-building activity. Are there any of those days that stand out to you? 

One of the first ones that we did was an art tour. That is probably the one that sticks out the most to me because we had spent so long never doing anything in person (due to COVID). Finally, we got everybody together in almost more of a friend capacity because we did build that relationship through Zoom calls and phone calls. We had camaraderie, even though we weren’t actively working next to each other every day.

What is it that you like about this group? Why do you think it’s important for the bank to have a group like ELG?

I think it challenges you to think about some things differently. We get so used to our direct roles every day—I’ve got to come in, I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to work with the customer on this and then go home. You’re working with peers on things. For example, in some instances, there’s somebody who might be a teller who’s on the core team. And now they’re part of the planning to teach bankers and assistant managers something, so they’re stepping outside the bounds of what they would normally do and flexing some of their leadership muscles.

That’s important because I think it really takes you out of your comfort zone.