What are your name, title, organization and accountability?

Maggie Mui, sr. vice president, director for small business banking in San Francisco Bay region. I am accountable for 79 store branches and focus on business acquisition, cross-selling and retention of the small business customers for these locations. I am focused on helping small businesses achieve their goals. I moved into this position in October 2004.

When and why did you attend WLC (Women Leading Change)?

I attended the WLC for ethnically diverse Wells Fargo women leaders in June 2004. 20 of us from all over the US got together. I felt WLC was a very unusual type of leadership training. For one thing it was very emotional. Being able to fully be ourselves was liberating and we learned many things in the course and from each other.

What skills have you used the most since the program?

I moved to the US about 15 years ago. As an Asian American I previously felt that my communication skills were not good. The one thing that has had most impact for me is the conversation for achieving ground-breaking results. I love the action conversation the most. Before I have important conversations I refer back to my WLC notebook and review this approach. It’s my ‘bible.’ I look at what’s important to the people I’m about to converse with. I find out what will make a difference to them. I try not to assume they’ll understand my point of view or what’s important to me. This format and template helps me in my conversations with others.

I always use the top-of-the-mountain vision to identify the outcome I want to produce. Once I’ve got that in mind I work backward to establish the foundation piece. This has been very helpful for me in working with my own vision as well as the team’s or bank’s vision. It helps us move forward.

I am still working on expanding the playing field for people’s commitments. As a leader, my job is to ensure that more people are doing the right thing for the customer. I encourage people’s commitments and link them to the bank’s commitments so that people enjoy moving the bank’s business forward and serving our customers.

What resources do you want from or do you have to offer the rest of the IWL community as you continue your leadership journey?

Our Wells Fargo WLC group of 20 decided that we would help effect change for the bank by positioning the bank as a better and more diverse organization. The Diversity Line Group Project is our focus. The purpose of the project is to make suggestions to the company that will encourage further diversity so that Wells Fargo, our customers and the employees will all benefit. We’ve presented to management twice and will have a follow-up in the future.

I am also proud of expanding my ability to partner with others. I enjoy getting more people on the playing field and expanding it for the people I work with. I am partnering with others to get work done instead of feeling like I have to do it alone. We have a collaborative effort in working towards mutual goals. Now it’s one team, one goal, one vision. We better understand each other’s jobs and are getting clear about how to make everyone more successful. The sky is the limit when you work as a team.

5) What resources do you want from or do you have to offer the rest of the IWL community as you continue your leadership journey?

My WLC program and my experiences are solely within Wells Fargo. I’m dying to hear from others in other companies about what they’ve found successful in their application of contextual leadership principles. I would love to hear about what people in other organizations do when they run into obstacles, for instance.

From my point of view, I highly recommend reviewing the WLC notebook when someone gets stuck because that’s what’s worked for me. However, perhaps someone else has something else that really works for them that I am overlooking. I would love to alumni stories.

I offer to be an available partner to anyone who’d like to contact me. If anyone would like to know more about banking, I’d be happy to speak with you.