Evaluate Your Bank President Through Meaningful Conversation, Not Surface Review.
A six-conversation framework that evaluates vision, judgment, trust, and results so performance is sustainable, not accidental.
Evaluate your bank president by replacing surface reviews with six meaningful conversations.
This six conversation approach helps directors evaluate not just outcomes, but the thinking, behaviors, and values that produce them. It creates a shared language between the board and President, reduces blind spots, and strengthens accountability without drifting into management.
Each CEO review conversation is intentionally paired with a quantitative assessment to strengthen, not replace, board judgment. The qualitative discussion surfaces context, intent, and leadership philosophy, while the quantitative measure provides shared language, structure, and evidence.
Together, they help directors move beyond opinions or isolated outcomes and evaluate how leadership thinking, behavior, and results consistently show up over time. The result is clearer insight, fewer blind spots, and more confident oversight rooted in both human judgment and measurable leadership signals.
How This Helps Boards
✔ Creates clarity around CEO accountability
✔ Reduces reliance on gut feel or personality
✔ Balances leadership behavior with banking outcomes
✔ Improves board confidence in oversight
✔ Strengthens trust between board and CEO
Conversation 1: Personal Vision for the Bank’s Future
Clarifies how the President personally sees the bank’s long-term future. This step surfaces strategic direction, community role, and values alignment beyond short-term budgets. The board listens for clarity, coherence, and stewardship-minded ambition.
Quantitative Companion
Kouzes & Posner Vision Creation Protocol
This assessment provides a structured way to evaluate how clearly and convincingly the President articulates a long-term vision for the bank. It examines the leader’s ability to imagine the future, connect that future to shared values, and communicate direction in a way others can understand and support.
For the board, the protocol brings discipline to a conversation that is often subjective. It helps directors evaluate clarity, coherence, and stewardship-minded ambition without debating strategy details or personal preferences, ensuring the President’s vision is both aspirational and grounded in the bank’s mission and community role
Conversation 2: Thinking Like a President
Evaluates how the President processes complex information and makes enterprise-level decisions. Focus is placed on judgment, risk awareness, and the ability to turn data into clear direction rather than reactive action.
Quantitative Companions:
MBTI® Decision Style + Personal Values Assessment
These tools provide insight into how the President processes information, evaluates risk, and makes tradeoffs when priorities compete. The MBTI component highlights default decision tendencies and potential blind spots under stress, while the Personal Values assessment clarifies the internal standards guiding judgment when outcomes are uncertain.
Used together, they help the board move beyond outcomes alone and assess the quality and consistency of decision-making. This supports better oversight of enterprise judgment, particularly in complex, ambiguous, or high-stakes situations where technical expertise alone is insufficient.
Conversation 3: Connect Like a President
Assesses emotional intelligence and trust-based leadership. This step examines self-regulation under pressure, credibility with key stakeholders, and the ability to stabilize and align the organization during uncertainty.
Quantitative Companion:
E/I TalentSmart Emotional Intelligence Assessment
This assessment measures the President’s ability to manage emotions, build trust, and maintain credibility across key relationships. It provides objective insight into self-awareness, emotional regulation, empathy, and relationship management under pressure.
For the board, this tool strengthens evaluation of leadership presence and stability, especially during change, conflict, or regulatory scrutiny. It helps distinguish between technical competence and the relational capacity required to align teams, reassure stakeholders, and serve as a steadying force for the institution.
Conversation 4: Acting Like a President
Focuses on observable leadership behaviors that shape culture and execution. The board evaluates how consistently the President models values, develops leaders, challenges the status quo responsibly, and reinforces the right behaviors.
Quantitative Companion:
Kouzes & Posner Leadership Practices Inventory® (LPI)
The Leadership Practices Inventory measures how consistently the President demonstrates the five observable leadership behaviors proven to drive culture and performance: modeling the way, inspiring a shared vision, challenging the process, enabling others to act, and encouraging the heart.
This assessment allows the board to evaluate leadership based on what the President actually does, not intentions or personality. It provides evidence of whether values are being translated into daily behavior, whether leaders are being developed beneath the President, and whether the culture being reinforced supports long-term success and succession readiness.
Personal Vision for the Bank’s Future
Conversation 5: Critical Outcomes
Connects leadership to enterprise results. This includes financial performance, safety and soundness, risk discipline, and long-term franchise health as evidence of sound judgment and stewardship.
Quantitative Companions:
Key Community Bank Financial & Risk Metrics
This component grounds leadership evaluation in the core outcomes the board is accountable for overseeing. Metrics typically include profitability, asset quality, capital adequacy, liquidity, growth mix, efficiency, and other indicators of safety, soundness, and franchise health.
Rather than functioning as a standalone performance review, these measures are interpreted in context, alongside leadership judgment, risk discipline, and strategic intent. The board evaluates not only whether results were achieved, but whether they reflect prudent stewardship, enterprise thinking, and alignment with the bank’s long-term objectives.
Conversation 6: Structured Input
Provides the board with limited, thoughtful insight from those who work closely with the President. Input is structured around leadership patterns and behaviors, giving directors added line of sight while preserving governance boundaries.
Quantitative Companion:
In-Depth, Structured Interviews with Direct Reports
This process gathers focused insight from those who work closely with the President, using a consistent framework centered on leadership behaviors, decision patterns, and organizational impact. Feedback is synthesized to surface themes rather than anecdotes or individual opinions.
For the board, this provides additional line of sight into day-to-day leadership effectiveness while preserving appropriate governance boundaries. It helps validate observations, identify emerging risks, and reduce reliance on episodic board interactions when evaluating performance and readiness.