7 Secrets Of Success: Part 6 Of An Interview With Gloria Nelund

Read the previous installments of our interview with Gloria Nelund, reprinted from Ethix:

Quitting the Job

[Nelund picks up on the story of quitting her job from our last post.] I got on a plane that night, took a red eye to London, and the next day I met with my boss and said, “A year from now I don’t want to be doing this.” He tried to talk me out of it, and make some accommodations for a different type of schedule. But I said, “I just don’t want to do this anymore.” It was April, and I agreed to stay with it till the end of the year to support transition of responsibility.

To demonstrate just how out of balance my life was at this point. Not only did my husband not know I was in London; he had no idea I was quitting my job. It wasn’t until after the fact that I picked up the phone and called my husband. I wanted to find a way to break it to him, to make some excuse, but I simply said, “Honey, I’m in London. I just quit my job.” Thankfully, his response was “Oh, thank God. I’ve been praying that something would happen because this is just unbearable.” He saw what it was doing to me physically. It was the commute, the stress of the position, the family separation, everything.

Principles of Success

Right after that I was asked to give a talk to a group of younger women called Women on Wall Street. They had asked me before but I had always been too busy and was not sure, in any case, what I would say. But now I had no excuse, so I made up a list of things that I had done in my career that I felt were at the root of my success.

What was on that list?

1. Daily time with God. It is easy in the hectic pace of business, where you can easily get caught up in the trappings around you, to lose perspective. I find that I need to take time each day to get centered, to gain a larger perspective, and to reconnect with purpose and goals that are bigger than me.Many people think they are too busy to do this, but I have found it essential.
2. Never compromise my values. Business dealings represent a series of compromises. Negotiations, structuring a deal, creating an affordable product, meeting conflicting demands all call for tradeoffs. But I need to be rooted in a strong foundation of ethics where my word is my bond, where cutting corners is unacceptable, and I need to review this and act on this every day.
3. Always be fair. You can’t satisfy everybody all of the time. When somebody misses an assignment or makes a mistake, you have to deal with the situation. But how you deal with the people involved (both people you are close to and people who you don’t know) must be done in a way that a third party would acknowledge that this is fair.
4. Really care about people. In an organization where there are many people carrying out assignments, it is easy to focus on the utility of what the person does and lose sight of the person. Seeing each individual as a person, not an object, keeps reminding us that a person is more than his or her task.
5. Focus on outcomes. This is related to Stephen Covey’s “begin with the end in mind.” I keep reminding myself to pull back to the objective and what we are trying to accomplish. This keeps us from needless side ventures away from the main objective.
6. Own the responsibility. When I have been assigned a job to do, it is important to be responsible for seeing that it gets done. There will always be roadblocks, excuses, and things that come up along the way that make the task difficult. But it is my job to get it done, and I can’t allow other things to become the reason or excuse for not carrying through.
7. Work beyond expectations. I need to have a higher standard for myself than my boss or others have for me. It is not enough to get it done in the time allocated. I want to do better than expected, more than is expected, working to my capability. This includes offering insight beyond what is asked and not being satisfied to simply “answer the mail.”

Did you get into the role of women in business specifically?

During the question-and-answer session after the talk, one young Wall Street woman asked me, “If you had one piece of advice for us, what would it be?” I thought for a second and said “Find a really great husband.” The women seemed confused by my response, but I could never have done what I did without a really great husband, somebody supporting me, somebody taking care of everything at home and providing incredible emotional support. I probably didn’t appreciate it as much as I do now, but I have to say it’s what I know allowed me to be stable and just continue doing what I did.

Starting TriLinc

How did you decide to start TriLinc Global?

I mentioned earlier how I quit my job at Deutsche Bank. I took a couple of years off, away from business. I got reconnected with my family, and I looked at options. But it was clear I was not a stay-at-home person. I admire people who are, but it is not who I am. I found myself arranging the books, alphabetizing the medicine cabinet, and other things that drove my family, and me, nuts. I engaged in a study of the Bible, looking for career answers. I considered whether ministry or church work might be the best use of my time. But again, that was not me. I realized I was wired for business. When I was asked to serve on the board of RS Investments, I realized how much the financial services area was something I was wired to do. There were numerous opportunities to return to a big bank, and that would have been great. But through my study and time away I decided I wanted to do something where I could make an actual difference, and that is what led to starting TriLinc Global.

Another thing I learned, though, is in the second half of my life I want to be more deliberate about what I’m doing, more careful. That is not to say I don’t overwork and I don’t put as much energy and effort into this, but I do more things to be deliberate. Every day without fail, I take the first hour of my day to do my devotions and center myself. It helps me with my spiritual balance. It really helps me to stay grounded and to be more present. When I am at work I am very focused, but I also try to be focused at home. It requires a little more compartmentalizing in my life than I used to have, but helps in terms of having better balance.

Stay tuned for our final post on Nelund’s story! Kind permission is granted by Seattle Pacific University and the Institute for Business, Technology, and Ethics for the use of this material from Ethix magazine, where it first appeared March 2012.