- Key insight: Truist is closing its executive-leadership institute in Greensboro, North Carolina, as new CEO Mike Lyons takes a hard look at the bank's businesses and operations. The institute used controversial practices, encouraging participants to recall childhood traumas in an effort to improve their leadership skills.
- Forward look: Truist said it plans to put the Greensboro property, which cost more than $80 million to build and expand, up for sale.
Truist Financial plans to close a leadership center in Greensboro, North Carolina, where its employees go for training, further distancing itself from its pre-merger past and redirecting resources elsewhere.
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The decision to shutter the Truist Leadership Institute, which drew criticism for using techniques that involved tapping into childhood trauma to improve would-be executives' leadership skills, comes on the heels of Mike Lyons' arrival last month as CEO. The regional bank is in the midst of a detailed strategic review of each of its businesses, operations and processes, Lyons told analysts last week.
If the review shows that existing businesses, operations and processes are not core to the bank's strategy or generating targeted returns or helping customers, they'll be cut, he said.
The Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank has already made some changes, such as exiting certain, non-core lending portfolios and overhauling the leadership of its consumer-banking business.
"It's not just businesses. It's every process, every operation, every committee, every decision we make," Lyons said on the company's earning call last week. "No sacred cows."
Lyons, a former president of PNC Financial Services Group and CEO of Fiserv, was hired in June to succeed former CEO Bill Rogers. By that time, investors had decided that the 2019 merger that created Truist was a disappointment.
Seven years earlier, executives promised that Truist would become "the premier financial institution of the future." But the company subsequently was criticized for not reaching the financial targets that executives expected to meet, and for not figuring out how to unify two different workplace cultures.
Truist employees were told this week about the closure of the leadership institute, according to an article in the Greensboro News & Record. In a statement shared with American Banker, the bank confirmed that the center's operations will be discontinued by the end of the year.
The eight-year-old campus of the Truist Leadership Institute cost more than $80 million to build and later expand, records show.
Classes will run through mid-December, and the property will be put up for sale, according to a Truist spokesperson. The decision is intended to simplify operations and focus on areas "that help Truist grow, better serve clients and succeed over time," the spokesperson said. The bank is "still shaping" its future leadership-development programming, the spokesperson added.
The Truist Leadership Institute is one of the remaining links to the bank's pre-merger history. Prior to North Carolina-based BB&T's 2019 merger with SunTrust Banks in Atlanta, the center was known as the BB&T Leadership Institute. That merger brought together two of the most prominent Southeast banks, which once together rebranded as Truist.
The leadership institute was a longtime source of pride at BB&T, championed by two former CEOs — John Allison, who was CEO from 1989 to 2008, and later Kelly King.
The center had a close connection to the late psychologist Dr. James Farr, who promoted the idea that unresolved issues from childhood could stunt the personal and professional lives of leaders. BB&T had a business relationship with Farr Associates starting in the 1980s.
In 1994, while Allison was CEO, BB&T acquired Farr Associates, a leadership and management consultancy developed by Farr, who died in 2000. Allison had said that his experience in Farr's program turned him into a believer.
King succeeded Allison as BB&T's CEO and later was CEO of Truist until he retired in the fall of 2021. He was also a supporter of the institute, saying that it helped him become more self-aware.
In 2018, the institute opened a new 60,000-square-foot campus in Greensboro that cost $35 million, according to a press release from the bank. The campus included 48 individual guest rooms, a "Treehouse" meeting room, dining areas, fitness facilities and staff offices.
Reflecting King's "purpose-driven" mindset in banking, which was later embraced by Rogers, his successor at Truist, King said in the 2018 release announcing the new campus: "Our mission is to make the world a better place to live, and we believe one of the best ways to improve our communities is through stronger leaders in all facets of society."
Truist later invested more money into the institute, expanding the size of the campus by 86,000 square feet at a cost of $51.5 million, according to a permit filed in 2023 with the city of Greensboro.
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Truist did not say how many people the institute employs. The center's LinkedIn page — which describes programming as a "one-of-a-kind, science-based leadership development experience designed with a deep understanding of human nature" — says the "company size" is 51 to 200 people. The center offers programming to individuals outside of Truist in addition to the bank's employees.
The Truist spokesperson said the company is "committed to supporting" the center's employees, including finding them other jobs at Truist and providing severance benefits and job-search assistance.
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Allissa Kline is a Buffalo, New York-based reporter who writes about national and regional banks and commercial and retail banking trends. She joined... Read full bio