2024 BankNews Outstanding Women in Banking: Shannon Johnson

Shannon Johnson, EVP and chief administrative officer for Kansas City, Mo.-based UMB Bank, and a 2024 BankNews "Outstanding Women in Banking" honoree, has a lot going on: .Johnson oversees all administrative programs that serve the $50 billion bank's 3,600 employees across its eight-state footprint, and manages more than 390 people within HR, corporate risk, credit risk, continuous improvement, audit and legal. She's also regularly in service to her colleagues through the bank's network of Business Resource Groups, she mentors female bankers who look to her as a role model, she's actively serving her community, and she's a wife and parent to three teenage children..In April of this year, Johnson picked up another task – leading the review and audit process in advance of UMB's acquisition of the $19.4 billion Denver-based Heartland Financial. "It was kind of a third full-time job for everybody involved," Johnson said. "But I think a lot of times I try to connect dots. I try to move people back from the details to get them to the big picture.".Johnson has been honing that skill for almost a decade. .Johnson joined UMB in 2002 working in the HR call center. Twenty-two years and nine role changes later, Johnson focuses on fostering connections between departments and stakeholders. That work began in 2015 when she was chief human resources officer. "We were a 3,500-person company, and while we're growing, we were not that big," she said. "But I think some of our corporate functions were acting like we were a 50,000-person company.".As she looked more closely at varying corporate processes, she viewed the lack of connective tissue as somewhat of a handicap. She told her boss: "I don't know why we aren't working together. We're serving the same business unit. Why can't we collaborate differently?".The bank's chair, Mariner Kemper, took Johnson's observations to heart, creating her current role so she could implement her vision of ensuring each corporate function knows how all of the bank's businesses work, and that they support one another, despite their differences.."It was really exciting to get to pull all of our corporate functions together," Johnson said. "They weren't talking to each other. They weren't aware of shared priorities, not because they weren't allowed to; they just weren't expected to."."Through her leadership, Shannon has helped UMB be even more adaptable, nimble and intentional in meeting the modern workforce's needs and desires – something not often found in the banking industry," said James Rine, bank president..The people at Heartland who will soon be UMB employees are counting on this empathic approach. These days, Johnson's focus has shifted to cultural and operational integration as the banks come together, creating what will become the 36th largest bank in the nation.."Heartland is kind of like UMB was 15 years ago," Johnson said. "They are 11 separate banks with 11 separate cultures, and they're strong within each other, but they are not cohesively together." UMB is acquiring 10 of the 11 Heartland charters. "We invested in a culture fitness diagnostic with EY, which felt a little scientific.".For the self-described "HR nerd," Johnson said the goal was to "help meet people where they are, understand how they feel about change, about communication, about rules within the organization.".With the understanding that a cultural misfit can sink a deal, Johnson said she's trying to manage people's expectations and lead with empathy, which she considers table stakes to be effective when dealing with humans. For this, she taps her educational background in psychology and an earlier career spent as a social worker. "Everybody has feelings about a situation," Johnson said. "When I'm bringing people together or I'm seeing different disconnects throughout the functions, it's about, 'What is so important to this person? Why are we so conflicted about this issue?'"."Rather than claiming to have the perfect plan or right answer, Shannon leads a team that regularly collaborates with leadership and associates throughout the company to gather and analyze data to help make strategic, well-informed decisions, all while openly communicating these items, and obtaining feedback along the way," Rine said..What Johnson is striving to communicate is that she values others the way she hopes they value her – and themselves. That takes her all the way back to her native New Mexico, and a lesson she learned from her grandmother. "She took care of people and she connected with people, and a lot of times she was underestimated because she was a tiny 5-foot woman who was running a construction company, an oil company, and a tire company," Johnson explained. "And she would always say to me: 'If you don't know what value you can add in a room or to somebody's life, nobody else will.'".It was years before her grandmother's words hit home. "It's so true in so many ways," Johnson said. "I think a lot of people look for validation from others to find that value, especially in the workplace, but in life in general.".Women at UMB also look to Johnson for inspiration on how to effectively balance work with the personal. Years ago, Johnson bowed out of dinner that UMB was holding to commemorate the close of a big transaction. The dinner was the same night as her daughter's 10th birthday..At the event, Kemper explained Johnson's absence in a way that honored her choice. "Two of the women who were at that dinner called me the next day and said, 'thank you for actually sharing that it's okay, and that for you to do that means I could take off for my daughter's birthday.'".The women at UMB look to Johnson for key examples of how to achieve their professional goals without giving their personal commitments short shrift. "I'm just a very transparent person," she said. "I have been privileged to have leaders here at UMB my entire career, all of them have been men, who have gone out of their way to support my ability to grow a family.".Balance, Johnson said, isn't ultimately the goal; what she prefers is "creating an environment where you can empower yourself to figure it out."