I received an e-mail from the President/CEO of my bank inviting me and 9 other officers of the bank to attend a meeting in his office early next month. I am the compliance officer for the bank. The other 9 officers are comprised of 4 branch managers, 1 regional branch manager, a mortgage officer, a commercial lender, a finance person, and someone that oversees some retail operational issues like ACH, cash management, CIF, etc. Our President/CEO hopes to meet with all officers below the SVP level in these groups of 10. The memo says "There will be no agenda for these meetings but a free flow discussion on any topic affecting our financial institution." It later says "This will be your meeting to express yourself, ask questions and provide input to me." This is the first time I have been invited to something like this.

1. Has anyone been invited to a similar meeting?
2. How did the meeting go?
3. Did you see any changes at your institution as a result of issues raised at the meeting?
4. Do you have any suggestions for me?

I had a President do this process once.
We sat around in a small boardroom and introduced ourselves and had to give a little bit of our background and what we did at the bank.
Some people did little more than introduce themselves and kept quiet the rest of the time.
It was about an hour meeting in the morning so we had coffee etc to make it more homey.
Some people really discussed the issues that they had in their position.
Some asked questions about where the bank was going or what thought process played in certain decisions that management had made.
I think it was a positive experience for both sides.
I suggest that you use the opportunity to show yourself in a positive light, but you will have to play in by ear as to how much he really wants to discuss work issues.
If he does not know much about you I would use the opportunity in your introduction to showcase your attributes.
Good luck.

Our bank president does this once per quarter. But he meets with every department, not just officers. He will go to each of the banking centers (15), and then meet with the various departments at the main branch. It's basically informational letting everyone know where the bank is headed, philosophy, expansion updates, answer any questions we may have etc. It's great that we have a guy that really wants to get to know everyone and let's us all know what is going on.

Thanks for the input MagicCity. The President is familiar with me and my work. I found out that he is meeting with another group a few days before my meeting. I will reach out to some of these people and find out how the meeting went.