Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here.
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Dear Bev,
With the anniversary of 9/11 next week I get the sense that I’m not doing enough to contribute to the world. One of my very close colleagues was on one of the planes that hit the World Trade Towers. The week before he and I had been out for drinks. He had such an enthusiastic and optimistic view of the world and would often nudge me on what a curmudgeon I tended to be.
Since his death and dealing with the trauma, I have done much soul searching and have become less negative and more positive. But every time the date rolls around, realizing how hard hit our industry was with so many financial services executives lost, I want to do something. It’s not enough to donate money or try and keep his memory alive by sharing his story with others.
I want to make an impact and don’t know how to do it.
S.J.
Dear S.J.,
Your note moved me. I too lost a high school friend, a very close colleague and a few other people I had known and worked with through my work in financial services. I wish more people had your attitude to “make an impact” on the lives of others. It’s very admirable.
It sounds like you have been thinking about this for some time – 18 years – and you have taken many steps to live a different and fulfilling life. That’s the first step for anyone wanting to make a difference – dropping unnecessary and draining negativity.
In your work as a financial advisor, you probably have better ideas than me about charitable trusts where you could put your money and your time to good use.
I’ll offer a few ideas simply to honor your colleague and perhaps to be more public about your desire to offer support. With 18 years of consideration, I’m going to assume you might have thought of some of these. But ideas just in case:
- Start small where you can have a real impact. There are so many local organizations who need a helping hand. Is it possible for you, or even perhaps your entire firm as an outing, to volunteer somewhere on a regular basis? You could let people at the org know you are doing this in your friend’s memory in order to keep it alive. They might even have ways for you to acknowledge him through their organization.
- Can you start or sponsor a golf, bowling, bike or other event in his name and raise money for some local organization or cause you care about? There are a number of September 11 organizations raising money and you could highlight these in order to keep the memory alive. These types of outings are a nice way for people to come together and remember those who have been lost.
- Can you create a more personal way to remember by planting a garden or buying a bench to sit somewhere with his name engraved on it, or take a trip once a year to a place he loved and cared about? Most of us want to make big impacts, but sometimes when you are trying to honor someone’s memory, carving out personal time and space to focus on them creates an impact in your life which can then reverberate.
- Reach out to others who might have known him, or know people who also died. Can you create an “anniversary to remember” each year where you do something together and share stories?
- If you want to really make an impact, beyond honoring your friend, find ways every week to do something nice for someone somewhere. I know it might sound corny, but when looking for the big impact, sometimes we miss the little things we all could be doing on a daily basis to spread care and kindness.
Dear Bev,
Would it be wrong to feature an article on one of our long-time (32 year) team members who worked in our office and passed away very suddenly a couple of weeks ago? Of course clients knew her. She ran our office and often got involved in answering operations issues for our clients.
I don’t want to continue to remind clients she is gone. We have five very capable people who worked with her (between 5-17 years of her tenure) so we are able to fill the hole from a business perspective. But she was a much loved person by all and we want to pay some sort of tribute. She led an interesting life outside of our office and I’m not sure most clients knew much about her.
Should we do this in our newsletter? It seems strange to send an email just featuring her.
A.U.
Dear A.U.,
Sometimes I organize similar questions. This one follows the one above about keeping someone who is important “alive” in people’s hearts and minds. She sounds like she was an important member of your team so this could be a nice tribute to her. Do you already include personal information in your newsletters so clients would be used to seeing this in a specific area? If not, it could be a bit odd to add it there. If you do, then this would be the perfect forum.
Sending an email to announce her passing and including information about her would be fine given how long she was with your firm and that she worked directly with clients. But it sounds like you have already done this, or clients already know. Perhaps you could create a scholarship in her memory, or donate to a cause she cared about and then announce this along with her background.
I imagine other advisors have gone through this – write in and let us know what respectful ways you have found to address this with clients.
Beverly Flaxington co-founded The Collaborative, a consulting firm devoted to business building for the financial services industry in 1995. The firm also founded and manages the Advisors Sales Academy. She is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching undergraduate and graduate students Entrepreneurship and Leading Teams. Beverly is a Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst (CPBA) and Certified Professional Values Analyst (CPVA).
She has spent over 25 years in the investment industry and has been featured in Selling Power Magazine and quoted in hundreds of media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC.com, Investment News and Solutions Magazine for the FPA. She speaks frequently at investment industry conferences and is a speaker for the CFA Institute.
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