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,
I am a female advisor and working mother. It’s been challenging to be home these few months and also make sure my two children, in the second grade and seventh grade, attend to their studies and focus on school. I’ve put a system in place to allow me to help them, but also work with my clients. My boss, a male advisor, is now talking about having us return to the office in mid-August. He is saying all of the right things about social distancing, rigorous cleaning, wearing masks and so on.
But the problem is that I have come to like working from home. I am the only female with nine other male advisors (all, except one, of whom have spouses who do not work). Even in the office, I generally keep to myself and manage my clients.
I have never asked for anything more than my male colleagues. I don’t talk about all of the additional responsibilities I have working from home. My husband has a very demanding job and the kids don’t respond as well to his “teaching,” so the childcare burden falls on me. I don’t complain to my boss or my other colleagues.
But when it comes time to return, I believe I should have more options around what I can do. I don’t have any idea how to broach this with my boss. As an aside, we hired a new advisor several months ago who wanted to work from home one day a week because he cares for an elderly parent and my boss hit the roof saying “our job is in the office.” That’s what I am up against.
L.L.
Dear L.L.,
I understand your boss had that position months ago, but the world has changed quite a bit over the last several months, don’t you think? Leaders who would never have dreamed that staff members could be productive (and maybe even more so) working from home are now seeing that nothing gets dropped, the work gets done, the clients are served and the staff is functional.
Don’t presume because your boss had a philosophy at one point in time, this is his philosophy today and going forward. He, like many people, may be re-thinking how work gets done. That said, I also speak with a lot of firm leaders who are anxious to get their staff back in the office. They miss the camaraderie that comes from being near each other, sharing ideas and insights and generally benefitting from in-office relationships. Some people want the break from their home and family and are hoping to get back to being at a formal desk in their work setting.
Honesty might be your best policy. Not knowing what your boss is thinking, how he might have changed his thought process, or what he might recognize about the responsibilities you have for your family, I suggest the following:
- Schedule time to talk with him. Don’t leave this discussion to tag along to the end of a conversation about something else, or hope you will find a time during your busy day to call him when he is also available. Scheduling with him also underscores the importance of the conversation and lets him know you have an important communication.
- Give him a bit of background, but don’t go into too much detail and don’t border on the “woe is me” side of things. Be factual: “As you may or may not know, I have two school-aged children at home and I have been using my own free time to help them with their studies. At this point, we don’t know what options we have for the summer, or what the school will do in the fall. I have been able to meet all of my client’s needs, attend every firm meeting (add other things here that will illustrate what you have successfully accomplished for the firm) and so I will need more time than mid-August before I can return to the office.”
- Let him know you value being a team member, you want to continue to be a strong contributor and you believe you are adding as much, if not more, value to the firm from a work-at-home position (assuming, of course, this is true for you). Explain it would add unnecessary and unwanted stress for you to have to also juggle a return to the office.
- Then stop talking. Allow him to process this and respond. His response will tell you everything you need to know about how hard you might have to fight or negotiate for this decision. He might surprise you and say he would expect you would have to be home longer than others, or he might tell you he doesn’t think you should be treated differently.
If it is the latter, you will have to create a stronger case for why you do need to be treated differently. You can always point out that your situation is in fact different from your colleagues.
Dear Bev,
I’m frustrated with one of my colleagues. We were both assigned to work on an important new client onboarding initiative for our firm. Neither of us wanted to be on the team to do this. We are overwhelmed, but we were assigned the tasks and there is no undoing it. My colleague shows up to the meetings (there are five of us on the project, but only two of us are advisors who are supposed to be the subject-matter experts for this). But then when work needs to be done, he is MIA. He doesn’t respond to texts, emails or phone calls. Then he will say – after something is due – “Oh, was that on my plate? I didn’t get any information outlining what I was supposed to do.”
It is driving me absolutely crazy. I don’t want to be on this team any more than he does. I feel like I am back in grad school where I was assigned a partner who did nothing. I did all of the work but he got the “A” that I generated. Help!
A.K.
Dear A.K.,
As a college professor, your last sentence struck a chord. I’ve seen that dynamic play out time and time again with my students, too. There is often a weak link in the group who simply does not pull their weight.
In business, when people display the behavior you refer to with your colleague, I call it “nailing Jell-O to the wall.” It is clear what needs to happen, but you can confront your colleague on what was due and watch him adeptly evade taking responsibility and not know exactly where to go – while the Jell-O you thought you had just slips down the wall…..
The most important thing you can do is take charge with this team and develop a clear plan of action. Something like the following:
I use this template with many of my own clients to create their plan and ensure accountability and timing for everyone involved. If the team had something like this, and circulated it to all of the team members, your colleague’s name would be here with his responsibility and due date. It would be hard for him to say he didn’t know, or forgot when other team members would be expecting him to provide an update.
You can change the headers for the columns. You always want to have what, who and when but sometimes I use “budget” as a category, or “expected obstacles” or “stakeholders.” Make this a discussion among the team members to figure out what would work best for this project and then write it down and hold his feet to the fire! I have seen even the best evaders shift their behavior when teams start operating this way.
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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