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,
We have a small firm, just nine people in total. Several of our team members have had some very difficult life experiences over the last year. One person lost a spouse to cancer, another had a family member detach and move away without communicating with the family, and another has an adult child battling substance abuse. I share this only to say the life issues are significant and they are naturally impacting these team members’ abilities to do their jobs. One person was very short and nasty with a client who called in. This was one of our larger clients and they needed money to address a serious life event. The client got upset, broke down in tears and called me as COO of the firm to share their upset.
I am not an HR person – we are such a small firm we don’t have a full-time HR person. I am watching these issues play out day-to-day. I have deep sympathy for our team members, but the toxic nature of dealing with them and taking it out on our clients is not acceptable. I have always had a problem separating the business that needs to get done for the firm from the reality that life happens and people deal with difficult things.
I don’t know the line between saying, “leave the issues at home when you come to work” and defending our team members to clients and asking them to understand what the person is dealing with. I am out of my league, but I have to do something.
A.D.
Dear A.D.,
You are dealing with a very difficult dynamic. I applaud you for considering how best to balance the needs of the business with the needs of your team members. People get into states of stress that make it impossible for them to stay objective and focused on the work. In a firm with only nine people, it would be hard each time this happens to tell some of them to “just go home.” And depending on the nature of the person, sometimes it is harder to be alone and left to think in your own home; it is better to be in the office dealing with work-related issues.
What do you do? There are a few options that come to my mind:
1. I know you don’t have an HR rep but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t locate an employee assistance program (EAP) resource for your team members. Perhaps the firm can pay for some short-term access for everyone. Even though you name the three people and their situations, that doesn’t mean the remaining six of you aren’t also dealing with stressful issues. I recently started teaching again, leading two graduate classes and one undergrad. I was struck when I went to class this weekend by the signs everywhere supporting students with their stress, worry and concerns. People are dealing with a lot, especially post-COVID. There is so much everyone has been asked to deal with and many changes in the world at large. Have resources and access for everyone if the firm can afford it.
2. Talk to these team members about their attitude and approach toward clients. Even the clients (back to point #1) are likely dealing with their own life issues. It really isn’t “fair” (to use a word I have never liked…) to have a client be a sounding board or target. Remind your team members the clients are not the source of the issue, nor can they do anything to change the circumstances of your team member’s life. Acting out toward them only creates more issues and makes things more difficult all around.
3. If you are comfortable with it and can spend the time and money, take your team offsite together and have an open conversation about the business – where you want to go, what’s working and what’s not. This environment allows for people to open up about personal things but not do it in a accusative way. In other words, your focus would be on planning for the business, but during these conversations you often let people share personal aspects too. It can be very cathartic for the team to plan together but also have an environment to be able to speak about important life issues.
Hopefully one of these ideas will work for you. Managing difficult life issues for team members while also staying focused on the needs of clients, and the firm, is not an easy balance.
Dear Bev,
I appreciated the article you wrote on gossip. We have such a problem with our team. If someone has a life problem, every single person in the firm will eventually talk about what they should do and why they are having the problem. It’s a situation where no matter who you are (lead advisor or the receptionist at our front desk), 19 people could be discussing you and your life. But you might not even know it was going on.
I come into the workplace to do the work. I love the planning. I enjoy the clients. I like most of my team members. This is a challenging business – it takes concentration and constant learning. Being distracted by hearing that someone’s spouse is cheating on them, someone’s kid is taking drugs, or someone is getting evicted just isn’t important to me. I lose my focus and fundamentally don’t care. How do I shift this culture and get people to see the damage they are doing to themselves, and to the firm?
N.P.
Dear N.P.,
Refuse to participate. Tell your team members “I don’t want to hear about other people’s lives and problems. It’s not that I don’t care, but I enjoy the work and I come in to do my work. There aren’t enough hours in the day to focus on everything.”
Given the toxic environment you are describing, the chance is very high the reaction will be to start gossiping about you. But you have to make a choice. If you don’t want to be involved, and you find the engagement distracting and negative, you must choose to ignore the fallout and stand up for yourself.
It’s harder than it sounds. But once you do it, you will be outside of the loop and left to focus on what matters to you in your planning profession. You have to use your own emotional intelligence (EQ) in a case like this and choose in favor of what matters to you.
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.