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,
Things are getting tense in our office over recent political issues in the media. We have 10 people; it is uncanny, but we divide five and five along party lines. In the past, it has never been an issue. We’ve worked together for 12 years, but lately the vitriol is getting out of control. Advisors will criticize clients in meetings for being “right leaning” or “left leaning” (depends on the advisor talking) and we have had a couple of blow-ups where advisors were yelling at each other in the office. We have three support team members who don’t take sides and don’t want to be engaged. One told me the other day that the three of them are threatening to walk out together if we can’t find ways to be more civil to one another and less angry and aggressive (her words, not mine).
We are all men in our 50s and early 60s. I don’t see anyone changing anyone else’s mind. But I do see the need to tone it down in the office and find different ways to interact. I know this issue isn’t isolated to our team.
Have you heard of other offices dealing with this? How do we take the temperature down enough so we can know each other’s position and maybe not respect it, but not find ourselves yelling about it? The support team member who talked to me told me she felt she was, “back in seventh grade with bullies who don’t see how ridiculous they are.” Yikes.
K.F.
Dear K.F.,
Times certainly have changed over the last few years, haven’t they? I remember when I was counseled over and over again “not to talk politics or religion” in the workplace. Many of us grew up in a professional environment where you kept your opinions to yourself. If you disagreed, you could certainly share your opinion. But you never worried someone was going to attack you for it! In today’s world, advisors frequently tell me what a fine line they have to walk with clients on this issue. Clients want to know the advisor’s political preferences to determine if it is someone they can respect and trust. Some people legitimately don’t want to lean “extremely” to one side or another. But if you have any opinion at all and it differs from another person, you are “extreme” no matter what you say or believe!
This is a potentially disastrous situation in your firm if your support infrastructure is saying they might walk out en masse. I wouldn’t want to have to explain to clients it was because you were all fighting and couldn’t respectfully find a way to disagree! Not that you would share this, of course, but having all three team members leave at once would certainly raise questions.
Hire an outside coach to come in and facilitate a discussion with all of you. This is not a discussion to help you see one another’s point of view, or to have you embrace the other’s value set. Rather, this discussion is to have you talk about (and hopefully agree upon) ways you can be in the office and stay away from these conversations including not basing clients or judging them for their viewpoints. Negotiate a way to behave – not a way to find common ground. There is no way you are going to meet each other on the discussions themselves, but you could find ways to establish ground rules so you can work together. Five of you can have discussions about what you believe and what’s going on, and the other five can go off separately and do so.
I am not offering to be the coach to come in and do this. You need a very direct, strong-willed person who doesn’t have a strong political leaning one way or the other – find a registered independent who focuses on negotiation.
Do this sooner rather than later. With everything new that is happening every day in the news, you are likely headed for a big blow up if you can’t reach common ground on how to talk with one another more professionally.
Dear Bev,
I have a client who is 79 years old. He is on his third marriage to a woman who is 40 years old. He has a net worth of close to $35 million, and she came into the marriage with nothing. I believe she was a cocktail waitress at a restaurant he frequents quite often – they have inferred this, but I’ve never felt comfortable asking directly.
He has six children from his prior two marriages. They range in age from 25 to 59 years old, and none of them approve of wife number three.
I have spent years cultivating this mutli-generational relationship. I was close with wife number two, who passed away from cancer three years ago. I was at her bedside with the children and was at her funeral services. The children are asking me to intervene and be sure there are documents to protect them. The new wife asked for new documents to be drawn up using a lawyer she trusted – one who I was not able to speak with before the documents were created. Of course, we will need to see these documents. But I have not been able to do so yet.
I know you can’t fix this in this column – but my main question is whether I try and align closely with this new wife or stay aligned with the children and grandchildren? Do I share what I know about the documents, even if my client has asked me not to? I believe firmly in multi-generational relationships and our firm has done a great job with them. But when something difficult happens like this, everything we’ve done to date seems to have been for naught. I don’t think I can win no matter what I do.
E.W.
Dear E.W.,
I often say one of the best things about this profession is the complexity of the situations and the human dynamics that clients bring to advisors. One of the worst things is the complexity of situations and human dynamics that clients bring. It is stating the obvious to say you are definitely in a tough spot. But I don’t think you have to choose between the children and grandchildren and the new wife quite yet. They likely do have competing objectives here, and you might not be able to find reconciliation. But with this much money and the assumption I am making that your client cares about the six kids and grandkids, reach out to each person individually and ask their willingness to attend a family offsite.
Hire an outsider to run this, so you are not perceived as “taking sides” or paying more attention to one or the other. But you should be the person who reaches out to each family member in advance to gauge their willingness to participate. Talk to your client and outline your concerns. There are competing interests, and you know he would likely want to see each person he cares about be treated well in the process (I’m making a big assumption this is true). If he agrees and shares his willingness to attend and fully participate in a meeting like this, the rest will be more likely to do so. Then once you have obtained his agreement, contact the six children individually, followed by the new wife. Share your desire to see everyone’s voice be heard and some trust be built by opening up in a safe place on what each person hopes to accomplish, what’s been done to date and what might or will happen in the future.
There is no guarantee this thing wouldn’t blow up given the competing interests. That’s why I strongly urge you to find someone who is schooled in managing these conversations and could guide them to a neutral or positive outcome.
It is a very difficult situation. I am not assuming this will work and take care of everything. But it is your best option.
I encourage readers who have dealt with something similar to comment on this article and give your ideas to see if I am missing something important.
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. The firm has won the Wealthbriefing WealthTech award for Best Training Solution for 2022 and 2023. Beverly is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching undergraduate and graduate students Entrepreneurship and Leading Teams. She 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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Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here. 
