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’ve been through several excellent management training courses and seminars during my 25+-year career serving the advisory profession. But I always walk away with the feeling that I’m too nice. I co-founded my advisory firm and we’ve grown it to just under 30 people. My original partner retired about three years ago, and I have three junior advisors who work with and support me. I hope one of them will be my successor when I retire in another 12-15 years.
The issue is when I have under-performing team members in different functions. For example, our head of operations is a lovely person. She takes care of her elderly parents and her aunt, and she is a single mom who raised four children on her own. She knows her job and does it better than I could ask – when she shows up.
In the last month, she has missed 14 days of work (and not remote work, being totally off the grid and unavailable). I know it was because of doctor appointments and her father taking a fall, but it disrupted our back office considerably.
I have a guy at the front desk who answers the phones and greets clients. We have many in-office meetings. Several times a week, we have people coming in. He refuses to get out from behind the desk to shake their hands, ask them what they’d like to drink and get them situated. He’ll wait until one of us (the advisors) comes out, and we have to do it. He tells me he will never get ahead in his career if he is known as the coffee-runner, yet this was a clear and explicit part of the job when we hired him. His background is that he was in foster care for many years, put himself through school and suffers from an inferiority complex. I get it, so I don’t like to push him.
My last problem is with one of my junior advisors who uses colorful language even with clients. One older client, an 80-year-old widow, told him she found it “vulgar.” It hasn’t stopped him. He tells me that he is who he is and that’s who I hired.
I’m so frustrated with what’s going on. But I’m also frustrated with myself. I know their stories and their lives, and I cut a lot of slack. But these are not small issues. As I hope you see from what I am sharing about their responses, it isn’t that I don’t address things. It’s that they all have a legitimate reason for their behavior and then I don’t know what to do next.
My original partner would have said, “Fire them all!” He was a very direct and no-nonsense person. But I am a mother-type who wants to see everyone succeed. How do I become a different person and take charge of some of this?
Anonymous
Dear Advisor,
Earlier this week, I was running some sessions with a room full of the very top performers in one of the largest and most successful firms in our profession. I asked for a show of hands about who in the group enjoyed giving negative feedback to their team members. Not one person raised their hands. Earlier we had been doing a session with 20+ people who were in a COO-type role, and I asked the same thing and only one person raised their hand.
I share this because it is often not that you are “too nice” but rather you haven’t been taught how to give people feedback, put them on a warning or performance process and follow-through to ensure the behavior changes. I’m not sure what happened in the management training courses you attended, but this should always be a key component for leaders. I teach the coaching, performance review and performance management processes in my graduate class on managerial skills because I find most professionals never have a chance to learn what to do that’s effective.
I’ll share a few insights here and please take what you think is valuable and applicable to you. There is a style aspect wherein you are a “people-person” and you like others and like to be liked. It can be hard to push a conversation you think could be disruptive to the relationship. Having a process and a structure can help obviate some of this over time.
I call this the 5 Cs of coaching – five steps that begin with the letter “C” to walk through with team members. Always start with coaching. You want to find out why this behavior is happening and whether the team member sees it and will “own” it. If they do, and you put a plan in place and they don’t shift their behavior, then you move on to performance management wherein you might have to put them on a performance-improvement plan (PIP) and ultimately manage them out if things don’t change.
1. Check-in: Check-in with team members and establish what’s happening for them. This is where you practice good open-ended questions to allow them to share what they are thinking and feeling. For example, with your director of operations, does she understand the impact on the team of being out so much? Has she considered other alternatives to help care for her parents that aren’t as disruptive to work? What’s the status of her parents and aunt health-wise? You may think you know these things, but it is important to get the team member to share their perspective. No human being changes behavior unless they admit there is something they need to do differently.
2. Clarify goals and objectives: In many cases I find the leader believes the goals and objectives for the person are clear and defined. In just as many cases, I find the team member has a different perspective of those goals. Just because you have a job description does not mean the team member understands what success looks like and what’s expected of them. Job descriptions are necessary for hiring and HR, but they are rarely used as working documents once someone is in the seat. Your office greeter/receptionist for example might not even remember the discussion in the interview process about how to meet-and-greet clients. You have to re-establish the measurements for success and the outcomes you are looking for from the role. It isn’t “go get the coffee,” which is a tactic, it is, “Do everything to make the clients feel comfortable, appreciated and welcome to our office,” which could include getting coffee, taking their coats, helping them get settled and so on. Rather than duties, think and talk outcomes. This can help people see the small steps required to get to those outcomes.
3. Collaborate and match goals: This is where you weave the person’s outcomes and the goals of their role into the overall goals of the company. Remind your team members about the importance of having the best client experience possible. Remind them your team leans on one another and needs one another. Remind them (this is for your advisor with the foul language) that client comfort is of utmost importance, and it is necessary to match the client’s language and terminology. I’m assuming these are all goals of your firm in totality – as they are for most financial advisory firms and teams. Bring it back to what matters over all and how their focus and behavior fits in.
4. Create a plan: Together you develop the next steps. I’m a fan of asking a team member to come up with the plan and then share it with you. How will your advisor become more self-aware and self-regulate the language he uses? How will your head of operations deal with taking care of elderly family members without compromising what needs to get done at the firm? How will your receptionist make the clients feel at ease without impacting his own self-confidence? You have to ask them what they think could work and what they will do. If it is just you telling them, they won’t follow through. This is the mistake most managers make – tell and tell and even sometimes show what needs to happen. You need to hear from them what they will agree to do and how they see a change taking place. If they can’t articulate something, they aren’t going to do anything.
5. Confirm measurements and milestones: Perhaps the most difficult part for most managers is the follow-through. You need to work with your team member to stay on track. You say you have a team of close to 30 people and you are the only senior leader. I don’t know if everyone reports to you, but this is where follow-through can get lost because of sheer bandwidth considerations. You can’t manage everyone directly, so you have to put some structure in place. Set check-ins on your calendar with the people you are coaching well in advance. Ask them to share updates and progress on a scheduled basis. Meet with them once a month to gauge what’s working and what’s not. It’s critical you don’t just talk and agree, but rather you have consistency in implementing the plan.
After you have done all of this, if you don’t see any change – or they are unwilling to create a plan or give you updates – move to performance management. This is where you become much more directive and must tell someone what is acceptable and what is not and give them a clear timeframe for shifting their behavior. It’s hard, but it is necessary. If you continue to let these three people do whatever they want, soon you will have the remaining 25 or so doing the same thing. You will set a cultural standard you don’t want.
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. 
