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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.
Dear Bev,
We have a weekly meeting on Monday at lunchtime wherein we review what’s upcoming for the week, talk about client issues or considerations and delegate responsibilities to team members so we know everyone has a shared load and we can get everything done.
In the last three weeks of meetings two of our senior advisors have not shown up. They don’t decline the invite, they just don’t come. One of the other senior advisors called them out on this and they said they “weren’t the workers but rather the rainmakers” and they were too busy to attend.
During these meetings all of the advisors (seven of them) share an insight about a client or something we as the support team need to know. The meetings are pretty efficient. We block 90 minutes but we usually only need about 75 to get through everything. It isn’t that we talk about a wire a client needs, or a distribution from a retirement plan. It’s always big things that come up and important client issues that we discuss.
Even though these two senior advisors were spoken to, I don’t anticipate they will be coming to these meetings as often as is needed. Do you have suggestions for ways to get the information out of their heads and into our hands? We really need it.
C.R.
Dear C.R.,
Maybe this is an opportunity to review your meeting process and make sure what you are doing is effective. I find that, over time, the “right” amount of meetings, timeframes and content changes as the team or firm evolves and changes. Your senior advisors might be reacting to the fact that you are covering everyone’s clients and having some general discussion. They may not find this helpful or useful for their activities. I’m not saying there isn’t great value in sharing across the organization. Hearing from one another and providing insights on “wins” or obstacles can be extremely valuable.
Lunchtime on a Monday seems like a tough time to me also. Mondays are often busy because they kick off the week, and lunch is a valuable time for advisors to meet with prospects and clients. You might have originally selected this time because it is the beginning of the week and it is the break period during the day. There is merit to this, but I can see where a busy senior advisor might find this time difficult to plan around.
The last piece is to consider whether the agenda is appropriate for everyone. Maybe it makes sense to have each advisor come for a 10-minute block and talk about what they are seeing with their clients, and what is upcoming for them. Perhaps if they don’t have to attend the whole time but are able to share insights with the support team, both sets of needs can be met.
I’m not suggesting that a team-wide/firm-wide meeting isn’t useful. I’m a big proponent of communication and input. I have many opportunities to have team meetings or run offsites with my firm; in every single case I get feedback that one of the best parts is that the entire team has been able to talk about things they don’t get to address in the day-to-day. I don’t suggest stopping your meetings. Instead, find out from your senior advisors what they see as the obstacles to success in these meetings. Then considering whether there is a different way to proceed.
Dear Bev,
Can you provide some direction to me, as a senior leader, on running a meeting where people provide ideas and speak up? We have a team of 50 and we have a monthly meeting that is a full company update. I share where we are against plan and any updates on projects, and I ask others to provide updates on what they are doing. That all goes fine, but when we open things up for Q & A, no one speaks. Afterwards, people stream in and out of my office with questions or tell me something I said was confusing. It is very frustrating.
I have tried asking someone else to run the meeting. That works for me to get out of developing the agenda and doing all of the talking, but it doesn’t get people to voice things.
We are part of a much larger firm and there are constant changes and transitions happening. While I can mostly control what my group needs to hear and know, there are always rumors and rumblings that people want to have addressed. I don’t always know what these are but I do my best to share what I believe is important.
Is this fear? Are people scared if they are noticed they will be considered a problem? I have asked several of the people who come in to ask me things why they didn’t bring their concerns up in the meeting and they answer often is “I thought of it afterwards,” or “We were running out of time.” There is always a reason, but I don’t know if these are real reasons. I think they are a way to avoid taking responsibility.
S.H.
Dear S.H.,
I’m going to be honest. When I read the beginning of your email to me I was thinking how great it was you were interested in figuring out how to get team members to open up, share and ask questions. However, when I got to the end where you suggest people are trying to “avoid taking responsibility” it makes me wonder whether it actually is a safe place to bring up ideas.
You suspect your team members are not telling you the truth when they say they thought of something afterwards or were concerned about a meeting running over. Forgive me for suggesting this, but often times senior leaders complain their team members are not stepping up or being honest or engaging when asked, but when I drill down I find the environment doesn’t allow for openness. In some cases, there is even a penalty for raising an issue or sharing what other people might be thinking.
My suggestion is two-fold: If you really do want to know what they are thinking or feeling about something, ask people to submit a question or comment in advance to someone other than you (i.e. another team member). If someone other than the leader is collecting these they need not be anonymous but should be collected and presented without saying who asked the question. These then can be raised at the meeting without someone feeling like they have to reveal themselves to the leader. This gets away from people being afraid to reveal themselves in a larger forum. The second thing is to deliberately ask about obstacles (not problems, issues or challenges – be careful about the language and call them “obstacles”) so that people are encouraged to raise things standing in their way, or where they might have confusion. You have to invite people to share in a comfortable way.
The problem you raised is not uncommon. In many situations, my clients will tell us they hear “crickets” when they ask for feedback. In large forums many people are simply uncomfortable bringing things up. I don’t know if it is fear, lack of good communication skills, concern about derailing the conversation or something else entirely. I do know yours is a very common experience and unless you actively find ways to gain engagement, it isn’t going to change by you simply being frustrated about it.
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, 2023 and 2024. 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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Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.