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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,
Our team is great. All work well together and respect one another. Midway through third quarter this year we feel stuck. Stagnant. Not terribly motivated. I’m n ot sure if it is the economic unrest, the political question marks or just a general malaise but we need a boost.
Ideas?
L.D.
Dear L.D.,
Your note arrived at what is the end of summer where I live so I would add “fall doldrums” to the list. While some people like fall the best, sometimes the back-to-school time of the year can be a throwback to sadder times when all of the fun stopped and school started up again!
I’m not sure if your question is asking what can you personally do to motivate and engage the team or if the team has talked about what’s going on and you are writing to me as their representative? For purposes of my answer, I am going to take the whole team into account and suggest things for everyone to do together.
- It might be time to revisit your goals and establish your success outcomes for 2024. Team goals are shared goals when they are discussed. I don’t know if you have already set your goals for the year and whether you discuss how you will attain them but having a discussion with the whole group and identifying those goals could be a rallying call for the team.
- Schedule a few fun things to do together outside of the workplace. Some teams enjoy each other’s company and so get together socially without a lot of planning. However, many teams have people who are busy and don’t find the time to get together. Look for a couple of times on the calendar where you could go to a bowling alley, an escape room, or a virtual reality adventure. Don’t make it a “meeting” or even just a dinner – make it a fun outing where there is no pressure to do anything work related.
- Consider doing something with the firm such as surveying your clients, revisiting your marketing message or seeing what new and interesting things you could do with your client experience. You don’t even have to do anything – just the brainstorming and idea generating could be healthy and inspiring for the team. Ask people to think creatively about options and then capture some ideas for future discussions.
- Identify whether there is anything the team would like to learn about together. Could you take a class on industry trends, explore the competitive landscape or assign someone the task of finding new technology to review? Step outside your current bounds and see if you can learn something useful for the team and for the firm.
You might want to try a combination of these things to get people energized. It sounds like you have a solid team in place with no identified conflict, but a lack of excitement and enthusiasm. Remember, this can also be behavioral. You might have people who are perfectly content but don’t outwardly show their emotions.
If you have had fun and collaborative times in the past, and that’s missing now – that’s a different story. If that’s the case, do your best to infuse that missing component into one of these new ideas. You don’t want to have people going along with it “just because,” but often once people do engage, they find themselves enjoying it!
Dear Bev,
Do you have any suggestions for the last four months of the year to turn up the heat on our team? We are behind goal on new AUM, new clients and client retention. There have been a number of difficult changes here this year and it’s taken our attention away from doing the core work. What can I suggest to the team to put a different focus, and hopefully have a different energy, from now until the end of the year?
G.C.
Dear G.C.,
It sounds like it a good time to do a “Year in Review” to look at what has worked well this year and what you would have changed if you could have. This isn’t meant as a way to get frustrated about the changes you have been through, or look back and beat yourselves up about how you handled the changes. Rather, it is meant as a post-mortem to consider any learnings from what worked well and what could have been done differently. While you can’t change the past, you can certainly learn from it. You might be able to identify ways the team could collaborate even more effectively going forward.
It's also a great time to revisit the goals you had set for the year. You say you are behind goal in all of your key categories. Can you give yourselves a break based on everything you were dealing with this year and perhaps revise the numbers to a more reasonable level? Talking together about these and what you could, or might, do differently could be very beneficial.
I notice everything you outline for goals is quantitative. Consider qualitative factors that are meaningful to the team. You can consider anything from different forms and ways to communicate together, to getting better at meeting management, to clarifying roles and responsibilities. Take the time to consider what is important and would make the team feel accomplished between now and the end of the year. This can be a boost to morale because, while you might not make your quantitative numbers, you are very likely to meet the qualitative ones if they are agreed upon by the team.
You might even want to take some time to celebrate what you have accomplished. I know you are behind in your numeric goals set, but your note indicates that you, as a team, probably overcame a lot of obstacles this year and were successful in many ways – navigating and implementing change. If you haven’t acknowledged this for everyone, and given yourselves a pat on the back for getting through it and being ready to get back to business as usual – that’s always a good idea, and especially so as we come into the last months of the year.
Recognition, celebration and team spirit can often get people focused on what they need to do and how they can work together to achieve what’s needed.
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.