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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 Readers,
I recently completed teaching another Executive MBA class on Managing Teams and Organizations. Earlier in the same week, I had the chance to speak to several hundred top-performing advisors about how to step more fully into leadership. With both scenarios happening so close together, it reminded me how many talented professionals there are who still haven’t heard ways they can improve themselves as managers and leaders.
In this semester’s class we looked at Patrick Lencioni and the Five Dysfunctions, Bruce Tuckman’s team evolution model and my own SHIFT Model® on how to implement goals most effectively and bring about change. It inspired me, again, to share some insights I hope you can implement in your practice, firm or team to help yourself and colleagues be the best you can be:
1. It’s the leader! Research shows that team effectiveness is largely dependent on leader effectiveness. Some studies attribute as much as 80% of the overall team success to the leader of the team. This could be counter-intuitive. After all, even leaders don’t “control” people. The team is free to do what they need to do. However, we know that individuals coming together as a team can struggle to work in the most effective manner and communicate well.
The Tuckman model’s “storming” phase, in which interpersonal conflicts arise due to the pushing of boundaries, is the most important but also the most difficult. Team members are often in conflict, trying to find their place and learning to work together. Without a strong leader to guide them and put ground rules and parameters in place, many teams fizzle out at this point and never reach their potential.
When leading a team, don’t assume everyone will eventually get on board. Unless you have an unusually collaborative and connected group, they will waste time struggling to figure out how to work together when they could be using that energy to focus on the goals at hand.
2. Style matters. I need to say this one again and again and again. In the years I have been doing this work, and with the hundreds – if not thousands – of teams I have worked with I have found that helping people see their style sameness and differences is crucial. We all have our behavioral wiring and our preferences for how we want to go about doing whatever work is in front of us. Leave me alone to do things the way I want to, and I’ll always have a preference about how to do it.
The problem on teams, of course, is that your style and mine may conflict significantly. My approach to solving a problem might be “Just do it!” And yours might be to ponder the problem, consider the different angles and approaches, carefully construct a path forward and then move to action. Neither of us are right and neither of us are wrong. But our differences will most definitely come between us and make working together more challenging. Learning about your own style, examining that of others and understanding the differences in style collectively makes for a better overall team.
3. Diversity helps a team perform better. Given the current environment, this one may elicit strong reactions from either position – whether diversity and encouraging it is good, or whether it is overdone. Let me be clear on the research – and there is a tremendous amount of it. Simply put, diverse teams are much more effective.
There are many reasons for this, and it isn’t just because there are differing viewpoints and ideas (although that is obviously a very important piece too). It is actually because diverse teams hold themselves accountable in unique ways. They tend to push each other differently than homogeneous teams. They also tend to be more data-oriented, questioning more to get to better outcomes and conclusions. They tend to innovate more regularly and be open to new and creative ideas. When diverse teams embrace their diversity, there is the added benefit of psychological safety in which team members are free to be themselves and bring their best selves to the team.
4. Knowing where you are going and agreeing to outcomes is mission critical. In the session I did for the top-performing teams, and then in the graduate class, I asked both sets of individuals to take some time to set their goals for end of 2024 and end of 2025. Goal setting should involve both quantitative and qualitative characteristics. When done well it should meet the SMART criterial (specific, measurable, action-oriented, realistic and time-bound) and it should include a qualitative piece to paint a picture of how you will meet the goal and what matters to you as you strive towards it.
In both groups, when I asked them how easy it was to do this, almost no one responded “Easy!” This is because we take very little time in general to determine what a successful outcome will look like for us. In business we always lean quantitative. In personal goal-setting we’ll tend to lean qualitative (“I want to be a better parent to my children,” as an example). However, in both settings we tend to lean away from combining the two. It’s hard to get a team energized when they aren’t sure exactly what a successful outcome looks like. And yes, if you read my column regularly, you’ll see me write this a lot. That’s because it is so crucial, and so few leaders and teams do it well that it bears repeating over and over again.
5. It really is a journey, not a destination. In examining Tuckman’s five stages of team evolution, I’m always struck by the late addition of stage number five, which is adjourning. In 1965 when Tuckman created his model, he had only four stages. Years later, about 12 to be exact, he worked with a colleague to acknowledge and validate that while teams may finally get to a place where they are performing well together (called the performing stage), they eventually will come to a place of closure. They will finish the project. Someone will move on to another role or company. Someone else will join the team to start the cycle over again.
This is actually often a grieving process, because when a team works through its issues and gets the “WIN!” they enjoy each other and feel accomplished. Like any loss in life, when team members have to say good-bye to the win and good-bye to one another, it’s a difficult parting. We don’t talk about this enough. We just assume people move on and start focusing on the next thing.
But we must acknowledge this whole experience called life – including the teaming part in business – is a journey and not a final destination. That is critical for honoring the human-centered part of who we are. Make sure you celebrate your success and, as a leader, offer your team the opportunity to do the same. Validation and confirmation are important.
The work of what leaders and team members have to focus on everyday is hard enough. There is often never enough time to do what’s needed for your clients, your business or your goals. You might not be able to do all of what’s needed to bring together strong teams and help your employees succeed, but even if you focus on just doing one thing differently and better, it can help improve outcomes.
My students often talk about how hard it is to find places that implement what we learn in class to be important. I always respond by saying we all have to play a role in making the work environment a more compelling and engaging place to be!
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.