Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
To buy a copy of Bev’s book, The Pocket Guide to Sales for Financial Advisors, click here.
Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here.
Dear Bev,
I am in a client servicing role for a fairly large advisory team. We have nine advisors and 12 support staff. Three others and I have the job of proactive outreach to clients, as well as being responsible for follow-ups and planning client events and team outings.
In the last year, one of my colleagues, a support person but not on my direct team, has gone to our senior advisors to complain about absolutely everything we are doing. She has the ability to call up tears “on demand” as one of my colleagues says. As a result, she is always emotional and upset when she talks about what we are doing wrong.
Our senior advisor will tell us to just get along and listen to her concerns, but her concerns are nonsensical. Last year she was upset because her husband is part owner in a restaurant and we didn’t have our annual client event there. His restaurant is very small, and we needed a place to accommodate about 125 people.
There is no rhyme or reason as to what she complains about. Last week we had scheduled three hours to all sit together and do outreach calls to clients (we do these once a quarter) just to check in. She was upset we “were loud” when she was trying to get work done. We do not have walls in our offices and the one conference room was being used by our advisors to meet with clients.
I know you cover things like this a lot in this column, but have you had a situation where the person is not overtly difficult in the sense of being mean to others? Instead, they have control over the emotional heartstrings of the people in charge. The leaders don’t want to deal with more tears, so they just want the whole thing to go away. But how do you arrive at a solution when the other party is unreasonable?
K.S.
Dear K.S.,
You are asking the $100 million question! If I knew how to make things go away when someone is unreasonable, I think I’d be a very rich woman. The problem is the definition of “unreasonable.” I understand all you are saying, and it sounds like your colleague might often put you in a box with her complaints. However, there are often two sides to a story.
For example, did you look at the husband’s restaurant at all without determining it wouldn’t hold enough people? Not that I advocate doing something for a friend just because they are a friend, but if the restaurant is good and could be used for another event, maybe just consider it?
As for when you were making the calls, I do understand the open-space environment. I deal with this a lot in training, when we talk about focus and time management. It’s a tough setup when there is no privacy. However, could the three of you have been laughing, or exchanging information outside of the calls, and perhaps inadvertently become louder as you were doing so?
I’m not saying your colleague is right and you are wrong. I’m simply asking the question as to whether there could be a kernel of truth in what she is saying.
On the other hand, her policy of going to the leaders in tears should be addressed. Perhaps one of you could ask her to go out to coffee. Over snacks or beverages, explore why she feels the need to avoid discussions with you and go directly to senior management, when all senior management does is put it back on all of you to fix! Explain to her this cycle is not productive and isn’t getting her – or anyone – answers that are needed. Ask her how you could all interact differently when she has an insight or concern, to avoid bringing the leaders in. Maybe if you could illustrate to her that she isn’t getting what she wants (and she isn’t!), she’ll see that and another approach is necessary.
She may cry and she may get upset and she may not even be willing to talk to you about this, but I suggest you try. This way, the next time your senior advisors hold you accountable, you can talk about what you are tried doing to stave off her concerns.
It’s not easy when someone doesn’t want to look at their own culpability in relationships. But you can only control what’s controllable, and we don’t control others, much as we endeavor to do so.
Dear Bev,
How do we make meetings more productive? I’m so tired of morning huddles, where everyone has to have a voice and no one actually accomplishes anything. I’m so tired of weekly team meetings with no agendas, where we waste 90 minutes and get nowhere. I’m tired of having to listen in to things that have absolutely nothing to do with my role or what I do.
Of course, I can’t say anything to our partners – they will call me “negative.” They believe they are fully committed to communication. It’s not that I’m adverse to communication. But I don’t believe getting together and chatting about things that don’t matter is communication. Our team of nine agrees with me, but no one is comfortable enough to speak up, because the three partners are very proud of themselves, and no one is in a position to deny them their objective.
L.C.
Dear L.C.,
You started off by asking me how to make meetings more productive, and I have many ideas for this. However, your note goes on to implicitly ask about how you discuss something with someone who might not want to hear it, similar to the other question in this week’s column.
I do understand your aversion to upsetting your senior leaders when their goal is admirable. We all know the problem of good intentions with not-so-great execution. A starting place might be to have an open conversation asking your partners whether they believe they are reaching the outcomes desired with the meetings. You don’t know if they see what you are seeing, and perhaps they aren’t sure what to do differently.
They are committed to communication, which is great, but you could discuss whether the current approach is the most effective one. If they do think things are working well, then perhaps you offer some best practices around meetings, which is in answer to your first question:
- Never have a meeting without an agenda and desired outcome. What do you want everyone to walk away with once the meeting is done? What topics should be covered? What prep will need to happen and by whom? What is the timeline associated with each section?
- Who needs to be in a meeting, and why? You can always make attendance optional if you aren’t sure if someone would feel left out, but talk openly about this.
- What is the follow-up? Every meeting should have a note-taker and someone responsible for assigning the next steps.
- For the morning huddles, what is the objective? Is it to get on the same page for the day, ask questions, or update one another? Set a reason for these each time you meet, too.
I know it’s hard to implement things when they aren’t happening now, but I see this a lot with our advisory teams. They want to communicate, and the objective of doing so is a good one. However, they don’t have a strategy for effective communication. I haven’t seen many leaders push back on good ideas, so it’s worth posing these and seeing what happens.
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.
A message from Advisor Perspectives and VettaFi: To learn more about this and other topics, check out some of our webcasts.
More Behavioral Finance Topics >
Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.