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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’ve spent much of my career coaching and providing learning opportunities for those professionals who want to improve. This week I had an experience that moved me to write a column about the difficulty in opening one’s self up to being willing to be coached, and of making behavioral change.
As anyone who knows me is aware, I love to box. I took up boxing almost ten years ago and find it to be both great mental and physical exercise. I love learning new moves and challenging myself, and my trainer has said I work as hard, if not harder, than anyone in my classes. This week I engaged in 1:1 coaching to learn from a master boxer so I could improve some of my moves.
I was trying to get better at footwork and learned, after all of these years, I struggle to put my feet in the right position. It hampers me from stepping confidently and with ease. It was an hour of effort, and I kept making the same mistake over and over again. My trainer teased me, because he knows I coach for a living.
The experience really did open my eyes – yet again – to how easy it is to identify what needs to be done, but how hard it can be to flex that new muscle and actually do something differently. This column is in honor of all of the coaches I have had, and also those people whom I have had the pleasure of coaching and those to come.
Here are a few insights about how to best leverage a coaching experience:
1. Be vulnerable. Candidly, I had some moments of embarrassment, realizing, after all of the years I have been doing something I love, I still hadn’t mastered a very core, basic thing and it was holding me back. It’s hard for seasoned professionals who are good at their craft and are making a lot of money to admit they might have to revisit some of the basics or revise the basic approach they have been using.
It’s natural to believe you’ve reached the pinnacle, but you can never improve if you aren’t willing to open yourself up to the idea that there could be something you are missing. Putting ego aside is important, but it isn’t easy. What successful person enjoys opening themselves up to hearing what they need to do better? That said, it’s important to recognize the most successful and highly paid people, like professional sports players and actors, open themselves up every day to someone telling them what they need to do differently and better. If people in these professions can do this on a consistent basis, maybe we all need to take a lesson about the importance of continual improvement. It’s often difficult, but you need to put ego aside to ask, “How can I get better?’ – and then listen to the answer.
2. Utilize a coach who stylistically “gets” you and with whom you can be open. My boxing coach is also a good friend. I can push back on him and he can do the same to me, because we have a deep level of trust. I know he wants me to be the best I can be. He isn’t ego-centered about it; he doesn’t get angry or frustrated with me; and he celebrates my wins. This meshes with my style quite well, which is important.
Others might like the tough, direct, in-your-face type of coach. And still others might like someone who goes step-by-step, spoon-feeding the necessary instruction. We talk about this in my own firm all of the time. It’s the coach’s job to meet the person being coached where they are, not where the coach hopes and wants them to be. In a coaching engagement, be sure you feel understood and that your coach is willing to modify and match what you need.
3. Change is hard. I was painfully reminded of this truth by the need for my coach to put the “sticks” in front of my feet many times to show me how I repeatedly chose to revert back to a less effective way of standing.
Human beings like stasis. I’ve perfected that wrong stance, so don’t make me change it! It’s why in our learning sessions we often ask people to practice with new ideas we are presenting. You may hear something and know it makes sense, thinking to yourself, “I can do that!” But until you are the one actually putting that idea into action, you don’t know if you can really do it or not.
People in our sessions will always tell us they “don’t like role play.” I agree that doing something that feels fake isn’t useful. We use the word “practice” instead, and ask people to take the new idea and practice for an upcoming real-world interaction. Thinking about a real prospect, client, team member or outside contact and then trying something different as you prepare can show you quickly and clearly if you really can do it or not!
It took me multiple (read: over a dozen) tries to finally get my feet in the right position, and then I was able to make the twists and turns I wanted to make pretty smoothly. If I had simply watched my coach and said, “I get it,” I would have gone into the next class without knowing if I had truly mastered it. Practice may never make you perfect, contradicting that trite saying, but it will most certainly make you better.
4. Finding an area of focus with a problem to solve doesn’t mean you are doing everything wrong. When I deliver learning opportunities, I like to open by asking people to find just one thing they could walk away doing differently. I don’t expect they will want, or need, to do many things differently – just that they could make a shift while they continue doing all of the other things they’ve done before well.
In other words, you may have 99% of what is needed in place and you are at the top of your profession, but resolving that 1% could make a difference in outcomes for you. Finding one thing to focus on is often all that’s needed. I found myself initially using self-talk in my session about how long I have been boxing and how this is a simple thing I need to re-learn. Then, right in the middle of that, I shifted that self-talk to recognize all of the things I do well in boxing. I don’t need to change my jab, my cross, my hook or my uppercuts. I have, with lots of practice, mastered these things. I know how to slip and duck pretty well. I continue to do those things well, but I lost focus on my footwork. It’s doesn’t mean I am a “bad boxer.” It means there is an area of focus that will serve me well. This is the same for successful professionals. Just because a coach points out an area of improvement doesn’t mean the coach doesn’t recognize all of the things you are doing well. The job of the coach is to find that 1% that will help shift your approach and really make a difference. When you find the one thing, be careful not to paint a picture that you should know better, that you aren’t doing anything right and so on. Focus on the one thing and keep doing what you are already doing well.
5. Just do something. I have been talking about having some 1:1 sessions for a number of months now. I kept finding excuses not to do it, probably subconsciously knowing I was going to have to work really hard to practice something I am not doing well.
It would not have served me to have my coach tell me I am great at everything. I would never improve if he had taken the easy way out. Instead, he filmed my footing and then asked me to watch the film. He found a number of ways to show me how to measure my foot placement and he kept making me do it over and over again. I felt really good by the end, even though I know I need to consistently practice what I did in every single boxing session I have.
It’s important professionally to make a commitment to explore one area you think you might be able to get better at in 2025. Self-assess and decide what you want to do and who might be best suited to help you. While it can be challenging to go through the coaching process for all of the reasons previously mentioned in this column, when you find yourself honing a new skill that helps you or refreshing your knowledge of an old one you haven’t used in a while, the feeling of success and achievement is unmatched. Instead of one “win,” you are creating a habit for a professional lifetime of wins.
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, 2024 and 2025. 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.