
Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here.
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Dear Bev,
One of the women in my office is a tattle-tale and a gossip. It’s become so bad that everyone is afraid if they don’t listen or don’t engage with her, they will become one of her targets. She picks on the most benign things; it could be someone’s dress, how they talk or how slow they approach a task.
It’s difficult when she talks about our clients. We work with very wealthy people and families and she sees a chance to make fun of everyone. I thought she might get fired when she was actually talking about someone’s child in our reception area and the client was walking through the door! The lead advisor just laughed it off and said “no harm done” because she stopped before the client actually heard what she was saying.
Our firm’s leader thinks her behavior is comical and he just laughs about it when any one of us complains. I think it makes for a very toxic environment and where we cannot trust one another because you never know who is engaging in the backstabbing along with her. I know that others in my firm will recognize this letter if they read it in your column, but I’m interested if you think there is anything we can do to stop the behavior?
Please don’t recommend taking her out for coffee or lunch. She will claim we have it all wrong and she is doing nothing offensive. She always turns things around so the person accusing her has a problem and she is without blame. It’s so frustrating and the whole situation makes for an unpleasant workplace. We don’t have a huge firm so it’s not like we can hide from her or go about our business and ignore what’s happening.
Have you seen this before? Do you have ideas about what we can do?
L.L.
Dear L.L,
I’m hoping when you use the “we” language that there are other people in your advisory firm who also feel an urgency to do something about this behavior. If you are in it alone and your lead advisor does not want to address it, you have extremely limited options. However, if there are others who might be willing to work with you on this, there are some things you can do.
Some great advice I was given many years ago in a similar situation is that engaging with everyone else who is impacted by her behavior is your best bet – safety in numbers. Have a meeting with everyone who wants to participate in shifting this woman’s behavior and then agree to do the following:
The next time she walks into anyone’s office to tattle or to badmouth another person, stop her and say something like, “It sounds like you have a problem with (name). To deal with it most effectively, let me call (name) in here to my office with us and you can speak to him/her directly. Hold on a minute while I get (name) on the phone.” It’s a magical thing if you can actually get everyone to agree to do this, after only one or two times she will get the message that none of you are going to play this game with her and pit yourselves against one another.
The other thing you should do is to publicly refuse to engage with her. When she starts to talk about anyone – the client’s family or anyone in the firm – say, as politely as you can muster – “I don’t really like to engage in negative talk about others.” And then walk away. Don’t be holier than thou in your tone, don’t be angry or irritated, simply make a statement that this is something you don’t do and then walk away or, if you are the receptionist stuck out at the desk, turn your attention to something else you need to work on.
People who behave as you describe get fueled from having an audience, or having someone agree with them, or having a rapt listener hanging on their every word. Don’t give her this. Made a pact amongst all of you who want to stop this approach, and then follow through. Everyone has to be in sync though – she will find whatever cracks and exploit them so you do have to band together.
This is your only chance of correcting or changing this behavior, which does sound as “toxic” as you describe it.
Dear Bev,
With the DOL rule change on advice to retirement plans, we believe the story we tell of being a fiduciary in our RIA will not be as powerful and significant. Do you have recommendations for other things a small, independent firm can say to separate ourselves from the brokers and insurance agents who claim to be advisors?
Joe L.
Dear Joe,
Do you really believe that brokers and others were not operating in an independent manner before the ruling? I recently spoke at a broker-dealer conference and asked the advisors who were affiliated with the brand to raise their hands if they considered themselves to be independent thinkers when it came to working with their clients. Every single hand in the room went up. The idea that someone who is affiliated with a brokerage firm is not capable of having free, independent thought is misplaced.
RIAs do themselves a disservice to focus their messaging on things like “independence” or “fiduciary” or “fee-only.” They use those terms to distinguish themselves, but the prospect or client does not know how to qualify the differences. So these concepts and words are meaningless to them. The client expects you to be independent in your thinking and act in their best interest. It takes a lot of education to explain to them why this may not be the case with loads of other options out there claiming to be “an advisor.”
What does it feel like to work with you? How do your clients think and talk about you? What’s the client experience when someone becomes a client? What’s the predictable process, or culture of your firm? These are the questions you want to be asking yourself to include in your marketing approach. Rather than use something that is an “us versus them” style, instead focus on what is involved in working with your firm, your people and your process.
This business is about planning, investing and finance, but it’s mostly about people – how well a client likes your style, how deeply they trust you to do the right thing by them, what they think, how they feel, etc. Elicit these ideas from those who know you well, the thinking and feeling about what you do and capture these in your messaging instead of the basic same-old, same-old you are referring to here.
The thing I like best about the business is that even though all advisors do a very similar thing, it is a very different experience from one firm to another, based on the personalities and the style of the advisors, and how they approach working with their clients. Try to pull these ideas out and incorporate them into your marketing approach so someone who does not know you can get that window into what it’s like to work with you.
Beverly Flaxington co-founded The Collaborative, a consulting firm devoted to business building for the financial services industry in 1995. In 2008, she co-founded Advisors Trusted Advisor to offer dedicated practice management resources to advisors, planners and wealth managers. She is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching undergraduate students Leadership & Social Responsibility. Beverly 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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