Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here.
Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
Dear Bev,
I work for a very large firm that is undergoing significant cost-cutting measures. This is corporate-speak for lots of my colleagues being laid off. I’m worried and depressed much of the time thinking about the potential of losing my job. I am the main breadwinner for my family and care for my elderly father as well as three kids in college. It would be nothing short of disastrous if I were to lose my job.
I know I am supposed to keep “chin up” (this is what my boss tells me) and stay positive, but I find myself focusing on the what-ifs most of the day. Even when I am home I don’t find myself enjoying anything. All I can think about is that I can’t afford to spend money and need to batten down the hatches with my budget.
I know this isn’t good for me or my family but I don’t know how to rise above the situation. I keep thinking if I stop worrying about it, that’s when something really bad will happen. What can I do to keep my job and stop worrying about keeping my job?
T.K.
Dear T.K.,
How about creating a plan B for yourself? One of the things I have learned over the years is that while losing a job can seem like the end of the world, for most people it can represent new opportunities and new challenges. I don’t mean to be a Pollyanna because I understand the financial hardship you would face. It sounds like you would be hit hard initially by losing your job.
However, given the reality of most businesses, having a plan B and reinventing yourself and what you can offer to your employer (or any other employer) is not a nice-to-have, but an imperative. The cost-cutting you are experiencing is going on in other places as well, but there are employers seeking top talent and trying to fill open roles.
While there are contractions, there are also opportunities.
There are two pieces to your personal puzzle–the first is getting a grip on your psychological state and rising above the morass you have pulled yourself down into by worrying. Many years ago I read a line by Zig Ziglar that has always stuck with me: “Worry is the interest paid on trouble before it comes due.” When we worry, we deplete our resources in advance of the trouble and by doing so we are less equipped and capable to deal with the trouble when (if) it does come. So you are burning emotional energy thinking about something that may never happen.
How does one get out of doing this? You may benefit from talking to a therapist (and see if your employer has an employee assistance plan (EAP) you could use). But you could also try reframing your self-talk from doom and gloom to a life experience you can manage if you need to. Watch how you talk to yourself, the words you use to pull yourself down and the negative picture you paint for yourself. Every time you catch yourself telling yourself something negative, use the STOP! technique. Picture a red STOP! sign in your mind to interrupt the negative thought process. Have a more neutral statement ready to replace the negative one. This looks like this:
Woe is me if I lose my job – I won’t be able to let my kids finish college and we’ll all be eating cat food.
Stop the thought process and change it to:
It is possible I might be a casualty of what’s happening at my place of employment so I need to focus on doing the best job I can at my workplace and prepare myself to be marketable if it comes to that.
You don’t want to tell yourself a falsehood (“Everything will be fine – chin up!”) but rather remind yourself you are capable of dealing with whatever comes your way.
Practice this as much as you can so that it becomes natural to catch the negativity and reframe, rather than give in to it.
Next, take steps to be a more positive participant in your workplace. There is always a possibility to add more value, so find where you can do this. Be active and proactive as much as possible.
At the same time, prepare your plan B. Get your resume in order. Keep networking and talking to people who could be references or referral sources if you do find yourself out of a job. Don’t panic, but prepare. Take steps to learn what other roles you’d be suited for and do some informational interviewing. Don’t take lots of time off to do this, but plan early morning coffee, lunch or after work get-togethers to stay active in the market.
Do your work internally and externally to stay positive and ready for whatever comes.
Dear Bev,
We’ve been trying to train our wholesalers for several years now on consultative selling. Many of them get it and are quite good at it, but too many of them are still product-pitching and alienating advisors. These are sharp people with strong skill sets but they don’t seem malleable and moldable. Do we focus on the top 20% and just help them get better or do we invest more money in the 80% hoping they will be able to shift their behavior over time?
K.D.
Dear K.D.,
How are you compensating these folks? What are the motivating factors behind the behaviors? Who gets acknowledged for success? Whenever you aren’t getting the behavior you want out of staff (especially revenue-related roles) look at the reward system and the implicit messages that are communicated.
For example, I often see asset managers that want their sales teams to be more consultative. But the materials created by marketing are heavily product- and feature-focused. Instead of taking a needs-based approach, the salespeople are armed with the information to bury the advisor in facts and data. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for the facts and data, but it can be an inconsistent message in the field.
Or, how about a reward system that only acknowledges those who push the most product? It often doesn’t matter how the process works, just that at the end someone buys something. So you could have a person being consultative and employing these techniques but not having actual sales success. Are you going to hold that person up as a success? As a role model? Probably not. I’ve been in sales my whole career and everywhere I have ever been, the numbers rule the day, not the behaviors to get to those numbers.
So unless there is a carrot and stick on the behaviors and you are rewarding people and arming them with materials to do what you are asking, the same 20% will continue to employ the techniques (and succeed at it) and the rest will do whatever they can to get to their goals. A systemic change is needed by firms that are loathe to take the steps needed to embrace this extent of change.
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.
Read more articles by Beverly Flaxington