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,
I recognize that as a leader it’s up to me to instill good communication practices across my team. But I have a couple of people who are gossips.
They will gossip about team members, about me and my family, about what’s happening in our community, about what’s happening on the global stage. Give them a topic and they’ll find a way to make a story out of it.
I would not care if all of the work were getting done. But lately I find them in one another’s offices, or in the lunch room supposedly getting a refresh of coffee or taking long, long lunches. I know that different people are motivated by different things and maybe their motivation is information sharing, but we’re a small 15-person advisory firm and I can’t afford to have people who aren’t totally committed to what we’re doing.
And before you ask, yes I have talked with them about it. So far they haven’t ventured into anything that is destructive or divisive, but I fear that is going to happen at some point. These are grown people. Telling them they need to sit alone in their offices isn’t the right answer. Is there a way to stop them without insulting them?
R.W.
Dear R.W.,
Let’s start out with a definition of gossip to ensure we are on the right track: casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details that are not confirmed as being true.
If we accept this definition there are a few things to consider. It most definitely sounds like these discussions are happening in both a casual and unconstrained manner. Your comment about going for coffee leads me to believe you think they stage running into one another so maybe they have texted “meet me in the coffee room” in advance! I don’t know from your note if the information they are sharing about others in the firm is true or not, so this could be a problem if there is smearing going on or someone’s reputation is being damaged.
I talk to managers a great deal about gossip and encourage them to use it to their advantage. Fundamentally, whether casual or not, gossip is information. If they are talking about the global stage it may or may not help your firm, but stories about team members or what’s happening in the community could be very useful to you – depending on the substance and veracity of this information.
I don’t know how direct you have been with them even though you say you have talked with them about it. Saying “knock it off” or “why do you gossip?” may be missing the point entirely. Being very specific about what you see, what they are doing, how it is impacting the firm and what you ask them to do instead would be the best approach. Recruiting them in an organized fashion for their observations and information could be the way to turn the tide on this.
Bring them in separately and ask them if they recognize their behavior as “gossip.” Most people will say, “no, we’re just having fun/a few laughs/enjoying talking to one another.” Most people don’t like to be known as gossips and don’t perceive themselves as such.
Outline where and when their behavior is a problem: 1. Three 25-minute trips to the coffee room today, 2. two 2.5-hour lunches, 3. an upset employee who overheard them talking about them, etc. The more you can be specific and enumerate what they are doing and what needs to be shifted, the better chance they will get an “ahah” about what’s wrong.
To turn this positive, tell them you respect their ideas and observations and you’d like to make it more formal. Schedule time each week to meet with them and ask for their insights. Write down what they say so it appears formal and business oriented. Sometimes taking comments and making them more “serious” removes the fun for the teller if their intention is just to stir things up.
Dear Bev,
How do you get a client who won’t respond to anything to sign important documents and get us what we need in order to help him? As fiduciaries we can’t just let him be.
Jon S.
Dear Jon,
This goes in the category of what I call TDOs (the difficult ones) and dealing with difficult clients can be the bane of any advisor’s existence! I recommend calling an audible before the client leaves your office, “We find many times our clients intend to do the right thing and sign the documents but then life intervenes and they don’t get around to it. How can we prevent this from happening with you?” so it is addressed upfront and you have the permission to follow up.
You haven’t asked in advance so you are simply in follow-up, and up, and -up mode with no good answer about where and when the client finally responds. You have a few options:
- Send a last-ditch letter to him saying how important this is, that he agreed to it and that you can’t keep chasing him. Include a postage paid return envelope to make it as easy as possible.
- Address this at the next meeting in a direct and forceful manner and outline why this could be a problem for him (assuming you have good reasons for why it might be)
- Give it up and find other ways to be of value to this client (make sure they are his reasons for needing this, not yours….)
And lastly, but not my favorite….
- Show up at his place of business or home saying, “As a fiduciary I just can’t let you avoid this any longer!”
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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