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,
We have an interesting situation evolving at our advisory firm. We are about 40 people and just last year we finally hired someone in an HR role. She is in charge of some operations areas but her primary responsibility is supposed to be HR. She has two junior people working for her in support roles – they are mostly supposed to be ops/client service but they get involved in HR activities too.
My role is to oversee our advisors and I am an advisor myself – I play a team-lead role. However, somehow I have been anointed as the confidant for many people in the firm. I am having other advisors come to me to complain about the person filling our HR role.
She is irascible and gossips. She will tell people about the confidential issues other team members bring to her attention. It’s becoming well known that there are no secrets in HR. I don’t know whether her junior service people know this is happening, or whether they are party to it. It doesn’t seem my place to pull them aside and ask them to tattle on their boss. But I have to wonder if they have been impacted too.
I’m in a tough spot. This person is HR, but she is actually part of the problem. She is new to our firm; when I spoke to our owner he told me I wasn’t giving her a chance – I should consider myself charged with supporting her, not betraying her! Is there anything I can do? I am not comfortable confronting her on my own. She scares me a bit and I don’t want to find myself in a position where I’m considered the problem. I’m not sure whether I have a responsibility when people are bringing these issues to me. Do I ignore it or try and get through to her? Do I put my own fears aside and take a bullet for the team?
C.Y.
Dear C.Y.,
It’s been my life’s work to find answers for difficult situations like yours and to help people deal with those who are difficult. However, one thing I have learned is that there are times where the best answer is to do nothing. I’m afraid you are in this situation, as tough as it may be.
Let me explain my reasoning:
- This person is HR. Your firm leader has said it’s best to give her a chance and effectively “leave her be.” It isn’t your role to run HR nor do you have the support of your firm leader to confront her and it doesn’t sound like, at this point anyway, the firm leader is interested in doing so. You are only going to be the “bad guy or gal” if you make an overture toward this woman.
- You are on equal footing with this person, not her boss or superior. How are you going to talk with her? Tell her you believe she is breaking confidentiality and she needs to stop? Betray the people who have shared this with you and make them targets of her wrath? Try and get her to see the error of her ways? There are times when someone is behaving in such a passive-aggressive, or even overtly aggressive manner that when you become the person to confront, you actually become the problem yourself! You don’t have authority with this person so you’d be making an appeal from shaky ground. The negative backlash is much more likely than you gain her trust and she changes her behavior.
- Others on the team are becoming educated about her style and approach. People will learn, on their own, not to trust her with sensitive information. They will therefore not share anything of importance, and she cannot betray confidentialities as a result. If she is sharing things she is privy to, such as salary information or someone’s personal situation (i.e. someone headed out on short-term disability and she tells every one of their ailments) the firm runs the risk of being sued. You can’t stop this. You don’t control this. You can only watch helplessly while it unfolds.
I see no good outcome for you in trying to help this situation. In fact, I strongly suggest that even though you are the firm confidant, that when team members come to you to complain, you let them know you are helpless to do anything. Encourage them to take these issues to your firm’s owner. Perhaps if he or she hears enough from others, they might move to action. Don’t let it just come from you – let there be a groundswell of feedback to act upon.
Dear Bev,
Our largest client talked with another advisor at a yacht show a few weeks ago. This other advisor offered to review his portfolio and give feedback on what we’re doing (for free, of course). The client received some really bad input and advice. I’m not just saying this because it was a competitor; the advisor truly gave bad direction and advice. He even wrote out what we as his advisor needed to do.
Our client is now pushing us to make these changes. The advisor did not succeed in getting our client to move, but he created anxiety and concern on the part of our client about what we’re doing. Now our client says we are “defensive and resistant” to take these recommendations into account. It’s so frustrating. We’re told we are not managing an account well we’ve had for seven years. How do we confront this without looking defensive? I want to call this other advisor and give him a piece of my mind.
C.H.
Dear C.H.,
Whoa! Before you go calling that other advisor, it’s important to examine the relationship you have with this client. Here is someone who has worked with you for seven years, goes and meets someone he doesn’t really know, gets input and feedback that his own trusted advisor disagrees with but considers you contentious and resistant when you won’t listen? There is something fundamentally wrong here with the client relationship that I encourage you to look at first.
I often talk with my advisor clients about the importance of re-tell and re-sell. This means when working with a client, don’t assume they know the value you bring, or that they remember why they enjoy working with you. Advisors will become defensive when confronted or questioned but they forget the client doesn’t have the same day-to-day exposure, or experience the advisor has. The client doesn’t connect the dots and it’s your job to do this for them.
Take the client’s concerns seriously. Acknowledge there must be a breakdown in your communication. Don’t validate the position of the other advisor, but validate your client’s right to be asking these questions. Offer to sit down and review these recommendations together, instead of discarding them out of hand. Take the time to review your process with this client. Walk him through what you do, and why you do it. Then show him how your decisions support whatever goals he has and what he is trying to achieve.
Be considerate of his need for answers and instead of debating the veracity of this feedback, work in partnership with him to review and consider. Ultimately the hope is that you will both, together, recognize you have made the right decisions to date but take the time to help him come to this realization along with you.
The worst thing you can do, when someone confronts you with something, is to show them the error of their ways and refute their concerns out of hand. You have to put ego aside a bit and acknowledge his right to ask the questions.
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
Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here. 
