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 have had two very negative partner experiences. Both ended with me buying the other individuals out, because we couldn’t see eye-to-eye on important issues. It was expensive.
I wondered if I should just roll my advisory firm into another firm. But I’ve stayed independent and have managed to build a very successful practice. I have three great people who are mostly support and I recently hired a female financial advisor who could be a rainmaker. She is very connected in the community, well spoken and has a number of great clients who are big fans.
The problem is that she knows how much she brings to the organization and is already talking about partnership. I totally understand that she wants to monetize her involvement. But I am hesitant after two disastrous experiences to take on a partner. I did not tell her when I hired her that this was her path. She sees what she is contributing and knows I would be in a bad place if I lost her.
Is there a polite way to tell her this has nothing to do with her, but is based on my historical experience?
M.C.
Dear M.C.,
When I did investment-product development in my old life, we had to always add the disclosure I will use with you now, “past performance is not an indicator of future results.” You have had two disastrous experiences with partners, but every situation is new.
As you reflect on your past experiences, did you learn anything about what went wrong that might help inform you in this new situation? Is this advisor someone you can have an open and honest conversation with to explain what has happened to you in the past? Are there different options to partnership? Before you were all-in with the other two professionals, could you have constructed a tiered approach here so she earned ownership to partnership over time and you both could test the situation?
If you are one person running the firm with just support staff, think about having another senior person who could fill in for you and offer a succession plan. Have you considered whether you could benefit from having someone at your level who you could brainstorm about business decisions with, or share ideas and even financial decisions? It can be lonely to be an owner without anyone to talk with or collaborate with. Could you gain from having someone like this and if so, does she bring the necessary background and knowledge to the situation for you?
Think some of these questions through before you have any conversations with this advisor. Get straight in your own mind what is acceptable and what’s not.
Then you need to have a conversation. This is a case of mismatched expectations. I realize she wasn’t hired in as a partner, or with the promise of partnership, but she has come to believe that is what’s fair and right for her. She won’t take kindly to being told, for whatever reason, this path is completely closed to her.
Start a conversation by seeking to understand. What does success look like to her? What does she believe is reasonable and appropriate? Hear her out even though you might disagree completely with her point of view. After you have a chance to understand her viewpoint, then share yours. Explain you have not been looking for a partner, nor did you want one. But that you are open to talking about a path to partnership (if you determine this would be acceptable to you). If the two of you together can devise a plan, agree on combined expectations, and develop check-in points to see where the other stands and how things are going, it is possible the situation could be beneficial for both of you in the longer term.
Dear Bev,
One of our analysts is making serious mistakes time and time again. Is it possible to change someone’s behavior? He knows what is expected, but then I review the next client packet, and it is filled with misspellings and errors. It is a tough hiring market so I don’t want to fire him and start over. But I’m losing my patience.
U.I.
Dear U.I.,
Generally answer is “yes,” it is possible. As someone who coaches for a living, I would be inauthentic if I said you can never shift someone’s behavior.
However, there are things to consider and steps you will want to take to see what is viable.
Many times when people make mistakes over and over again, it is because of a few reasons:
- Behaviorally they are a mismatch for a role. You are asking them to do something that naturally they are not skilled to do. For example, if someone is not naturally comfortable talking to people they don’t know, it might be hard for them to succeed at a job in direct sales or where networking all of the time is required. It is not impossible; just hard to do.
- There can be misunderstandings about what is expected. You might be asking this analyst to do a number of things. He may think he is focusing on the most important, and these errors are not as important in the scheme of things. You may be focusing on the errors because they are most important but your expectations about priorities and what matters are not clear and/or misunderstood by him.
- He could have a different definition of “errors.” You say there are misspellings. I will assume that is true, but I have seen where one person is very detail-oriented and the other not so much. You might think, for example, using the shorthand for “St.” is a misspelling because you prefer the word written out, as Street. This isn’t always the case. But I encourage you to see whether these are actually errors or more differences in opinion about what is right and wrong. Granted you are the boss, so your view will rule. But I’ve seen good people pushed out because they didn’t live up to an unreasonably high set of standards.
And then there are times where someone just simply cannot do the job that they are in. You can provide them all kinds of support and it doesn’t work. Look at the other things above before you determine he can’t make it and you are trying to find a new hire to fill his role.
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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Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here. 
