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 don’t believe in coddling our younger advisors. When I started in the business, I was thrown into challenging situations. I was a 20-something with little experience and had to just figure things out. It worked fine for me. I run a firm and have 23 people working for me. My HR support person says I should be coaching and mentoring our junior advisors and helping them learn by showing them what we do and how we do it.
I say bull.
They should have to figure it out just like I did.
Am I outdated in my thinking? My daughter calls me an old thinker. But I don’t believe I am. If I am paying someone, they should not be stealing my valuable time to learn what they need to do.
R.C.
Dear R.C.,
What’s your objective? Do you want to increase the capabilities of your team members more quickly or do you want those team members to prove themselves worthy by stepping up without your involvement? Are balls being dropped by those junior advisors? Do you see areas where they need to improve, or is this your HR person suggesting you create a career path for them to navigate? It’s hard to tell from your note what’s driving the issue. But it’s in your best interest to find the time to coach and mentor these folks.
You have made it to the position of running the firm. But you have cultural values and important processes and procedures you would like all of your team members to follow. You have gained a lot of knowledge from the path you have walked and you have learned from mistakes as well as found successful ways to do things. Why not share these with your team members? Why not make the ability for them to be productive and contributing a bit easier by showing them the way?
A few years ago I worked on a study with another colleague where we talked to senior leaders of advisory firms and the junior advisors who worked with them. One of the most stunning things we learned was the disconnect around coaching. Lead advisors believed they were doing plenty of it, but junior advisors were looking for more. If you think about it logically, why wouldn’t you want everyone who works with or for you to be as successful and contributing as they can be? It’s better for the firm and for you. What do you gain by allowing them to languish or waiting for them to mess up because that’s the road you chose?
We want better things for our kids – a better life, whatever that looks like, than we had. Most parents don’t want their kids to make the same mistakes they did. Why would it be any different in the workplace? Why not help someone else by sharing what you learned the hard way?
Ultimately it is your firm and it isn’t my role to tell you what to do. But I hope I’ve given you some food for thought in how you might want to consider managing this situation.
Dear Bev,
We are losing one of our best employees (I will call her Sally) to early retirement. She has been so crucial to the success of our firm and has become our resident “mother” (in a good way). Sally is young (only 55), but she has an aging mother she wants to care of and she has amassed a lot of money so can afford to stop working to do so. It leaves me with a huge hole in many ways. But, very importantly, two of my best people who have worked under her are vying for her position. I don’t think either one is qualified for the job. But I am so afraid I could lose one or the other unless I promote them. I can’t promote both and they don’t warrant the salary I have been paying Sally. Sally brought so much experience and both of these people are early 30s and have never managed anyone but themselves.
How do I tell them they are not qualified but I don’t want to lose them?
J.H.
Dear J.H.,
Could Sally’s departure give you the opportunity to rework some job descriptions and how duties are allocated? Sometimes when you lose a very senior, long-tenured person you can’t replace them by filling from within or even going to find someone with similar qualities from outside. Make these two people part of an effort to review and improve the way you do things now. Are all of your policies and procedures working and updated? Is everyone in the right roles for future success? Have you built in the needs of the future? Is anyone charged with seeing where the business is going and coming up with suggestions for improvement?
Take a step back and make sure you are not just following an outdated script when you could be doing something new and more effective.
It may be that you end up splitting Sally’s job between the two people and they are still peers but in more senior roles. But don’t do anything until you are sure what you are doing is the best thing for the business today.
Beverly Flaxington co-founded The Collaborative, a consulting firm devoted to business building for the financial services industry in 1995. The firm also founded and manages the Advisors Sales Academy. She is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching undergraduate and graduate students Entrepreneurship and Leading Teams. 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. 