Dealing With a Team Member Who Refuses to Listen

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,

What do you do with an intractable advisor? I was brought into a larger advisory firm where we are trying to make some changes and have our previously siloed advisors work more closely with others in the firm. We have missed opportunities because of breakdowns in communication. We are solving a bit of it through a newly installed CRM, but we need a human effort.

“Larry”, one of the advisors I’ve inherited, is an “It’s not my job” type of guy. He has told me everything from “I don’t like working with them,” to “Clients don’t care about what we care about,” to “I am not getting paid to do more, why should I do more?”

It’s infuriating because to me it is very clear. We are doing a disservice to our clients when we don’t communicate internally. We miss chances to support them in broader ways and we leave them vulnerable to getting help from our competitors. Larry doesn’t see this or doesn’t care to see it.

I could ignore Larry if he were not so important to our efforts. Because he has been around for a while, he has a following. He is also a loud person so can be heard having discussions in meetings and in our coffee room about what he considers “the nonsense” we are bringing into the organization.

How do I get someone like this on my side?

S.H.