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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.
Dear Bev,
I work in a very busy financial advisory firm. We have a large number of clients, onboard new clients on a regular basis and, because of the complexity of the service we provide, it is often non-stop from Monday morning until Friday afternoon.
Our senior advisor just came back from a coaching offsite sponsored through our affiliated company and now he is all about teambuilding. He wants us to go out once a month and “do something fun together as a team”. His ideas are bowling, hiking, a pool hall and a scavenger hunt, to name just a few. These outings would be held after hours, or even on weekends, so we don’t interrupt the flow of our work.
We are a very close-knit team already. We like each other, we support each other and we have each other’s backs when needed. I trust my teammates implicitly and don’t see a need to bond with them more than I have.
My situation is not that dissimilar to a lot of my colleagues: I have a spouse and two small children. My personal time is my own and I cherish my family time. Several of my colleagues have families and one has elderly parents she cares for when not at work. She pays quite a bit for care while she is working and she must leave work right at 5 p.m. to get home to relieve the caretakers. None of us have a problem with this because we all want to get out by 5:30 or 6 after very busy days. We rarely take lunches and most of us come in very early to beat the traffic.
I get the fact our leadership is seeking ways to engage us, but I don’t get why we have to do it in this manner. We are tight, we are happy and we work very hard to make sure every client gets what they need right away.
I dread the idea of these outings and I know most of my colleagues do too. However, we’re afraid to say anything in case our leadership considers us to be difficult or not invested in the firm. If it were a one-off I’d say we’ll all go and just get it over with, despite the waste of time and money. But talking about doing this monthly makes my stomach hurt.
Is there a way to explain to him (without jeopardizing my job) that while we certainly appreciate the gesture, it just isn’t necessary?
A.G.
Dear A.G.,
As often happens when a particular topic comes up, your story is not too different from several other situations I’ve encountered over the last few weeks. In one case, I work with an exceptionally busy leader of a group that sounds like yours in its dedication to clients. However, the managers of the group want the team to be bonded and are seeking ways for them to get together outside (or inside) of work hours. People in the group are busy and they don’t want to spend time on this.
In another case, the firm in question is looking for ideas for their annual offsite. They are focused on teambuilding and fun activities for a team that is already very bonded and close. That said, the firm wants to focus more on learning-based activities to make the time valuable.
It’s unfortunate there is a sense amongst leaders that having fun downtime together is often the key to team happiness. Many teams do enjoy outside time together. They may like to go for a drink or dinner or even get together at one or another’s house from time to time to enjoy the company. But it is more common that teammates really enjoy the people they work with and – as you point out – have one another’s backs, but they don’t particularly want to give up personal time to spend more with workmates. In fact, for most of us, we spend so much more time at work than we do with our own families that the personal time becomes very precious.
You could approach your senior advisor with an air of curiosity to find out what he believes is missing from the team that needs to happen with outside activities. Has communication broken down somewhere? Did a client miss receiving something leading him to believe the team does not work seamlessly together? Has he observed a scenario that would lead him to say you need to work on your communication and relationships?
While you might suspect the idea came from his coaching experience (and it well might have been what prompted this), there could also be an underlying concern he has that he is trying to address.
So, first seek to understand what he sees that the rest of you may not see and stay open to learning more. If he doesn’t have anything concrete to offer, then you might want to share the insight about team members. Is he disconnected from the day-to-day? For example, does he know you have a colleague who is caring for elderly parents? Or does he know that many of you have small children you miss throughout the workweek and can’t wait to see once you get home? You might want to say while you are so appreciative of his efforts to spend money for the team to be together, you believe most people would rather spend their precious off-work hours with their own families. Ask him to make this optional – for those who want to go, that’s fine, and for those who choose to opt-out there is no penalty on their career.
Like most situations, I don’t know your senior advisor, so without having some sense of his style and personality, I honestly don’t know how open he will be to this. But it sounds like it is worth a try to approach him and see if you can appeal to his care about the team. Just be sure to inquire first about why he believes this to be an important course of action.
Dear Bev,
We are a strong team of 19 who all come in to the office every day and work well together. Most of us have been here for a minimum of three years. Some, like me, have been here for over 10 years. We value team and camaraderie and believe the reason we work so well together is that we are here together.
We have been posting for a new role as a junior advisor and have not been able to find a good candidate. The recruiter keeps telling us that in this day and age everyone wants flexibility and some people want to be able to work from home five days a week. Our senior partners seem to be warming to the idea because they really need the help, but the rest of us are concerned about what happens to the culture we’ve built if we don’t maintain what we have now.
I am not a negative person and don’t want to cause a rift, but I don’t agree with capitulating to the idea we cannot find anyone who fits without offering something that isn’t who we are.
Are you seeing teams being forced to offer WFH in order to get the right talent? Are we an anomaly? I will say we are based in the suburban area of a very large city on the east coast. Most people want to live and work in the city and it’s about 50 minutes by train to get out to where we are. You couldn’t walk to our office park once you get here, you’d have to Uber from the train station. We all live anywhere from 10 minutes to one hour from the office, so I get that people don’t like commuting.
S.K.
Dear S.K.,
Your core question is whether I am seeing the WFH request to be a deal breaker for other teams and firms when trying to find new talent. I appreciate all you have written, but to be honest, it is entirely up to the firm or team to determine what they need, how their culture is designed and what’s acceptable and not acceptable for work behavior.
I have many clients who are in the office five days a week, and I have many still operating on a hybrid model where they might insist on one, two or three days in-office but allow WFH the rest of the week. I have a few clients where almost nobody comes into the office, and perhaps they arrange a lunch once a month to have everyone get together.
In the scenario you outline it is entirely possible your location might be a barrier. However, your firm has found almost 20 people who live close enough to make the trek every day and (apparently) are happy to do so. Once you decide you will allow someone new to work from home or be virtual, you might find that others in your office ask to do the same. While they are coming in now, they might prefer a virtual option if it was available to them.
This is the problem with changing requirements for a new hire: you have to offer the same options to those that have been there for a while. Perhaps you could share this with your partners and make sure they are ready and willing to open the door to changing the way things work now.
I also know recruiters want to have as many options to them as possible, so you might be getting pressure from the recruiter because having flexibility will their job of locating qualified clients easier. They have a job to do, and they’ll do whatever is necessary to succeed!
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. The firm has won the Wealthbriefing WealthTech award for Best Training Solution for 2022, 2023 and 2024. Beverly is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching undergraduate and graduate students Entrepreneurship and Leading Teams. She 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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Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
