How can we as financial advisors demonstrate leadership to our teammates and clients during a crises? What about setting goals and stick to them in chaos? How can the five star model help teammates collaborate, measuring performance? Rob Knapp and Curtis Brown discuss these issues and more.

Bear Markets are naturally occurring events. This creates a tremendous opportunity to develop our leadership skills so we can be there to support each other and your clients. Rob Knapp explains the process to stay healthy while growing your practice in difficult markets.

 

By Rob Knapp

If we’re lucky enough to be well-parented (and I was), we’ll often enter adulthood carrying great gifts. We may or may not be consciously aware of them. We may not realize their  importance until much later. When you are subject to optimal parenting there are all manner of useful gifts and lessons deposited into our psyches. The power of a negative example can provide a purpose that drives one toward a remarkable life. In my case my father was a positive example. With a single sentence I’ll never forget, he armed me with an idea that grew more and more powerful the longer I carried it forward.

My father was an industrial engineer for Armstrong. The company made linoleum floors and his job was to make them more efficiently. He was given the task of relentlessly squeezing costs out of the manufacturing process; and relentless he was. He used to say, “believing you’ve eliminated all the costs was just a failure of imagination.”

Dad was a smart guy, and even my 15-year-old self wanted to learn something from him. I asked him one Saturday when he brought me into the office, “What’s your job?” His answer is the gift he gave me. He said,

“My job is to eliminate my job—my job is getting everyone else to do the stuff that’s in the job description so that I can think up new things.”

His job was to think, to envision cost savings, to invent new workflows. It wasn’t to send memos or sit in staff meetings (although I’m sure he did his share of each). And with that idea perking inside me, I entered adulthood. As my career unfolded and Supernova emerged, the idea of getting other people to do your job so you can do your real job crystallized into a bedrock principle I live by. Today, I call it radical delegation.

It’s easy to see this principle at work in a growing Supernova practice. The administrator runs the office. They schedule the 12-4-2 sessions; they move the folders into place, they even schedule the acquisition calls. Why? First off, they are organized and dispassionate about the tasks, meaning they are more resistant to avoidance and procrastination. But most importantly, it’s not your job.

Your job as a leader and FA is to think about your clients and your team. Your job is to get deeper and deeper into their lives so that you can understand the complexity and respond with a plan and with solutions that make their lives better. Your job is to become your client’s CFO, and as soon as you think you’ve done everything you can you need to look at it again so you don’t have your own ‘failure of imagination’.

Teamwork makes the dream work, but a vision becomes a nightmare when the leader has a big dream and a bad team.
—John C. Maxwell

It’s our belief that managers are an undervalued resource; they’re the unsung heroes–they move advisors toward a vision for success as well as helping them with their development. The manager leader must create the right environment in which teams can thrive. Without leadership, it’s going to be very hard for teams to thrive. The right environment is created through building a culture that is sustainable. In other words, the leader must be fully engaged with the advisor teams.
We see the leader as your business strategist and coach. The manager as coach facilitates the building, creation, and leading of advisor teams. This is an individual who helps to promote collaboration among teams, both internally as well as across organizational silos. The leader is establishing a common vision among all the advisor teams in the market area of responsibility, and the vision is a unifying purpose among all the advisors. As a business strategist and coach, he or she meets with advisor teams at least on a quarterly basis and helps to shape business plans that meet the objectives of client, the advisor, as well as the firm.

When you think about this role and how busy this individual is, it seems overwhelming. The leader must create an infrastructure in the office and build his/her internal team to be able to help execute on the advisors’ most important activities that are necessary for success. We have witnessed some leaders having one or two sales managers, having individuals work with the on-boarding of new advisors, establishing roles around administration, compliance, strategic marketing and product areas and the tactical product areas for the firm.

The leader is the unifying person who helps elevate the entire team to have an impact on advisors. He or she understands the “pain points” in his market. For example, someone working in a Florida market might have a distinct set of pain points relative to retirees or opportunities as opposed to someone who might be working in a very entrepreneurial environment in the Silicon Valley in California. This is an individual who is going to understand their market and is diligent in helping and coaching advisors to seek out specialized niche markets and other business opportunities that might exist.

Building Partner Relationships
He or she can build and extend partnering relationships throughout the organization. There may be an area of expertise that doesn’t exist within the branch and it’s up to the branch leader to examine the organization and create collaborative partnering opportunities. They may be with compliance, with marketing, with product groups, and they may be with specialists. They also may be with highly specialized divisions within the organization, whether institutional relationships or specialized retirement planning groups.

He or she is effective at building a team that supports the team-based environment with administrative staff, sales managers, product/market coordinators and other advisor teams. This is an individual who leads through observation and interaction and asks questions to gain knowledge and information as to how best to provide support of the advisors within their branch.
This is a two-way street. While we are focused on managers, advisors need to challenge them to get certain things done that benefit the entire office and the advisor team. When this leader is out recruiting they should ask a fundamental question to each advisor they try to on-board which is, “How are you being coached?” Recruits should ask the question, “How do you coach and lead your advisors?” For recruits who want to grow, that is a very important question. It speaks to your future growth potential through an offer of coaching and guidance.

It bears repeating: these manager/leaders should ask the advisors they’re trying to recruit how they’re currently being coached. The role of the manager and coach is often undervalued in terms of the impact that these leaders can have on building sustainable environments and impacting the communities they serve. When firms engage in frequent reorganizations and relocations it can impact a leader’s ability to have a long-term positive impact on their advisors. As a result, advisors can become cynical due to leadership change.

And if advisors are not being coached, what is the answer? If you really think about why are they not being coached, the face-to-face meetings with the advisor has got to be front and center, and how they delegate certain duties and responsibilities must be examined so that these manager/leaders can maximize the opportunity and time spent with them.

So why coach advisor teams? If you’re really looking at trying to extract maximum organic growth out of an organization, helping teams become more successful is a key component of this strategy. These leaders can take several steps to remedy problems with team dynamics. The first is to work with teams to develop a common objective understanding of why team members are not collaborating effectively. Managers must examine these teams through interviews, evaluations, coaching, and reviewing advisor business plans. It’s a substantial commitment of time, but the rewards and psychic income that comes from coaching and developing others is personally gratifying.

These leaders are also responsible for helping to correct dysfunctional team dynamics which means they must focus attention on interventions. As soon as managers begin to observe a level of dysfunction that can put a team into a crisis, the leader must intervene and potentially mediate conflict. As the saying goes, it’s up to this leader to try to “manage the ripples because ripples become waves and waves have the potential to become tsunamis”. This means problems have the potential to escalate beyond repair at times.

If leaders don’t manage that risk, teams may break up or they vote with their feet and they move to another organization thinking that will solve the problems. Being interactive in this way is also part of an advisor retention strategy. If a manager is building organic growth, retaining advisors and reducing turnover is part of the equation for success.

The Soft Skills
And part of the dynamics is being able to express sensitivity, being able to express understanding, being able to remind advisors that you are there to help them with their business. These are some of the necessary soft skills. Part of it is trying to get team members aligned to the broader vision and strategy and making sure that this leader communicates the organization’s purpose.
Leaders must examine the team’s alignment, and how teams are organized, and how they collaborate. Show an interest in teams by reviewing team agendas and communicating and checking in regularly with teams to ensure they’re working consistently and collectively on the vision and the strategy. These actions help to provide direction and focus. These are all elements of team-based coaching.

McKinsey and Company studied top teams in organizations and they reported that only 30 percent of the time was spent in productive collaboration. They identified some examples of how poor dynamics depressed performance. It is these soft skills that very often no one pays a lot of attention to, but they impact performance and the metrics.

One of the things that these manager/leaders must do at the formation stage is to help teams get it right, help teams get the right people on the bus, establish priorities, avoid conflict and disruption, and get the training they need to succeed. The real task of this leader is to build and nurture other potential team members as leaders. It’s this balance between the teams needing some objectives in how they manage themselves, and the leader stepping in only appropriately to help these teams succeed.

The leader is being confronted on a day-in day-out basis by numerous people, clients, advisors, support staff, operations, administrative personnel, and product vendors who want their time. The leader must constantly establish priorities and make sure that they’re focused on the priority activities that are going to impact team performance and enhance the branch revenues. The coach, the manager, the leader, one and the same, it’s that person’s job to represent the values of the organization as powerfully and as charismatically as possible. It is these leaders that set the example in everything that they do.

In an interview with the Harvard Business Review, then CEO of GE, Jeff Immelt was asked, “What does a leader do?” His response was, “Drive change and develop other leaders” . And, yes, it’s also important to nurture the other team members as leaders and to talk about curbing the egos. There are many soft skills that leaders must use to understand these team interpersonal relationships and weighing and managing conflict, as well as curbing the egos of individuals that could be disruptive to the team. Team members must understand that no one is bigger than the team, and they all must make sacrifices for the group. Team leaders must set aside personal egos and remember they are working for the greater goal of helping the team succeed. It’s a difficult soft skill that is required to diffuse conflict so that the team continues to move forward. This is a huge transformation for many team leaders.

The role of the manager/leader is multi-faceted. These leaders must be adept at strategic planning and understanding the unique markets within their area of operations. They must lead advisors in embracing and understanding many of the changes that are occurring in a changing marketplace. The leader must adapt and organize their operations that support clients and advisors. This leader must establish controls for profitability as well as managing the compliance posture in their offices while managing risk.

The Leader as a Business Strategist
This leader is also a business strategist who meets one-on-one with advisors to lead and ensure that there is alignment with the goals and vision of the company. A business strategist is responsible for determining the direction and scope of his office. The business leader is also a coach responsible for the development of his/her people. One of the keys to this coaching effort is mentoring and developing others who can assume leadership roles within the office. When this leader takes an interest in the personal development of others, these individuals will, in turn, reciprocate by offering their support in the offices as mentors and coaches for advisors within the office. If the leader is developing and fostering a collaborative culture, it will permeate throughout the entire office. These individuals can become a de-facto leadership team in the office and should be organized in a way that provides organized training and support for them as well as for teams in the office.

The role of these leaders has become so complex over the years that a collaborative team- based model must be utilized to leverage the capabilities of the leader like the way an advisor team might operate with delegation of duties, responsibilities and accountabilities. This leader is also a conductor when it comes time for mobilizing his or her teams. Sometimes, this leader might bring in a team either within his office or from another office and hold a developmental meeting for the sharing of ideas and concepts. These break-out sessions are designed to focus attention on the strategies necessary to enable teams to break new thresholds of performance.

The role of leader, as illustrated in Fig.14.1, is multi-faced and has a high degree of complexity if performed appropriately. Leaders must plan and organize strategies to have a positive impact on market penetration, client service, coaching, training and development of all employees, as well as growing revenues. Metrics are generally handed down from above, however, you must provide leadership to accomplish firm-wide goals while paying close attention to the unique attributes of your market or service area. These activities must be done while controlling costs and maintaining the compliance posture within your branch.

As a leader, you are the business strategist for your market. You are analyzing opportunities to have an enormous impact. While there are problems and issues that abound, you must stay vigilant and create strategies for success.

The 7-Step Coaching Process
We have spent some time discussing the manager as leader/coach. Now let’s examine a process as described in Figure 14.2 for mangers to implement this 7-step process.

Step 1: The Assessment/ Preparation. Before you bring in an advisor team for coaching you must perform an assessment of the team. Gather all relevant reports and data on the team members. Examine the quantitative data and qualitative data for the team and team members. At a minimum, review revenue reports, household growth reports, product mix, financial plans, and plan implementation. Also, review client satisfaction reports, net new money, and annuitized business reports to name a few. We realize that these reports vary by firm. The point is, you want to understand as much about the team as you can prior to engaging them in the coaching and business strategist roles.
Step 2: Strategy. You want to communicate the vision and objectives for your office and firm. You are trying to establish congruence and alignment of the team’s mission and goals with that of the organization. The time spent here is designed to make sure everyone is on the same page. Conduct a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis as discussed in a previous chapter. Ask the advisor team for feedback. Is there alignment with firm strategy and the team?
Step 3: Gap Analysis. In this step, the leader will discuss the gaps in alignment between the firm and the advisor. The leader should also discuss any challenges and problem areas that are in conflict between the two parties as well as where there is common ground. Identify opportunities and areas for improvement. What behavioral changes need to be discussed? (This is a joint effort between manager and the advisor team.)
Step 4: Seek Agreement. Confirm with the team the gaps that require special attention and focus.
Step 5: Discuss Potential Solution. The solutions might be the best course of action, recommendations and improvements to the practice. Are the recommended solutions realistic? Negotiate solutions between manager and advisor. It’s important that these methods not be presented as dictum, but rather as possibilities. Identify and discuss best practice solutions.

Step 6: Create an Action Plan. Have the team create an action plan with initiatives, tasks, timing or time table, and who will be responsible for the implementation. Prepare a joint written action plan with key initiatives, tasks, timing, and responsibilities. Establish measurable goals and critical next steps.
Step 7: Schedule Sessions for Monitoring and Feedback. Sometimes, this is a meeting, and, at times, a simple note written on a performance report with a green or blue felt tip pen is enough. Providing a congratulatory word or words of encouragement indicate that you, as the leader, care about the team. Schedule check-ups and inspect progress. Sessions should be scheduled three or four times per year. Characterize the sessions as business planning and strategy meetings. Calling them “reviews” has a negative connotation. Remember, you are engaging the advisor team in a coaching or developmental session.
Outcomes

If you are engaging your advisor teams in this manner, you will impact and create a culture of excellence in your office environment. You will foster communication and collaboration in the branch or office you have been chosen to lead. Awareness of what needs to be done in your office will become clearer because you will be earning the trust of your advisors and team members and they will be more inclined to share information with you. You will coach teams to higher levels of performance and show them the pathways as to how to get to their destination.
Leader Challenge

Meet with your leadership team and develop your coaching model and vison for your team’s future. Make sure that all advisor teams have a business plan that is not just constructed, but is discussed with you several times per year. Utilize the coaching model as discussed in this chapter.

[1] www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/world-class-teams

[2] Harvard Business Review, How GE Teaches Teams to Lead Change, Steven Prokesch, January, 2009.

Let Excellence be your minimum

Curtis Brown

 

Imagine it’s 2:30 in the morning. You are a trauma surgeon trying to save the life of an accident victim with multiple gunshot wounds. Your team is ready to go. The airways are checked. Breathing is checked. The circulatory system is stabilized. The life of that patient relies on you and your team working in synchronicity with each team member performing his or her job at the exact right time to keep the patient alive.

Execution is everything.

That’s what Trauma Surgeon Dr. Andre Campbell discusses in a new book by Curtis Brown and Rob Knapp titled: Supernova Advisor Teams, a Pathway to Excellence. Being released this April through Amazon. Supernova Advisor Teams is a handbook for building healthy teams in the financial services industry. Team members who work in harmony make the sum of the whole much greater than the individuals working parallel but separate paths. This has been documented many different ways but none so dramatic as a trauma surgery team. A group of Wharton professors following surgery teams found that amid what seems like chaos is a well-choreographed process that advisors can learn from and emulate.

Whether you are looking to take your existing team to a new level of performance or are considering starting or joining a team, this is a must read to continue your future success. When each team member clearly understands their roles, a fluidity in solving the complex problems for the client takes place. This book breaks new ground on the complexities of team building and leadership roles. Pre-order today on Amazon.com

Advisor Teams can benefit from coaching.

By Curtis Brown, Vice President, Supernova Coaching

The age of the sole practitioner advisor is giving way to team-based advisors for many reasons.

There are essentially four reasons to form a team:

1) Improve productivity and grow revenues
2) Deliver the “wow” client experience
3) Create a retirement succession plan for your practice
4) Improve the personal quality of life for you and your family

Improving productivity and growing revenues

All of the big firms who studied the impact on team productivity decided teams are more productive than the sole practitioner model and then implemented incentives for FAs to be on a team. Most have key initiatives around team formation. Teams must be structured in a way that is more than cobbled together solutions and also provides the basis for leverage. In other words, 1+1=3, or by pairing two individuals the team has the leverage equivalent of three producers.

Let’s review a few statistics surrounding team productivity. According to a study conducted by Price Metrix, ‘55% of advisors are on teams and manage more assets, generate more revenue and maintain more client relationships than sole practitioners.’

The average team manages $260m and generates $1.7m in revenue across 280 relationships, compared to the average sole practitioner who manages $110m, generating $830k across 140 household relationships”.

Unfortunately, when teams are being formed, they can skip many of the strategic and operational issues and go straight to, “how are we going to split the production?”

Teams need to establish a strategic plan that identifies the team’s value proposition, mission statement, and elevator pitch.

These are necessary components of a team-based strategy that should be discussed to determine if each team member is aligned with the strategy. This also provides unity of purpose.

Teams should also go through the exercise of performing a SWOT analysis. Identifying (S)Strengths; (W) Weaknesses or developmental needs of team members; exploring (O) Opportunities for productivity improvement; and examining (T) Threats associated with team success. While going through this analysis, action items should be identified along with the delegation of duties and responsibilities for team activities or initiatives.  Once a team is sufficiently organized around specific processes, strategies can then be developed for the development and penetration of niche markets, building new relationships via centers of influence, and gaining referrals from existing relationships.

The Supernova Leadership Five Star Model equips a team to be more efficient and grow at an accelerated rate through accountability of their actions. The Supernova process assigns certain responsibilities to team members by making them “Vice Presidents” of an area and then holds them responsible for specific actions related to that area. Separation of duties increases the expertise of either of the VP’s. Specialization increases productivity, focus and creativity.  

This week we will review the role of the VP of Leadership. This person is responsible for developing and maintaining a productive environment through:

The leader helps the team members release their inner potential by choosing growth over fear. He or she will build time into the schedule for monthly meetings with individual members of the team. The VP will create a folder for each team member as if they were a client. He/she will work with each team member to develop their skills based on the goals they set together. 

The VP sets standards, strategies and goals for the team and then follows up on the set guidelines. Here is an example:

Standard: To create an environment where people can fail as well as succeed. To give honest feedback to each team member. To encourage everyone to help each other and leave their egos at the door. 

Strategy: Encourage growth of business through the Rule of Reciprocity (if you give an extremely high level of service the client will want to help you in return by giving you referrals).

Goal: To develop skills, knowledge and confidence of team and help them achieve their goals. 

Follow Up: Daily stand up meeting and weekly team meetings to measure their goals. 

There are a lot of advantages of having your team members take responsibility for different areas of your business. If you are a sole practitioner you and your administrative staff will be responsible for the VP roles.

The Supernova Leadership Five Star Model equips a team to be more efficient and grow at an accelerated rate through accountability of their actions. The Supernova process assigns certain responsibilities to team members by making them “Vice Presidents” of an area and then holds them responsible for specific actions related to that area. Separation of duties increases the expertise of either of the VP’s. Specialization increases productivity, focus and creativity.  

This week we will review the role of the VP of Marketing. This person is responsible for overseeing the acquisition strategy of the team, 90/6/4/2/2/1 + VIPSA.

Many of the teams we work with have “gaps” in their marketing plan. The VP of Marketing can ask the team to do a gap analysis to understand the team’s competence and execution of their acquisition strategy. That will give the VP a base to develop a robust model.

On a granular level we ask Supernova teams to identify real prospects they have a chance of closing. Look at the percent of prospects that convert to clients. If that number is low your prospect pipeline may not be realistic and needs to be fine-tuned.Has each FA on the team identified 6 business people (CPA, Attorney, Doctor, Insurance or Real Estate Broker, etc.) whom they can exchange referrals with. Are you meeting with each of them on a regular basis?  COIs are a vital part of acquisition. Do you have a web page? How is your team involved in the community? These are all areas the VP of Marketing will handle.

The VP sets standards, strategies and goals for the team and then follows up on the set guidelines. Here is an example:

Standard: All team members are fully engaged and have ritualized the agreed upon acquisition strategies.
Strategy: The team implements the seven Supernova acquisition pieces: 90 prospects, 6 Centers of Influence, 4 member Mastermind Group, 2 Niches, 2 Community Boards, 1 social media strategy and VIPSA.
Goal: Every Team member has executed the seven strategies 100%.
Follow Up: VP measures the success of the team’s plan through the Gameboard. This ensures you are getting the results you want. 

There are a lot of advantages of having your team members take responsibility for different areas of your business. If you are a sole practitioner you and your administrative staff will be responsible for the VP roles.

Take advantage of all the resources in the Advanced Learning Library to help you create your leadership model. Use the forum to ask your questions. Work with a Supernova coach to get even more help.

January is a good time to review and update your strategic plan for the new year. Most operations-related challenges can be addressed through an active strategic planning process. The Supernova Five Star model will help you in creating a strategic plan because it sets clear assignments, goals and measurement tools for each team member that will keep you on track over time. 

First step would be to apply the GAP analysis to your business and find out what you need to work on. We divide a business into five strategic areas: Planning; Planning Implementation; Branding/Service; Marketing and Leadership. (See articles on the Five Star Model in the Advanced Learning Library. Once you have assigned the roles and responsibilities to members of your team (in the case of a solo FA he/she would be responsible for every role) you can evaluate the areas based on competence and execution. To Download a template for the Gap Analysis click here.

David Lawrence, founder and president of EfficientPractice.com, in a recent article states, “For a strategic plan to be successful, it should be an ongoing process with periodic reviews during the year to ensure the firm stays on track or accounts for changes in goals. ”  

Set up daily and weekly meetings to work on the day to day goals. Set up  monthly, quarterly and annual meetings to work on long range goals and set your strategic plan based on your mission and purpose statement. 

Lawrence uses the example of a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) grouped into a four box grid to uncover issues that need to be address. Having the team think through these four aspects of planning prior to a meeting will lead to more accurate results. You can also apply the Steven Covey’s Urgent/Important chart as well. Once you have set up your strategic plan and identified workable goals assign the VP of that area to execute them Use the Gameboard to measure your progress.

 

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