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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,
We recently lost a key member of our team. He was diagnosed with a rare illness, and three or four weeks later, he was gone. We’ve all been devastated, of course. He was a nice guy, along with being one of our top producers and firm leaders. We’ve been reaching out to his clients proactively. They are all similarly devastated but appear to want to keep working with the firm.
The dilemma is this: Our owner would like to establish a foundation in our colleague’s name for underprivileged kids in our community. Our office is in a very wealthy area, but a few towns over you can find some of the worst poverty imaginable. It is tough to say, but our client base is very right-leaning, and they have the attitude that people should just fend for themselves. Ergo our problem. Do we move forward with something we know our colleague would have cared about or do we capitulate, knowing if we do this, some of his clients might leave because they see us as too “woke”?
J.V.
Dear J.V.,
First of all, my condolences on your loss. This is the third firm I have heard of in the last month that lost someone really special without much warning. I send my sympathies to your entire team. It is very difficult on so many fronts to be able to move on in a caring and professional manner.
To your question, I’d like to poll our leadership on this one, because I think the answer lies in the value lens one puts on the world. For me, I am about doing what you believe is right, even if it isn’t profitable in that moment to do it. However, others would likely say you should go out of your way not to offend your clients — after all, what they think and believe should be paramount. They are paying the bills.
I think your team needs to get together and decide what kind of a culture you have, and want. Then you need to talk about what your colleague would want you to do. Was he a boat-rocker who might do something because he believed in it, or was he someone who took the feelings and thoughts of others (i.e. clients) into consideration and so would have been hesitant to do something they might find offensive?
I often work with clients on Driving Forces — sometimes called motivators and values. There are extreme differences in the way we see the world. Our “value lens” tells us what is right versus what is wrong. If I believe strongly one way, and you have the opposite lens on the world, we are not only going to disagree, but we will probably not like each other very much. For this reason, being diligent about culture and what you stand for is important.
I’m going to guess, with the client set you have attracted, your culture may have previously been about focusing on return on investment and individualism. These things are not bad (no value set is “bad”), but they are in opposition to the path your owner is considering taking with the loss of your colleague. It’s not that the two sides cannot co-exist. However, it takes careful consideration to do something very different with clients who have come to know you one way and now will see you another.
There are no easy answers here, so I do encourage our loyal readers to write in and let us know your thoughts on this difficult, but important, topic.
Dear Bev,
We are about to embark on our bi-annual offsite. Generally, these meetings are very productive, but for the past seven years we have always had an outside facilitator. We have a new HR person, “Suzanne” who started 18 months ago, and she wants to be the one to lead the offsites from now on.
I believe we should solicit input from our team about what they want to talk about. Perhaps we could have a survey or focus groups. Suzanne is adamant the leaders of the firm know what’s right. To me, this is a warning flag that maybe she won’t be as open to hear what people want to say. Would I be disloyal to go to team members and get input on my own?
Anonymous
Dear Advisor,
Oh, my goodness, YES! It would be disloyal, but it also would create a divide within your team before the offsite even starts. You would be taking input that you would ultimately have to either keep to yourself, which would create distrust with the team, or you would need to share it with Suzanne in the planning. She would know you reached out on your own after she told you she didn’t want to proceed this way.
You have two options:
- Continue to try to get Suzanne to see it would be in her best interest to know what might come up before the offsite. This way, she can plan in advance, and there are no surprises once the team gets together.
- Let the chips fall, as the saying goes. Allow her to proceed in the way she believes is best and see what happens at the offsite.
There are times you can’t get someone to see something that might actually be in their own best interest. All you can do is share your viewpoint. If she chooses to accept it, the event will go one way. If she doesn’t, it might go another. But in that case, it isn’t in your power to control her behavior and the outcomes. Your team has apparently made the decision to allow her to play this role, so you have to let her play it the best way she sees fit to do so!
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, 2024 and 2025. 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.
