We are rolling out a new investment approach. Our advisors have agreed to outsource investing and we are migrating our accounts. It’s been a very, very long decision-making process to determine how best to shift investment management and communicate internally. Now, the hard part comes – communicating this change to our clients.

I work for a large organization that has very poor leadership. We lack direction, communication and motivation from the very top down to the level of my manager.

What’s your thought on hiring a business-development officer?

Some of our team members are lazy. They will say they are busy doing client work or following investments but then they are gone at 3 p.m. on a Friday.

Over the last several years the advisory industry has trended away from valuing financial expertise in order to put the emphasis on the relational or human side of investing. This makes sense but we have moved too far in the opposite direction.

We are having more conversations with clients about their spending habits. This is a major transition in the advisor-client relationship.

I’m a woman among much older male partners and I sense that no matter how much I’ve done, how far I’ve come and how much I’ve proven myself, they do not see me as their peer. They believe I contribute less to the firm.

Our founder has decided to turn us into a sales operation. He has hired a consultant to work with us, has put goals in place for new sales and is turning those of us who are investment experts into nothing more than sales agents.

We are putting a new system into place to ensure some of the commissioned people in our firm are acting in accordance with the pending DOL changes. They have been pure product salespeople and need to become advisors who use a consultative approach. This is a wholesale change in both thought process and systems and I don’t believe our management realizes how much is involved.

Many thanks to those who joined me last week for my webinar, Strategies for Dealing with Difficult Clients. Whenever I get questions on how to handle someone who is difficult, or what to do when a client (or employee) is unreasonable, I focus first on the differences in style.