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,
We have a woman, “Grace,” on our team who seems to enjoy stirring things up. She is one of our client service managers. My partners and I have agreed to ignore her antics in favor of harmony within the team. Everyone else knows she is a troublemaker. When she talks about someone behind their back to someone else, we ignore it. I know it isn’t optimal, but it has worked in our culture.
This week she crossed a very difficult line. One of the women in our office overheard Grace telling a client about another woman on our team, “Shelly,” and how unreliable and unpredictable she is. The client was concerned because they had asked for some information and not received it. Rather than follow-up and meet the client’s needs, this colleague heard Grace say a number of unattractive things about Shelly. It is Shelly’s account, and she was out for two days quite ill. We had asked her to take time to recoup and not to check emails.
I’m not sure what to do. I have to call Grace’s behavior out, but do I also call the client? Do I let Shelly know in case the client says anything to her? I realize allowing this to go on has created a problem that was bound to bleed into client conversations. But I thought Grace had more professionalism than this.
E.I.
Dear E.I.,
You took away my opening line, which would have been, “It never pays to ignore a problem like this in the quest for harmony.” I often refer to this as the “culture of nice,” whereby a team chooses not to confront or introduce an issue because they don’t want anyone to get upset. They prefer to bury the problem or ignore it altogether. As you have learned the hard way, it doesn’t go away. In fact, in many cases, and it sounds like it might be one with Grace, the person becomes emboldened. They cease to consider their behavior as inappropriate and can feel entitled to have an opinion and share it – even if it is a negative opinion about a colleague.
You have to confront this pattern of behavior. You have an issue not knowing how the client reacted to what Grace shared about Shelly. A few considerations:
- Understand from Grace directly exactly what she said to the client and how the client responded to her. I realize this will put your third colleague in a tough position, having been the one to hear the call and tell on Grace. You don’t have to say where you heard it; you can say it has come to your attention that a dialogue took place. For all Grace knows, the client or Shelly might have told you. Before you confront Grace, see if she will share what she said and the client’s response.
- Share the exchange with Shelly. From what you have said, it is no secret within your team that Grace tends to disparage her colleagues. If you can find out from Grace what the client said, that would be best. But at a minimum, let Shelly know the client might have a perception she dropped the ball. Shelly does not want to get defensive, but perhaps wants to share there was a bit of a misunderstanding and then be clear about what happened and what she will do next. The nature of this client relationship matters a lot. If it is at risk or a problem situation Shelly will have to tread very carefully.
- Talk to Grace about her overall behavior. Come together to establish ground rules on how she and your team will interact. Many teams have a rule – no talking about another team member to someone else without the person in question in attendance. In one of my corporate jobs, a wise consultant had us implement a plan whereby if someone came to speak badly about another person, immediately you – as the person being told – were to tell that person to stop while you picked up the phone and called the person being talked about and asked them to join the conversation. Back talking went away and quickly. I’ve given this advice many times over after seeing how effective it was.
- Have your team discuss how they want to be together. Is “harmony” worth denying problems? Are obstacles off the table and never to be discussed? Is it expected that no one will ever have a problem with another teammate? The team should use this as a chance to talk about who they want to be as a team and establish values that work for everyone.
Dear Bev,
We are undergoing a lot of change, having acquired a team of two advisors who had no support staff. We have a team of nine, including excellent support colleagues who have allowed us to have a seamless client onboarding and management process.
Those two advisors want to continue to do everything on their own. They believe the success they have had is because of what they have done, and they don’t want to change anything. We believe we acquired them to give them infrastructure and a way to be even more successful. How do we get them to see the benefit of having processes and team members to take things off their plate?
J.S.
Dear J.S.,
I’m always concerned when I get these questions and the acquisition has already taken place, the people are working on the team and now the significant cultural differences and approach to serving clients comes to light! These are things, along with the financial considerations, that should be explored and discussed long before the transaction takes place.
But alas, you have to work from where you are. Promise me if you do future acquisitions, you will learn from this experience and have a deep discussion about client servicing, approach to work, management style and so on before the deal gets done.
In many cases, people are hard wired to having and implementing their own process, and are distrustful of handing pieces of it over to others. This is a stylistic approach, and it can be hard to ask someone to take a risk when they don’t want to disrupt clients.
Have you allowed these new advisors to get to know your team well enough to see their dedication to the clients? Have you shared enough about how the process works so they have transparency and can be comfortable about what exactly will happen to the client throughout the journey?
Ask them for a pilot of two or three of their clients where they work closely with your team members to explore the process and work hand-in-glove together. You might not be able to force a wholesale change, but ask them to work with your team on a couple of situations to learn and practice together.
Don’t give up on this, but respect their “truth.” They have been doing it a certain way for a long time. If you did not make it a condition of their joining the firm that they’d need to shift their behavior, they have a reason to resist. Understand this and help them work it through in a comfortable manner.
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. She is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching undergraduate and graduate students Entrepreneurship and Leading Teams. Beverly 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.
Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here. 
