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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’m an advisor working in partnership with one of our most senior advisors who has made it known he will be retiring in the next five to seven years. He is very respectful about the transition: includes me in discussions with clients, gives me specific aspects of client accounts to work on, and is generally supportive in helping me grow into the role of taking on his clients when he retires.
In the last few months, he has been including me in more and more meetings with clients, even where I might not be working directly on their accounts. I have noticed a disturbing trend, and I’m not sure how to address it. My advisor, “Sam,” often talks only to one person in a spousal or couple situation. In some cases — mostly when it is the wife — she will ask a question and Sam responds directly to the husband to answer it.
He does this so much that he will use the husband’s name, even when it was the wife who asked the question. I can read body language pretty well and in a number of cases I can see the person who is being ignored getting either irritated or wanting to remove themselves from the engagement. Sam has kept these clients for decades, so I’m sure he is doing something right by them. However, witnessing this behavior has me concerned that, if the husband or main person should pass away in the next five to seven years, these clients could leave the firm because they felt disregarded.
I did try to bring this up to Sam. I told him that because my role was more to watch and listen I was able to observe dynamics he might not be as aware of. =I asked him if he realized he was doing this. He told me his job is to focus on “the power person” in the relationship rather than both, because they don’t wield equal power.
This seems old school to me. My wife is quieter than I am, but vendors and others who come to our house learn to their peril what happens if they ignore her wishes and input. We recently had a landscaper who wouldn’t talk to my wife when I wasn’t home, and they lasted about two months working for us. She made sure I fired them quickly. Sometimes the quieter spouse doesn’t speak directly in meetings, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t wielding power at home when decisions get made.
Do I wait it out and hope for the best? Do I keep pushing this with my advisor? It’s a hard position to be in. That said, I also don’t feel comfortable watching it and not doing anything about it.
L.A.
Dear L.A.,
I’m impressed to hear you are observing this dynamic and can relate to those partners being ignored because you respect your spouse and can make a corollary to what Sam is doing with clients. I also agree you are right to be worried. This is not just a “be kind to the other person” issue, but a business imperative. If you are reading the body language right, the ignored person might be getting increasingly frustrated and just waiting it out to make a change when they are the “power person.”
I recently had someone tell me a support person in their advisor’s office sent a note saying it was “not necessary” they attend a meeting scheduled with their spouse, and the person who received this note did not take kindly to being told their presence was unnecessary. It’s important to always err on the side of total inclusion for both parties.
If one wants to opt out, that’s their choice. In cases where both partners are present, it is critical to make eye contact with both, speak to both about information and answers and most definitely use the person’s name who asked the questions. I’m not repeating this for your benefit — you clearly know this — but others who read this column and may make Sam’s mistake or that of the advisor I am referencing. It’s a good reminder to be intentional in how you treat your clients.
I do think you have to push Sam on this topic. Perhaps you could even find a way to work more closely with the ignored partner. It could be after the meeting, just to follow up and ensure they found it valuable, or in the meeting when Sam is ignoring them.
I understand right now Sam is in a “power position” career-wise for you, so I don’t suggest this lightly. You aren’t going to make him see this differently if he is old school and set in his ways, but you could suggest this as a way for you to integrate more fully into the relationship. Perhaps he doesn’t feel comfortable with the other person, or isn’t quite sure how to extend the relationship at this stage to include them more fully. You could say this would be a way for you to learn more about what the quiet or uninvolved spouse/partner is thinking or feeling.
Taking Sam out of the equation and offering to put yourself in seems to be the only way to gain more knowledge about the dynamics in these relationships. You might find the uninvolved person is perfectly happy to be sitting on the sidelines, and that’s fine. But I bet you will win points reaching out to make sure that is the case.
Dear Bev,
One of our advisors is crass and insulting in team meetings. I have never seen him behave inappropriately with clients – which honestly is hard to believe – but in internal meetings he says things that are so shocking. There are many things happening on the political scene and in our country that most people in our firm are appalled about. He will say things that I don’t even want to repeat, but that are insulting at best and racist, misogynist and downright cruel at worst. We all know he owns 70% of the firm and our jobs depend on him, but we can’t bring ourselves to laugh when he is celebrating someone who wasn’t doing anything being shot in the face.
I know you are going to ask me why we work here. I don’t want to share my initials for fear of someone knowing who wrote this, but I can say we are in a small town. Unless we want to drive 1.5–2.5 hours to work in a similar situation, there aren’t a lot of options here. We are all professionals, and we otherwise like our jobs. We have a good team, love our clients, know our jobs, and collaborate well together. We really like the other two advisors, who collectively own 30%. We just hate being subjected to this behavior.
Anonymous
Dear Advisor Team Member,
I am not self-limiting too often when it comes to having an idea about something someone can do differently, but I’m going to admit to being stymied here. You definitely can’t address his behavior directly. He owns the company, and the type of person you are describing isn’t going to be swayed by what others see. He would likely come out swinging if someone did try and confront him. You don’t say whether the other partners become upset by this behavior and whether they have tried to get him to change his behavior. I’m going to guess they have tried to speak to him, even just to test the waters on his reaction — and likely haven’t gotten anywhere. It would be hard for me to believe no one has ever confronted him somehow.
People like this often don’t have the ability to look in the mirror, don’t have humility and definitely don’t want to self-regulate or recognize and apologize. If you are all truly stuck there and there aren’t other options, and all else is in good order for the firm and your jobs, I suggest you sit in these meetings while he is saying despicable things and go somewhere else in your mind. “Visit” a beach you love, go to the mountains, sing a song you like, say a prayer, recite a poem — all in your mind — while he is talking. You can act like you are listening, but your mind is focused somewhere soothing for you.
You can’t detach so much you don’t recognize when he is done and someone has to call your name to snap out of it, but you can turn your attention to something you find grounding. I often offer this advice on dealing with difficult people. We fight hard to change them, but if they don’t want to be changed the only person getting exhausted from the fight is us. Stop resisting and find another way to deal with his behavior. There are, as you well know, many people like this, and they are going to be there no matter what you do. I’m sorry you are dealing with this so directly.
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.
