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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 have built an interesting practice where we have strong infrastructure. We are able to attract advisors who have grown to a certain point but perhaps stalled because they don’t have the resources and support they need — and they don’t want to grow it on their own. We are up to 23 advisors, and almost all are a great cultural fit. Everyone runs their own business, and we leverage combined resources. We collaborate and share ideas, and in many cases, we will partner to show our resource strength to prospects and clients.
One of our newest advisors, who joined in late 2024, is not fitting in well. My wife tells me I am not allowed to say this, but I call him “lazy.” He makes about $350,000 a year and seems perfectly content to stay at that level. When I say “lazy,” it’s because he hasn’t integrated any of his clients with others on the team, he rarely goes out to find new opportunities, and he does not enjoy networking. He stops working around 3:45 p.m. every day, ostensibly to pick up his youngest child at school, even though his spouse is a stay-at-home parent.
I don’t know if I should play the odds. We have 23 advisors, and 22 of us are motivated, engaged, and interested in growth. We have one advisor who doesn’t fit the mold. I have shared my frustrations with him, and his response is that he’ll “try harder.” I have not called him lazy to his face, because my wife is a head of HR at a large firm and tells me this is an opinion, not a fact.
Can you motivate someone who doesn’t really want to be motivated?
L.H.
Dear L.H.,
This is one of those eternal life questions that I believe many spouses, parents, team members and bosses have asked for hundreds of years. “How do I motivate someone who doesn’t want to be motivated to change?” The answer is, you can’t.
When I teach my graduate classes in leadership, we talk about the essence of motivation. Even the best leaders cannot motivate other people to do something. They can create an environment within which the person becomes self-motivated. But motivation is intrinsic.
Daniel Goleman, the founder of Emotional Intelligence and a leadership scholar, talks about intrinsic motivation as a component of high EQ (Emotional Quotient). Being able to keep one’s self motivated and focused, no matter what conditions are around us, is part of being an emotionally intelligent professional.
That said, definitions of motivation might be different. You refer to your colleague as “lazy” (and your wife is correct, you never want to say this directly to this advisor or to colleagues who work with him). Your definitions of lazy and motivated might be very different from this advisor’s definition.
It sounds like he has young children and a busy family, so right now he might be motivated to simply cover all of the bases at work, and spend as much time as possible with his family when he can. When I think “lazy,” I think about someone going home and collapsing on the couch watching television. This advisor might leave your office at 3:45, relieve his spouse and spend all evening helping with his kids. Would we call this “lazy”?
It sounds to me like you need to have a cultural fit discussion with this advisor. You have to be able to take your own judgment and criticisms out of the conversation and ask him open-ended questions about how he believes he is fitting in, and whether he thinks this culture is the right one for him. Ask him about his goals, aspirations, and values. Seek to understand what’s priority for him and how this manifests in his day-to-day activities.
This will be hard for you to do because you clearly have a strong viewpoint on what he should be doing and who he is as an individual. To make this work, you’ll need to put that aside and go in with a blank slate mentality to listen and learn. It will be a chance to increase your emotional intelligence and you might uncover things in the conversation that surprise you.
Dear Bev,
I work on a great team inside a large organization. We have worked hard to develop a culture such that many people inside the organization want to work with us. One of our partners has been talking to a senior management individual within our firm about joining as our chief operating officer. This woman has been known to be very difficult to work with, and there are a number of people in the organization who have told us she could destroy our culture were she to join.
Our partner seems enamored of her. He thinks she will “add structure, discipline, and seriousness” to what we do. We are very serious about what we do! We also like to have fun and work collaboratively to support one another. This hire could destroy all of this. Can we push back and let our partner know we aren’t happy about this decision?
Anonymous
Dear Advisory Team Member,
Of course, you can always push back and let your thoughts and feelings be known to your senior leaders. However, you have to be careful how much you say, and the style you use to go about doing this. You can never be accusatory or go into a discussion like this needing to “win.” You can share insights and observations.
That said, in this case I don’t recommend doing this. It sounds like this hire is going to happen based on your senior partner’s views and needs. Your best approach is to embrace this new COO and work with her to integrate her into your team and your way of doing things. If your team is as strong as you suggest, she won’t be able to disrupt what you have built. She will feel the pressure from the rest of the team.
While your information may be correct regarding who she is and how she operates, remember also that people get put into difficult situations (especially in large organizations) and they may do things that are not entirely reflective of who they are. She might be looking to make a change because she isn’t happy where she is. Maybe she will embrace your culture and find it suits her well. Give her a chance before you shut the door.
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, 2025 and 2026. Beverly is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching Executive MBA students Leadership and Managing 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.
