The ClientWise Blog

At ClientWise, we talk at great length about the critical importance of cultivating the NextGen owners and partners who will guide your firm into the future. It’s not only vital to realizing the full value of your business when the time comes to exit, but more importantly, it’s a critical aspect of your fiduciary duty – a commitment to ensuring the continuity of care for clients who have entrusted you to protect their financial future.

Succession planning remains a topic of great concern and considerable discussion within the advisory community. You undoubtedly have seen numerous research studies highlighting the widespread neglect of succession planning in the profession – the dangers this poses not just to the individual firm owners, but to the profession as a whole. The lack of path between the current generation of financial advisory firm owners and those behind them is nothing short of an alarming crisis.

But where do you start? What exactly should you be looking for when hiring and identifying the future leaders of your firm?

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If we only had a dollar for every time we’ve heard an advisor say “I’d really prefer not to add new team members because I just don’t like managing people.” Mind you, these are the very same advisors who are phenomenal at managing client relationships – highly adept at deciphering precisely what their clients hope to achieve and creating strategies to help them reach those objectives. So exactly HOW is that any different from managing team member relationships? 

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We focus so much on acquisition, portfolio management, client issues and day-to-day operations that we rarely have time to sit back and take stock of the state of our team. It’s a by-product of the fast-paced business we’re in – and anyway, does corporate culture honestly need to be all that high on your priority list? 

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Successful wealth management is a team concept and not an independent function. In order for the client’s work to get done, you need a team that willingly engages in the exchange of leadership among themselves. Your team should work together in a manner that evokes meaningful contribution, showcases the strengths of every team member, and advances consistent and effective group decision-making.

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A true team is a group of people who are fully committed to mutually defined and extraordinary success of the group as a unit, and hold themselves mutually accountable for the achievement of that success, as well as the methods by which success is achieved. But what distinguishes the highest-performing teams from the ordinary? A shared ambition that is significant in size, aspirational in scope, and possible to achieve; one that serves both your clients and your organization. In other words, a common intent and purpose.

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Years of accumulated research has taught us a simple, irrefutable fact. The most effective team leaders guide and manage from within the team structure rather than directing from above. Not only do they see themselves as team members, they have effectively shifted their mindset from personal success to focus on team success.

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Team Leadership is an incredibly important and in-depth topic in today’s world. It’s so important to our financial advisor clients that most of the workshops we hold at ClientWise focus on the techniques of becoming a true team leader. Lone Ranger to Leader™ and Building the Billion Dollar Business™, as well as many of our other ClientWise programs, teach advisors how to step out of the role of solopreneur and into the role of team leader, and to build teams that eventually achieve Total Team Leadership™. 

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