Bowen, founder and CEO of CEG Worldwide, previously worked as a financial advisor and firm executive. He served successively as CEO of Reinhardt Werba Bowen Advisory Services and Assante Capital Management.

Leadership Lessons

Many advisors are responsible for building and managing a team of people that will allow their practices to scale up. Trouble is, too many advisors are ill-prepared to lead. That's partly because leadership skills haven't been their area of focus. Most advisors entered this business because of a deep interest in financial services and a strong desire to help investors. So when advisors do add more staff to their operations, they often find themselves in over their heads.

The good news: Some advisors have had major breakthroughs in inspiring their team members to achieve great things individually and as a group, and in retaining these valuable individuals through good times and bad. These advisors have developed and used five leadership skills that have allowed them to build successful teams while maintaining high quality-of-life standards.

Have A Clear Purpose

Advisors are often so busy serving clients that they don't take time to think about where they want to take their businesses. Getting at the heart of "why" defines clarity of purpose. Think about asking yourself the very same clarifying questions you use with clients to identify their goals.

For example: Why are you in business? What is important about your business to you? The most common response is to make enough money to support the quality of life that you and your family desire. But that only scratches the surface. Go deeper in your thinking and you might come to realize, for example, that you do what you do because it satisfies your intellectual curiosity or because of the pleasure you receive by making a positive impact on affluent people in your community.

Come Into Focus

Like you, your team needs to understand clearly whom they serve and the unique value they can bring to that group of investors. This helps ensure that there is no misunderstanding about what you do and whom you do it for. Unfortunately, many advisors don't articulate their value proposition to their teams very well. That damages their ability to build and lead an effective team by sending a mixed message to the organization.

To gain the right focus—or regain it, as the case may be—you've got to determine the most important goals for the business in the short, medium and long terms. Set no more than three major goals in each of those categories. Then communicate your goals and strategy to the team.

You don't need to have an all-encompassing strategy document. But you've got to make sure your team members understand your strategy if you expect them to work together—and with you—toward those goals. All teams need leaders who can spell out the organization's objectives and how each member's work relates to and furthers those objectives. Therefore, you want to know that your team members can state your purpose, strategy and goals in general terms.

This requires you to develop both formal and informal approaches to communicating with your team. Formal approaches can include weekly staff meetings, monthly executive committee meetings and annual corporate retreats. Informal methods can include pre-meeting discussions of ideal outcomes for meetings, debriefing get-togethers after meetings and unstructured lunch meetings.

Get Buy-In

Your team may comprehend the firm's goals and direction, but getting them to commit to taking the firm in that direction may be more difficult. Knowledge without the motivation to act won't do you much good, so you must work with your team to inspire them toward the desired results. This is especially important in a wealth management firm, where team members want to feel highly involved and know that their work matters.

Gaining buy-in requires you to inspire your team. You have to connect with team members on a personal level through your interactions with them. These interactions can be basic; taking time to say "hi" to your team members during the workday, for example. Or they can be more substantive, like bringing a junior analyst who worked on a client's portfolio into your meeting with the client.

You must also build trust for your team to commit to the focus and direction of your business. One of the best ways to do that is to be up front with staff about what is going on at the company, so they understand how they can help at any given moment. No one likes bad surprises at work, and team members must feel that their leaders are being open, inclusive and honest with them.

You further build trust when you recognize and reward team members for performance. Team members need to know that someone senior to them sees that they are doing a good job. Too often people do great work but feel their efforts go unrecognized. Those team members quickly lose their inspiration—and lose confidence and trust in the organization and its leadership—at which point they either move on or stop working hard.

Although rewards should be based on performance, performance must be viewed within the context of the firm's values. It's easy for a firm to talk about what it believes in. But adherence to those values can quickly disappear when a team member generates huge results using methods that aren't aligned with the firm's core values—and is consequently rewarded for those results. This situation—a common one in the highly competitive financial services industry—is demoralizing to other team members.

Get It Done

Deadlines must be met, goals must be achieved and you and your team must hold one another accountable for turning vision into reality. This requires you and the team to deliver compelling value to clients. Therefore, revisit and refine your process and your compelling value proposition with your team on a regular basis. The more they understand it, the better they'll be at executing its building blocks.

You also need to develop your team members. Obviously it's much easier and cheaper to retain great team members than it is to find and train new ones. Keeping great talent requires willingness to guide and develop your team. So get to know your team. Structure ways to involve yourself with your teammates and maintain reasonable levels of contact. This involvement can occur formally through meetings, by taking a team member out to lunch each week, or informally.

Also, don't forget to delegate. Great leaders spread responsibilities. It may seem much quicker to do everything yourself, but you'll never get out from under the busy work and be able to focus on your unique skills if you don't delegate. What's more, your team will stagnate if they aren't given challenging tasks.

Walk The Talk

Your team will judge you by your actions more than any other factor. That's why setting a personal example—or walking the talk—is the most powerful thing you can do as a leader. Walking the talk means holding yourself to the same high standards that you have set for your team.

Think of your team as a constitutional monarchy: You must follow all the rules that you set out for the organization. If you don't, your team has the right to call you on your actions.

One way to set a positive personal example is to demonstrate your passion for your business, your clients and your team consistently and display an unswerving commitment to being the best. If you treat your career as "just a job," that attitude will rub off on your team, and you'll find it much harder to become more successful. But if you consistently go the extra mile through your words and deeds, your team will come to see the extra mile as the norm.

These strategies can serve as an effective guide for any wealth manager looking to put together and manage a team capable of building a world-class enterprise. That said, strong leadership skills are vital even if you have no employees and no intention of building an internal team.

A 2007 CEG Worldwide study showed that only 6.2% of advisors were very concerned about improving staff efficiency. That means only a small minority is probably thinking strategically about staff.

Think about it: You are working with people all the time; you have to demonstrate leadership qualities to your network of experts, centers of influence and strategic partners. Good leadership can even make a positive impact on your family and your life outside of the office.

Reprinted from: Financial Planning