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.

Teaming Up

One of the challenges financial advisors are most concerned about is how to make their staff members as effective as possible. Today, with the financial markets gyrating wildly and everyone concerned about the future, it's more important than ever to make sure your staffers can pull together as a team.

Building a great team is an absolute necessity in today's hyper-competitive, high-risk environment. Advisors who surround themselves with great people put themselves in ideal positions to build practices that can alleviate clients' stress while serving their needs.

The best financial advisors are doing exactly that by building what we call high-performance teams (or HPTs). Think back to high school or college and recall the best team you've ever been on (football, school play, debate team). Do you remember how great it was to be part of a group where everyone pulled for one another and consistently gave their best? That's what an HPT does.

When it comes to your business, few things are as satisfying professionally and personally as being part of this type of team. That's because an HPT enables you to leverage your individual value, talents and skills to create success for yourself and other team members. It also gives you the time to put your focus where it should be—on your clients. And it creates a resilient and robust organization that will consistently provide clients with great results and exceptional service. It's no wonder that truly elite advisors function as part of HPTs.

Identifying an HPT
What does an HPT look like? The ones top advisors use share a number of characteristics. For example, there is a high level of trust throughout the team. There is regular, open and honest communication between the members, along with equanimity in giving and receiving feedback.

There is also a system for regularly assessing results, so that members continually learn and improve. These characteristics create a high level of group intelligence, along with a positive and attractive work environment that makes recruiting and retention much easier.

Most strikingly, perhaps, HPTs manage on several levels simultaneously. While most staffs focus on just one thing—completing the task at hand—HPTs watch and measure often-overlooked areas like work processes, values and vision, interpersonal dynamics and feedback and learning processes. In other words, they focus on how the work gets done and look for ways to improve their methods. That's managing on several levels.

This type of multiple-level management requires stewardship. On great HPTs, all team members view themselves as stewards both of their job responsibilities and of the success of the other team members. They also act as stewards of all the resources that the team needs to function. And the team's leaders make sure to provide necessary resources (including attention, awareness and change-initiating conversations).

A major benefit of stewardship is that you don't have to be responsible for everything. Instead, your other team members are empowered and effective. If something goes wrong that you can't personally handle, or if you're sick or otherwise unavailable, there's a powerful and highly skilled team to rely on.

Over time, financial advisors with HPTs come to see that their way of doing things isn't the only or best way. Team members show them other ideas, and they gain new knowledge and reach innovative solutions far more often. As part of an HPT, owners and other leaders at a firm can leverage and benefit from the skills, knowledge and personal chemistry of many talented and committed individuals.

Six Attributes
There are six primary attributes of HPTs that advisors should focus on as they recruit and build teams of partners and employees:

• Mutual influence. Mutual influence exists between all team members, including the team leader. On non-HPTs, team members compete for influence with one another in what they see as a zero-sum game with clear winners and losers. By contrast, HPT members' goal is to create an environment where everyone is valued.

Mutual influence begins with reflective listening, or showing others you've understood them. Explicitly letting others know that you've heard and understood them is a great way to build influence. Similarly, recognizing that you might have a dominant mode of communication—such as being persuasive-can help you vary how you communicate to fit the situation at hand. If you always use the same mode, it's hard for others to know that you've heard and understood them.

Other elements of mutual influence are safety and acceptance. When the norm is safety and acceptance, team members are confident they won't be taken advantage of or hurt. Team members may disagree with you, but if they are working to understand you, they will remain respectful.

• Trust. Trust comes from being truthful, and truth-telling on all levels is the norm for HPTs. Trust also arises when there is congruence among team members—when team members consistently do what they say and say what they'll do.

Congruence issues show up on both the micro and macro level. On the micro level, an incongruent act might be a team member saying she is happy with the results of a meeting, but with a scowl on her face. Other team members will read this as emotional tension and wonder what's really happening.

On the macro level, other team members will sense unspoken disagreements, making difficulties harder to address. It's far better—far more congruent—for team members to be explicit about what's going on and to talk about it respectfully and openly.

A final element that leads to trust is a genuine interest in people. Great leaders usually are curious about people and things, even if they don't understand or like them. In fact, great leaders recognize that not liking something is an opportunity for learning and growth.

• Membership. Membership is about being a member of a team and feeling that you belong. Your job recruitment process should help members-to-be feel as if they belong from the time they start interviewing. This results in team members who not only feel they belong, but are also happy about belonging. HPTs also have healthy ways for individuals to leave the team. In a non-HPT, leaving the team can create shame or awkwardness. Even when a team member needs to be fired, this should be done with clear communication that respects everyone's feelings.
  
  
• Common vision, values and goals. Usually you as the team's leader will formulate vision, values and goals, but teams often use a more democratic process. When all team members get at least some say, they are more likely to embrace the firm's direction.

Write your vision, values and goals in just a couple of pages—not a 30-page document. You should also have a simple version—an elevator speech—that you can use frequently. Repeating a simple but powerful mantra helps your message sink in with team members. During your meetings, regularly use the elevator speech and some key phrases associated with it.

Vision, values and goals should evolve over time, as fine-tuning leads to better team performance. For similar motivational reasons, vision, values and goals should have an inspirational but achievable component that involves learning, stretching and growing. Having such challenging—but not overly daunting—stretch goals is energizing to a team.

• High standards of excellence. High standards of excellence help create your desired outcomes, ensure superior client service and prevent errors. By embracing high standards of excellence, HPTs create a level of service that satisfies clients and keeps them happy over the long haul.
  
  
• Leveraging group power and intelligence. HPTs create synergy—an effect that is greater than the sum of the team members' individual talents, skills and qualities. This synergy enables HPTs to produce better results, be more enjoyable and attract the best talent and clients.

Clearly, there are a lot of components involved in HPTs. Building this type of advisory team isn't easy or quick, but the payoff can be remarkable in terms of increased effectiveness both internally and with your clients. In my next column, I'll explore the processes, systems and skills you need to build a truly remarkable HPT.

Reprinted from: Financial Planning