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.

Go Team!

Last month, I showed you the value of creating a high-performance team (HPT) of people at your firm and how such a team can make your entire practice more successful. With today's roiling financial markets and stressed-out clients, it's more important than ever to be able to depend on your team. To build and manage an effective team, it's crucial to understand the four key components of HPTs: team beginnings, work effectiveness, communication effectiveness and change management.

Team Beginnings
To develop an HPT, you must first focus on the basics of team building:

• Recruitment. On an HPT, you trust and value the feedback of your team members. So get your people to contribute to your hiring decisions. During the recruitment process, pay attention to skills, diversity and overall fit. Have relevant team members agree ahead of time on what job you are recruiting for, along with the minimum skills and the "stretch skills" you hope the recruit will grow into. Spending substantial time on recruiting leads to a much stronger team—and less turnover.
  
  
• On-boarding. The process of making a new hire a part of the team is critical. Ideally, you'll assign a mentor to help the new person learn the ropes and feel comfortable. Also make sure that you (or the new hire's direct supervisor) explain what role he or she will be playing.
  
  
• Getting to know teammates. Making a new team member feel valued from the beginning is an important first step that will motivate and create loyalty. For most teams, it pays to formalize the process. Having an introduction exercise at a team meeting is helpful. It's also good to have existing team members take their new teammate out to lunch in the first month.
  
  
• Vision and values. The idea is you will have communicated your vision, values and standards of excellence during the recruitment process. It also pays to cover these topics explicitly once again when the new team member comes on board.
  
  

Work Effectiveness
HPTs leverage the concept of work effectiveness, which puts egos aside and asks an all-important question: "Will this make us better in what we do and improve the level of service that we deliver to our clients profitably?" Your work effectiveness development efforts should focus on issues such as:

• Leadership and decision making. Enlightened team leaders know that they have weaknesses and that they can't know everything. They need to step aside and let others lead when that best serves the team's interests and effectiveness. For example, suppose you have strong opinions about a certain topic. It likely would be difficult for you to listen to team members' opinions and advice when this topic arises during a meeting, so it would make sense for you to let someone else run that part of the meeting. Here, the act of stepping aside shows leadership-and builds trust and confidence.
  
  
• Goal setting and commitment. HPTs regularly set goals and assess whether they have achieved previously set goals. Some goals should be easily achievable, allowing for early wins and confidence building. Others should be "stretch goals" that push your team members out of their comfort zones. All goals should be measurable and specific. For example, instead of aiming to "improve your marketing," try saying, "We will conduct 20 regular progress meetings with our clients each month. We will update each client on his or her investment and wealth management and then ask for referrals, so that those friends and business associates can have the same great wealth management experience in these challenging times."
  
  
• Work process. Work process includes every action required to complete a task from beginning to end—including who does it, what they do, how long it takes, interactions with other individuals or with information systems and the physical or information exchange that is needed. Systematically map out the work processes of individual team members and of the team as a whole. Include what needs to be done both for clients and internally. You can do this mapping on a whiteboard or with computerized flowcharts, but in any case, do it visually so that everyone can see what is at stake. A great place to start is to define the client experience you are delivering.
  
  

Effective Communication 
HPTs create a network of relationships between team members. This leads to superior performance and achievement, enjoyment, growth and overall team resiliency. Great HPT communication involves:

• Effective interpersonal skills. All team members need to recognize how they come across to other people and how they affect others. Even if you're not a team leader, it's important to develop the kind of awareness that lets you see things from the perspective of others.
  
  
• Listening. Reflective listening, in which you let someone know what you heard and that you understood them, is far superior to passive listening. By explaining to someone in your own words what you heard them say, you close the communication loop and ask good questions: For example, you might say to an unhappy client, "I'm hearing you say that our client relationship management techniques are not as effective as they could be. Tell me more about which areas aren't working, so we can address the critical issues." Listening is one of those skills that you can't practice on your own. You won't be sure you're a good listener unless you involve others in the process.
  
  
• Feedback. In giving feedback on an HPT, you're trying to improve the team or serve your teammate, rather than just criticizing for criticism's sake. Since giving and receiving feedback is often difficult, most teams need some type of structure.
  
  Try to maintain a 5:1 ratio of positive feedback to negative feedback. For example, in a status meeting, it's best to ask first for comments on what went well and then to inquire about what could've gone better (rather than first asking, "What went wrong here?"). If you find it difficult to maintain this 5:1 ratio with a team member, there are probably other problems with roles, work processes or resources you need to look into.
  
  

• Recognizing accomplishments. Positive feedback isn't only verbal or written; it can take place through handshakes or pats on the back, depending on your practice's norms. Simply greeting others and showing interest in what they're doing can also go a long way toward building a positive environment that fosters employee motivation and loyalty. Recognition should be both formal and informal, and aimed at both individuals and the entire team. For example, an especially profitable year might lead to a luxurious retreat or year-end dinner for the team. As important as these big events can be, the day-to-day recognition is much more powerful in building HPTs.
  
  

Change Management
HPTs embrace change by incorporating formal and informal ways of monitoring their teams. Effective change management techniques include:

• Individual performance reviews and self-assessment. One successful type of performance review calls for each team member to write his or her own review. You or a team leader then sit down with the individual to review the self-review in the context of how others on the team perceive him or her.
  
  
• Team evaluation. It's important to have a formal review process not just for each individual team member but for the team as a whole. The team evaluation process focuses on positive feedback and improvement.
  
  
• Openness to new ideas. One way to encourage change is to value and encourage dissent. Ask team members to play devil's advocate for unpopular positions or to analyze issues thoroughly regardless of their own opinions. As with listening, these group-level skills can be practiced at off-site training and seminars that build these talents.
  
  

As you continue to build your HPT, understand that few have all of these processes, systems and skills in place. Consider these four components of success as a template for the ideal HPT. Don't judge yourself, your team or your team members too harshly. Instead, view the ideal team as a work in progress: You're committed to be all that you're capable of being for your clients and for one another. By working toward this goal, you will find your organization operating at a higher level of effectiveness.

Reprinted from: Financial Planning