Advisory Leadership. Friedman Greg

increase with employees who are motivated and inspired, who enjoy working together and who find coming to work every day rewarding and challenging?

      What may sound like an unrealistic ideal is actually an attainable feat if you focus on an element of your business that you may have overlooked – your firm’s culture.

      Historically leaders have analyzed how they can better engage employees, focusing primarily on the success of the firm. In today’s landscape, truly meaningful leadership must go a step further, flipping yesteryear’s notions of firm first thinking and instead doing something that should come naturally to all of us: Putting people first.

      If that sounds precarious, consider the facts about our industry. The wealth management space is on the cusp of monumental change in its life cycle, with a large number of advisors looking ahead at succession planning and retirement. The next generation of advisors – your firm’s successors – have different values and priorities than their predecessors. Your next clients, the Gen X and Gen Y contingent, also have different (and some would argue higher) expectations of their advisors than their parents do. Technology is abundant and data is accessible in one click. Instant gratification is a foregone conclusion. What does this all mean?

      The only thing that truly separates and elevates your firm is your people.

      In Advisory Leadership, you’ll learn how seven key steps can help you transform your firm’s culture, including, if necessary, how to reverse the course of your current culture to create a dynamic, energetic environment of happy, engaged employees. These seven steps, based on human virtues we all strive to achieve, are the key to unlocking the power of a people-first culture:

      1. Patience. Slowing down the hiring process to help the firm better choose the right candidate for any role, every time.

      2. Honesty and Integrity. Leading by example and encouraging open and honest communication.

      3. Compassion. Acknowledging people for their individual contributions and getting to know them beyond their roles.

      4. Respect. Empowering employees to make decisions and guiding them in their personal goals for professional achievement.

      5. Persistence and Consistency. Aligning your management team with your firm’s goals and reiterating your values through various communication channels.

      6. Encouragement. Promoting and rewarding team collaboration instead of competition.

      7. Courage. Looking inward before taking those crucial first steps toward change.

      This book will cover each of these steps in its own dedicated chapter, and provide actionable tips at the end to help you get started on your own path to creating a healthy and thriving company culture. It will also cover how to make lasting, positive changes that encourage your team to help protect and promote your values.

      Along the way, you’ll also find interesting real-world examples of heart culture elevating a firm’s success as well as some pitfalls to sidestep, which are based on my own experiences in the advisory business.

      For principals, advisors, and team leaders in the wealth management industry, you’ll recognize many of the common challenges we face in our unique environment. And though the title is Advisory Leadership, many of the principles in this book can be applied to anyone who is trying to run a successful business.

      If like me you got into this business to help people, you’ll find that many of the messages in this book will seem like common sense.

      Listening.

      Being honest.

      Caring.

      Getting to know people.

      Encouraging them to succeed.

      We are in the service business, after all, and our job is to learn as much as possible about our clients in order to help them achieve their financial and life goals. We’re good at it. These seven steps succeed in using those same innate skills we have as advisors and as people to help us build a stronger, more cohesive team with shared goals and a shared philosophy of how we work, how we deliver financial advice, and what we want to achieve personally as well as professionally.

      Ultimately a leader wants to build a thriving, fulfilling business by using the best tools and resources available to become more profitable and to reach more clients. Consider Advisory Leadership one of those resources: A tool to help you unlock your business’s potential and to cultivate your firm’s most valuable resource – your people.

      Acknowledgments

      This book was inspired by many people, and without their encouragement and support – and life lessons – it would not have happened. I want to thank in particular Deena Katz for being a relentless advocate for our industry and for her staunch encouragement to write this book.

      I am grateful to all of the many people I have worked with over my career – both professionally and personally – who helped shape who I am as a leader, who I’ve learned from, and whom I consider my friends. In particular I want to thank Ken Golding, Dan Skiles, John Shangler, Jim Herrington, Mark Tibergien, Susan Dickson, Tim Welsh, Philip Palaveev, Harold Evensky, Tom Giachetti, Marion Asnes, Jamie Green, Larry Ginsburg, Erin Kincheloe, Colin Drake, Cynthia Greenfield, Jim Placak, Bill Burke, Sharon Hoover, Kerry Elkind, and so many more amazing friends and colleagues in our industry who have taught me valuable lessons and been a tremendous support.

      An immense amount of credit is due to the people along the way who helped inspire and educate me over the years, and to them I would like to express my gratitude for their continued support and their friendship. A strong, successful culture begins with relationships and grows as you build trust, encourage growth, and share new ideas. I thank each and every employee I have worked with in the past (and will work with in the future) at Junxure and Private Ocean for working with me to create great things – I believe together we have made a difference!

      And of course I am so grateful for my family – my wife, Laurie, and my twins, Andrew and Marissa – who keep me grounded and teach me every day!

      Introduction

      Understanding Heart Culture

      Making the Change

      All business leaders share a common goal – to inspire their employees and to see profitable results in the business. That inspiration then encourages collaboration, which leads to success. In today’s evolving business environment – and in the financial services industry especially – a successful and balanced corporate culture begins with a leadership mentality that appeals to the heart first and the mind second.

      What is heart culture? At its core, heart culture symbolizes how a firm values more than just an employee’s output. That it’s not about the work, but rather, the people who do the work. This may seem like simple human nature, but in the business world, heart culture is a rising movement that is quickly supplanting the cold, hard corporate machine of yesteryear. The truth is, leaders can no longer afford to ignore the shift toward a people-first culture and its direct influence on a healthy, effective work environment. Leaders today need to be flexible, fluid, caring, and individualistic to be competitive in today’s market.

      This book was written not just for financial advisors but for any leader looking to make a sea change in his or her company culture. Many of these lessons, which I learned on my own professional journey as both an employee and a leader, have helped shape my views on successful and fulfilling leadership that leads to employee retention and company growth. In fact, another key benefit of creating a heart culture is that you will attract talent.

      I have been a financial advisor for more than 25 years and am currently the president and CEO of Private Ocean, a wealth management firm in the San Francisco Bay Area that is the product of a merger of my firm, Friedman & Associates, with Salient Wealth Management. I am also the cofounder and president of Junxure, a technology firm based in Raleigh, North Carolina, that provides customer relationship management (CRM)