PLANADVISER - November/December 2022 - 19

3 Talk regularly, and honestly, about how
the job is going.
Advisory team leaders need to keep a very close eye on how
they are developing junior staff members and bringing them
along, Griffin suggests. " If people aren't having the success
they anticipated, that's when they tend to move on, " he says.
He gets together biweekly with each of his team members
to talk about the status of the person's current work projects.
He also brings junior team members to meetings,
such as with wholesalers, to show them that these industry
contacts can be a good source of information on potential
client opportunities and what competitors are doing.
Deena Rini, vice president and practice leader of retirement
plan and wealth management services at Oswald
Financial Inc. in Cleveland, has learned the importance of
making time to talk regularly with team members individually
about how they feel their work is going. She does that by
meeting monthly with each newer member and quarterly
with each longer-term member. More informally, she talks
with a team member soon after something notable happens
with client work-good or bad-to offer her feedback and
get the other person's feedback. " What motivates a team
to keep going is when they know their voice is heard and
makes an impact, " she says.
It is important to understand each team member's goals
and what motivates that individual, since this differs from
person to person, Rini says. " I think the most important
part of being a leader is giving clear, constructive feedback,
and being honest with the advisers on your team, " she says.
" And don't speak in generalities: People need to understand
the details of your feedback and a specific growth plan for
themselves. "
Cullen considers SRP a steward for its employees'
careers. " That means our chief operating officer, Deane
Mayerhofer, and I have to get to know our people well
enough to make sure we're doing the right things for them, "
he says. They talk individually with each team member a
couple of times every year about how they feel about their
job, and aim to keep a free-flowing dialogue. For that open
dialogue to happen, he adds, staff members have to feel it
is safe for them to speak honestly.
4 Support nonlinear career paths.
People now in the early years of their advisory career want
flexibility, Cullen finds. " The traditional career path of, 'OK,
I'm going to do step one and get a promotion, then I'm going
to do step two and get another promotion' isn't as interesting
to younger people now, " he says. " This generation
wants variety, and they may want to do step one, then step
A, then go back and do step two, then do step B. I don't think
the advisory career path will be as linear, moving forward,
and we'll need to find different ways for them to stay in the
organization and to learn different things. "
Cullen's team at SRP actually has very few people with a
job description today that is a linear progression of the one
they had when they started, he says. Take the example of one
" This generation wants
variety, and they may want
to do step one, then step A,
then go back and do step
two, then do step B. "
staff member who had been doing participant meetings on a
part-time basis, who wanted to go back to full-time work but
work from home. " So she became an internal relationship
manager, on the operations side. And now she's moved on to
doing recordkeeper RFPs [requests for proposals] and vendor
benchmarking, " he says. " She wanted a behind-the-scenes
role and to have that work/life balance she needs, but she's
still progressing her career. She knows the education side;
she knows the operations side; and now she's learning the
RFP and benchmarking side. We've done this time and time
again with our staff. "
5 Invest in organic growth.
Advisers historically have wanted to be part of an organization
with an infrastructure and support that helps them grow
faster, says Troy Hammond, founder and CEO of Pensionmark
Financial Group in Santa Barbara, California. He says
advisers still want those resources for organic growth,
meaning growth by signing new clients or deepening existing
client relationships. But he thinks some aggregators now
have a much stronger focus on inorganic growth, meaning
growth via mergers and acquisitions. Advisers, including
those whose practice gets acquired, " want to have cuttingedge
tools and resources, so they can compete for clients, " he
says. " They're going to be asking, 'How can you help me grow
my business organically, or do you just care about the next
acquisition you're going to make?' "
Asked what resources advisers want for their organic
growth, Hammond says it starts with lead generation that
can connect an adviser with potential future clients, such as
putting on seminars for employer prospects. " It also has to do
with our proposal system and our RFP system, to make sure
that's efficient and that it helps our advisers to express our
value proposition, " he says. " And it has to do with the clientsupport
infrastructure, so that advisers can offload much of
the day-to-day, routine client work to those team members.
It's really that whole life cycle. You've got to do each of those
things well: If you don't, your growth will suffer.
" There are many firms that are laser-focused on
inorganic growth and not so much on organic growth, "
Hammond continues. " For us, they're equally important:
There's an equal amount of energy and effort, and financial
spend, behind organic and inorganic growth. We want
to be organic growth leaders, as well. That's what it's going
to take to keep people. "
planadviser.com November-December 2022 | 19
http://www.planadviser.com
PLANADVISER - November/December 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of PLANADVISER - November/December 2022
