Managing People: Lend Your Employees an Ear

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

by Norm Trainor, The Covenant Group

As you con­tinue to build your busi­ness, it will be nec­es­sary to del­e­gate func­tions of the firm to oth­ers. How­ever, if you do not man­age the team well, items can fall through the cracks and your expenses can sky­rocket with­out results improv­ing or prof­its ris­ing. What role do you play as man­ager? How much time are you set­ting aside to review the tasks and func­tions assigned to your team?

In terms of build­ing trust and pro­fes­sional rela­tion­ships with your team, you should make your­self avail­able to employ­ees and be a source of help if they are strug­gling with tasks, stress or the daily demands of their jobs.

The results of a sur­vey released by ComPsych Cor­po­ra­tion in March under­score the effect that stress can have not only on employ­ees’ morale, but also the pro­duc­tiv­ity and prof­itabil­ity of a firm. Out of the employ­ees who responded to the study, 56.3 per­cent indi­cated that stress had made it dif­fi­cult for them to con­cen­trate on their duties, and another 21 per­cent admit­ted that they had missed dead­lines or made mis­takes due to feel­ing stressed. Dis­cussing and address­ing these issues can lead to hap­pier, more pro­duc­tive employees.

In a sep­a­rate arti­cle, “Help­ing Your Peo­ple to Grow,” I tell the story of Jan Hol­man, a sea­soned finan­cial advi­sor who had added a mar­ket­ing spe­cialty and a sub-producer to his team, but still was not see­ing any results. While the sub-producer showed promise, she still needed a lot of guid­ance, and the mar­keter, although enthu­si­as­tic, was not deliv­er­ing the kind of prospects needed to bring Jan’s busi­ness to the next level.

I told Jan about another one of my clients, Pat Foley, Pres­i­dent of Dis­tri­b­u­tion and Mar­ket­ing at Gen­worth Finan­cial, who had cre­ated a the­ory about man­age­ment that he called Foley’s Law. The essen­tial con­cept is that strong man­agers are both con­fronta­tional and rela­tional, and are able to cre­ate high-performing employ­ees by bal­anc­ing the two. Focus too heav­ily on nur­tur­ing the rela­tion­ship, and your team mem­bers will be mediocre. Act overly con­fronta­tional, and you will only lead them to burn out and quit. High turnover is not good for busi­ness on a num­ber of lev­els: It dam­ages morale, increases your recruit­ing, train­ing and hir­ing costs, and dis­tracts you from work­ing on the busi­ness and amass­ing client capital.

Jan’s sit­u­a­tion with his mar­ket­ing spe­cial­ist, Cole, was com­pli­cated by the fact that Cole was the son of one of his friends. While he was hes­i­tant to con­front Cole about his poor per­for­mance, it was nec­es­sary for Jan to not only take respon­si­bil­ity for work­ing to develop the employee but also to hold Cole account­able for keep­ing up his end of the deal.

By lis­ten­ing to a prob­lem employee, estab­lish­ing a two-way dia­logue and work­ing together to address areas of weak­ness, you will be able to iden­tify why some­one on the team is not per­form­ing as expected and help them grow into a high-performing, results-driven mem­ber of the firm.

As founder, pres­i­dent and CEO of The Covenant Group, Norm Trainor is often seen as the face of the com­pany and its lead­ing finan­cial advi­sor train­ing pro­grams. He has penned sev­eral best-selling books, arti­cles and other works with entre­pre­neurs and finan­cial advi­sors to show them how they can become more valu­able to their clients, boost pro­duc­tiv­ity and, ulti­mately, achieve the suc­cess they desire.

Fol­low The Covenant Group
     

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Tags: Building Trust, Covenant Group, Cracks, Genworth, Genworth Financial, Guidance, Holman, Managing People, Marketer, Nbsp, Next Level, Norm Trainor, Pat Foley, Productive Employees, Productivity, Professional Relationships, Profitability, Profits, Prospects, Relationship, Stress
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Helping Your People to Grow

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

The fol­low­ing is based on one of Norm Trainor’s clients, Pat Foley.

Pat Foley is the Past Pres­i­dent of the Indi­vid­ual Insur­ance Group of Allianz Life. Over the last 25 years, Pat has been a suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neur and senior exec­u­tive in one of the largest finan­cial insti­tu­tions in the world. In a five-year period, Pat’s orga­ni­za­tion increased pre­mium income by 850 per­cent, a remark­able accom­plish­ment. Pat is a very effec­tive leader and man­ager.

Pat has devel­oped a The­ory of Man­age­ment that has become known as Foley’s Law. To be an effec­tive leader and man­ager, you have to be rela­tional and con­fronta­tional. First, you have to build rela­tion­ships with your peo­ple. They have to trust you and feel safe and respected in the rela­tion­ship. At the same time, you have to hold them account­able and stretch them to work at the high­est level of their capa­bil­ity. The chal­lenge is to find the appro­pri­ate bal­ance between rela­tional and con­fronta­tional. Typ­i­cally, each of us has a pre-disposition. Some of us tend to be more rela­tional; oth­ers are more chal­leng­ing and con­fronta­tional. An approach that is too rela­tional builds trust but doesn’t lead to effec­tive per­for­mance. An approach that is too con­fronta­tional will usu­ally work in the short-term, but burns peo­ple out. Suc­cess­ful rela­tion­ships are built on a judi­cious blend of the two approaches where man­agers build trust but aren’t afraid to hold their peo­ple account­able to assigned tasks.

If you are good at build­ing rela­tion­ships with your peo­ple and unwill­ing to con­front, you will get mediocre performance.

Con­versely, if you are strong on con­fronta­tion, but weak in build­ing rela­tion­ships, you will have high turnover and your peo­ple will burn out.

The key to high per­for­mance is in bal­anc­ing rela­tion­ship build­ing and con­fronta­tion.

The fol­low­ing case study illus­trates Foley’s Law.

Jan Holman’s strat­egy of build­ing a team of spe­cial­ists and assis­tants to help him move into the busi­ness mar­ket was back­fir­ing badly. His expenses had gone through the roof, but his rev­enue hadn’t budged.

Jan had been an advi­sor for over 20 years and for the pre­vi­ous eight years his busi­ness, with the help of two ded­i­cated assis­tants, had gen­er­ated over $450,000 annu­ally. Last year, after rework­ing his busi­ness plan, Jan made the deci­sion to hire two spe­cial­ists, one, a mar­ket­ing wiz­ard and the other, a sub-producer, to sup­port his strat­egy to spe­cial­ize in the busi­ness mar­ket, where he had dab­bled for many years. It was a bold move, but he was con­fi­dent that if he could get face-to-face with a steady stream of afflu­ent prospects he would have no trou­ble gen­er­at­ing the rev­enue to cover the new hires and make a profit. The sub– pro­ducer would help relieve Jan of ser­vice work for C and D-level clients and the mar­ket­ing spe­cial­ists would run a num­ber of cam­paigns and events to attract high qual­ity prospects. It all made sense on paper, but six months into the new plan, Jan had seen no reward for his efforts.

“Adding two new peo­ple to my team has really taken a lot out of me,” Jan said.

“I guess I was opti­mistic about when I’d start see­ing results. Maybe I need to give it more time.“

“Per­haps,” I said, “but I would think by now you should be see­ing a return on your invest­ment. What do you think the prob­lem is?“

“Well, basi­cally it comes down to me not see­ing enough good prospects.“

“And why is that?” I asked.

“I hired Barb, my sub-producer, and Cole, my mar­ket­ing guy, to free me up to work at a higher level. But the real­ity has been I’m get­ting bogged down. Barb is a good advi­sor, and I really believe she’ll be able to grow into a top pro­ducer, but I’ve had to spend a lot of time with her, intro­duc­ing her to my clients and train­ing her on how I want her to ser­vice them. I didn’t expect to spend this much time with her, but I guess it’s a good invest­ment in my busi­ness. Soon she’ll be more inde­pen­dent.“

“And what about Cole?” I asked.

“Cole’s a good guy. I really like him. He’s the son of a friend of my mine and I’ve known him since he was a young kid.“

“But how is he on the job?“

“He’s com­ing along.“

I encour­aged Jan to be com­pletely frank with me.

“I guess I have some con­cerns.“

“Like what?“

“Well, we’ve now run a cou­ple of sem­i­nars and both times I was dis­ap­pointed in the types of peo­ple who showed up. They didn’t fit the pro­file I was look­ing for. Only a few were afflu­ent prospects.“

“Why didn’t the right peo­ple show up?” I asked.

“Because Cole didn’t invite them.“

“Why?“

“I’m not exactly sure. I wanted Cole to work with Car­ole, an accoun­tant I know, to develop a list of high pro­file prospects and invite them. But he only got a cou­ple of names. I was expect­ing a list of 50 peo­ple. Cole was sup­posed to send out an invi­ta­tion on Carole’s let­ter­head to attract these peo­ple.“

“So what was the prob­lem?“

“Maybe he didn’t feel com­fort­able work­ing with Car­ole. I’m not sure. Maybe

Car­ole was busy.“

“Jan,” I said, “I’m con­cerned about your not know­ing what the prob­lem was. Weren’t you man­ag­ing Cole through­out the process?“

“Sure, but –“

“But you were afraid to bring up some­thing neg­a­tive.“

“I guess so. Cole’s a hard worker. He’s been work­ing late nights, putting in all kinds of crazy hours. He really loves work­ing with me.” I inter­rupted Jan. “Look, it’s great that Cole loves work­ing with you, but you’re run­ning a busi­ness, Jan. And you’ve got to make sure that your busi­ness achieves its objec­tives, and right now, it’s not.“

Jan nod­ded, but said he wasn’t sure how to han­dle Cole. “Cole is the son of a friend of mine, I have to be care­ful.” Jan said.

“I respect that,” I said. “But it’s bet­ter for you and for Cole and for your friend if you can get your busi­ness on track. You’re not doing any­one any favours right now. A friend and client of mine, Patrick Foley, who is Head of Indi­vid­ual Insur­ance Group at Allianz Life in the US, taught me some­thing I’ll never for­get. He calls it Foley’s Law. Accord­ing to Pat, there are two types of approaches to build­ing a rela­tion­ship. The first is rela­tional, where the focus is on build­ing trust and get­ting peo­ple to like you. The sec­ond is con­fronta­tional, where the focus is on chal­leng­ing the rela­tion­ship and encour­ag­ing it to evolve and grow. Strong rela­tion­ships are built on a judi­cious blend of these two approaches. Unfor­tu­nately, with most peo­ple one of the approaches tends to pre­dom­i­nate, to the detri­ment of the rela­tion­ship.“

“I guess I’m the rela­tional type,” Jan said.

“Yes, and it’s inter­fer­ing with your abil­ity to man­age. I want to make some­thing very clear, Jan. Con­fronta­tion is not a sub­sti­tute for man­age­r­ial respon­si­bil­ity. If you don’t assign the task prop­erly, if you don’t set the right con­text and pro­vide peo­ple ade­quate resources, you don’t have the right to con­front them. When some­thing doesn’t go accord­ing to plan, you have to be clear about when the fault is yours and when the fault lies with your employ­ees. And you have to be open to things going wrong because of exter­nal forces and unfore­seen obsta­cles. But from what I’m hear­ing, it sounds to me like you set the con­text and assigned the tasks prop­erly, but failed to mon­i­tor Cole’s per­for­mance.“

Jan agreed.

“It’s your job to ensure that Cole is doing his job the right way. I under­stand that it’s often not prac­ti­cal for you to be able to keep on top of every­thing, but you cer­tainly should have sat down with Cole after the first sem­i­nar and debriefed on what went wrong. And when I say you need to con­front Cole, I don’t mean you need to raise your voice, I sim­ply mean you have to deal with the issue head on and not be afraid to bring up issues that you feel peo­ple will take per­son­ally. The basis of your dis­cus­sion should be look­ing for growth oppor­tu­ni­ties. You and Cole need to explore together what went wrong. You have to be open to tak­ing respon­si­bil­ity your­self if its war­ranted, but don’t overdo it. Be open to Cole’s account­abil­i­ties and where he fell down. In the end, you might find out that Cole is not right for the job, but there’s a good chance the issue is skills related and your solu­tion will be to train and coach Cole to the skills he’s going to need to do the job prop­erly. Most peo­ple in Cole’s posi­tion don’t will­ingly admit to a lack of skills or aren’t aware they lack the nec­es­sary skills. It’s your job to find that out.

“If you don’t con­front Cole, you will con­tinue to get frus­trated. Peo­ple who are too rela­tional end up with medi­oc­rity. They tend to sweep things under the car­pet, and even­tu­ally the car­pet gets too lumpy to walk on. By con­trast, peo­ple who are too con­fronta­tional usu­ally get good short-term results but even­tu­ally their employ­ees either burn out, bow out or rust out.“

Jan agreed to change his approach and com­mit­ted him­self to hold­ing his peo­ple account­able.

A cou­ple of months later, Jan told me the process was noth­ing like he’d expected. There were no big fire­works or cry­ing jags. While Cole did have a ten­dency to get defen­sive, in the end they were able to iden­tify devel­op­men­tal areas for Cole and to put together a train­ing solu­tion to address those needs. In fact, Cole was actu­ally excited about learn­ing and grow­ing. And Jan’s fear about jeop­ar­diz­ing his rela­tion­ship with Cole’s father turned out to be a non-issue. Cole has since run two more sem­i­nars, both of which gen­er­ated numer­ous high qual­ity prospects for Jan to follow-up with. Rev­enue has picked up finally and Jan is on tar­get to grow by 35 per­cent this year.

Lessons Learned

Jan learned four impor­tant lessons about build­ing effec­tive teams:

Foley’s Law states there are two types of approaches to build­ing a rela­tion­ship: rela­tional and con­fronta­tional.

An approach that is too rela­tional builds trust but doesn’t lead to effec­tive per­for­mance.

An approach that is too con­fronta­tional will usu­ally work in the short-term, but burns peo­ple out.

Suc­cess­ful rela­tion­ships are built on a judi­cious blend of the two approaches where man­agers build trust but aren’t afraid to hold their peo­ple account­able to assigned tasks.

Norm Trainor is the author of The 8 Best Prac­tices of High-Performing Sales­peo­ple, a speaker and founder of The Covenant Group, a com­pany spe­cial­iz­ing in prac­tice devel­op­ment for advi­sors. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, visit his Web site at www​.covenant​group​.com.

Fol­low The Covenant Group at:

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