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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