Would being part of a team help your business? More and more brokers think so, but many wonder whether a partnership is right for them and, if so, how to select the best teammates. Enter team consultants. These gurus of group work will help you assess your strengths, find team members and monitor your progress.
"Before creating a team, I would suggest working with a consultant in virtually every case," says Steve Binder, senior managing director and director of First Union Securities' Central Region. "While not preventing all problems, it will preclude the obvious ones. A good consultant will immediately spot personality types so divergent that it would be virtually impossible to work together. Also, an outside consultant can determine if this team has thought through its game plan. Recently one of our teams was considering adding another member. After much discussion and the input of a professional team counselor, it became clear that the brokers didn't need another person, they just needed to streamline what they already had in place."
Binder came to the team-building process two years ago when he asked Margrit Harris, founder and president of StrataTeamTeam Strategist Group, to develop a program for the financial advisors in his group that would help them make the transition from working solo. Prior to launching the Albuquerque, N.M.-based Strata-Team, psychotherapist Harris had helped entrepreneurs and had been a team manager working with groups and families.
Ideally, consultants like Harris are brought in when no team yet exists. "We explore with the broker what kind of team is most conducive for him or her, based on expertise, the type of business, operating preferences, and goals. We consider the human side -- namely, the right people mix."
Harris says she uses assessment tools to "profile" the people, then determine a good match and create a personal Team Blueprint. "Do we ever reach the ideal? Probably not. But the blueprint creates a basis that can be systematically realized. Often, folks put the cart before the horse and start looking at individual people as team members before they identify their goals, and the expertise and personality strengths needed. We bring that critical, objective perspective for exploration, strategy, and implementation. In a nutshell, we assess the status quo, clarify the vision, and build the bridge. The result is a highly productive team that may see a 45 to 100 percent increase in business in its first year."
Great Efficiency
In an existing team, StrataTeam analyzes how the members can optimize what they already have. "We look at the whole process of their business. How can we make that more effective and efficient? I see our job as asking the right questions: If I'm your client, how do I want access to your service, to you, and to your information?'"
A consultant may work with a team for the first year, providing ongoing coaching and consulting. "It's a real paradigm shift to go from working solo," says Harris. "Brokers are at a high risk of falling back into their old ways, since it takes discipline and effort to maintain the business while strategizing and implementing their team system." Initially, Harris may meet with a team once a week for the first one to three months. After that, it's usually once a month.
Another approach is taken by The Strategic Coach, a firm with offices in Toronto and Chicago. Shannon Waller, creator and lead coach for the firm's entrepreneurial team programs, believes communications skills are the most vital element of a successful broker team.
"It's very easy for a broker to work with a client, determine what the next step is, and forget to communicate the whole picture to the team members. So the client calls up and says, Joe promised me X.' The staffer says, Oh! Great, I'll get that out to you right away.' Then goes to the broker and says, Joe, you never told me that!'"
She says lead brokers in the team must communicate the team's goals and priorities so staff members can do their work more purposefully. Teams also require a high degree or respect for each other's skills and talents, as well as a sense of humor.
"The tool we offer is a common language, so that when brokers are communicating, planning or teaming, they are literally and figuratively on the same page," says Waller. "The program is extremely useful for partners who want to simplify their working lives, increase their income, improve their quality of life, and build a structure that will keep them growing. It's very easy to hit what we call a ceiling of complexity.' At that stage, you have all the skills and talents you need to reach the next level of success, but you're so filled up with stuff' and messes' -- pieces of paper on your desk, voicemails, unanswered e-mails -- that you can't find the time or the mental energy to get to the next level."
The Strategic Coach's program runs for three years, with attendees committing to one year at a time. They attend workshops one day each quarter. "The first year is focused on their personal economic system and how they organize their time. We break entrepreneurs' time into free days, focus days, and buffer days. A free day, in which they do no actual work, is for rejuvenation. The world really demands creativity right now. You need your best brain.' Staying in the creative zone enables you to give your clients the best service, and to come up with the problem-solving ideas clients are counting on and new ideas to develop your business.
"On a focus day, you focus on your top three results-producing or money-making activities," continues Waller. "For broker teams, that usually involves prospecting, selling, and time spent thinking about taking care of those clients. And any time spent building a relationship with your very best clients, whether or not you're actually getting money from them that particular day.
"Buffer days are for cleaning up messes, delegating stuff, and putting into place new capabilities, whether learning new technology or creating a partnership."
A crucial component of The Strategic Coach program is determining one's "unique ability." Waller and staff use the Kolbe-A psychometric profiling test. "What Kathy Kolbe has figured out is that there are three parts to the human mind: the intellect; the affective, or personality; and the conative, or striving instinct. No one part is more important than the other."
Waller defines a unique ability as "something at which you have superior skill, and you have passion for," versus excellent, competent, or incompetent abilities. "We suggest people determine what their unique ability is, then partner up with others who have unique abilities in the areas they don't, and a similar value system. You don't change people's talents. They are who they are. Expect from them what they have to give, not something else. Ideally, you end up with your entire team doing what they're best at. The nice thing about unique ability is you don't have to actually manage it -- you provide direction and your staff will do things that will blow you away."
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Taking another approach is Steven Gustafson, owner of Experience Based Learning (EBL), based in Rockford, Ill. While he founded his firm in 1995, Gustafson has been in the industry since 1984, and his forte is designing customized, experiential workshops. First, EBL collects data on a brokerage's demographics -- the number of staff, the region, its history, the size of the business, etc. Then EBL surveys the key players to find out where the issues lie. Gustafson and staff might use a personality profiling test, such as Meyers-Briggs, or focus on high-performance team models. Gustafson says his clients "don't necessarily understand how to create a team with the smoothest, most seamless transition possible -- to empower all the people who are going to help that process."
New Approaches
EBL's teambuilding workshops range from two hours to five days. "The more you can get people out of their current behaviors or patterns, the greater your success. We take a stepped learning approach. First we do a de-inhibitizing' exercise." Gustafson notes that it's vital for the team members to check their titles and egos at the door, so that all are committed to finding the right answers for success. Next is an exercise that clarifies roles and goals. "At the end of this workshop, what do we want to walk away with that's going to help us with specific roles? Everybody has to be able to buy into that. The team might have a rough goal going in. Here is where we cement it, and everybody commits to the details. Then we hammer out stages that get us to that end result."
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Harris of StrataTeam says one of the biggest problems she encounters is that brokers want to address the issue of compensation first.
"They might ask, How do we split commissions?'" but she says talking about money first is premature. "First they must ask, What is the purpose of our working together?' Will one plus one equal three, or maybe even five? After all, if teaming is not synergistic -- if it doesn't result in more production or more free time -- it's not worth it."
Firm Support
Yet compensation is an integral part of the teambuilding process, and Harris notes the importance of having the support of the firm. "It takes bureaucracies a long time to really get behind this," she says. "It's important to have the support of the firm and the management. A potential team can come up with the best plan, but if the firm doesn't support them in structuring compensation, all bets are off."
If a branch manager's attitude is: "You're on your own; if you can make it work, fine" the firm may lose brokers to others more willing to support teams.
Teams can take many forms, and Harris believes the most difficult to maintain is what she calls the "Peer Plus," when two advisors enter into a 5050 relationship. "There's no designated leader. It's easier to maintain the Senior Plus,' when one seasoned broker brings on associates or juniors. In the One Plus,' a financial advisor creates a highly skilled support staff -- for example, one registered sales assistant, who is often also the operations manager, plus specialists in areas such as customer service, marketing, and data entry/administration."
Despite their appeal, the failure rate among teams is high -- about 50 percent, Harris believes. She says the reasons are "primarily due to human factors, not technical ones. For example, you don't want team members who are clones. There's no synergy generated." Does the failure rate go down if a consultant is brought in? "I believe it does, especially when the consultant works with the team right from the beginning. I've spoken with several potential teams that have not moved ahead because we've identified a team-killer."
When asked about the challenges of forming teams, Binder of First Union outlines five:
* Goals. A broker must be crystal clear about what he or she wants to accomplish as a team and what the contribution is going to be as a member.
* Personalities. You have to make sure the personalities can work together. The most powerful combinations are those that bring together virtual opposites, so that each individual brings something unique, emotionally and mentally, to the team. Yet working together can be a real challenge.
* Structure. The team members must think through a format that gives enough structure to the team's organization, yet allows sufficient flexibility to modify compensation as circumstances change.
* Growth. The team has to work out how it will add members, since sometimes teams start out as two people and can grow to seven or eight.
* Dispute Resolution. There should be a formal mechanism by which the team turns to an outsider to arbitrate any disputes that might occur. "Teams are very intimate human experiences," says Binder. "There's a lot of pressure, and you're dealing with people's money and volatile markets."
Binder notes that some brokers have had bad experiences with teams, which have colored their thinking. "In my region at First Union, we have had extraordinary success in the formation and maintenance of teams. I think that is due to the fact that we recognize it as a process, and we also recognize that our people needed help from the outside, away from the firm or the branch manager. There are firms that pay lip service to the formation of teams but don't support them. They are frankly intimidated by the fact that employees would form these teams that are almost mini-offices within offices. We are very comfortable with that format, because we recognize the tremendous increase in productivity."
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Gustafson of EBL sees another challenge. "With the shift into an information-based economy, we're seeing that those under age 40 or so are less shackled by an industrial mindset." That's why creating a team that consists of both "industrial" and "technology" members can be a good idea. A good team, says Gustafson, asks, "Why do we do this the way we do?'"
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