Journal of Financial Planning: April 2023
Kristen Terpstra is a senior practice management consultant at Commonwealth. With the firm since 2005, she consults with advisers on human resources topics. Kristen has an undergraduate degree from Connecticut College, completed her master’s degree in communication management at Emerson College, and is FINRA Series 7 registered.
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There are myriad designations, certifications, and degrees to help you further your skills as an adviser. But, aside from honing your planning and technical skills and having a career path in mind, what are other ways you can show leadership you’re serious about your development and position yourself on a clear track for growth?
Whether you are a new planner on a team, a dual adviser office, or a part of a large RIA, it’s essential to create a path for yourself where you learn the soft skills needed to work with clients and simultaneously show yourself as a valued member of the team. Over the past 15 years, I’ve seen many new planners climb the ladder to senior roles—and one thing they had in common is that they proactively demonstrated leadership early in their careers.
With this in mind, here are seven tips to help you fine-tune your own professional skills to achieve success as a new adviser.
- Create a development plan. Work with your lead planner on building your professional development path. To start, consider the industry certifications, degrees, and other credentials the leadership team holds. Does it make sense for you to pursue those same ones? And how will they help the firm grow? Remember to think beyond designations, too, by brainstorming creative ways to broaden your knowledge base. For example, join local or third-party vendor networking groups that specialize in specific training types. The more well-rounded you are, the more options you may have.
- Learn more about the clients. Firms have various client niches, from divorcees, money in transition, and pre-retirees to corporate executives of specific industries. If your firm has a particular area of focus, learn more about it by researching the unique needs of that client base. Read websites, join LinkedIn groups, or subscribe to publications devoted to educating those niches to help you become well-versed in the specific needs of that group. Taking steps beyond the client meeting to expand your knowledge enables you to provide leadership with valuable information on how to work with them more strategically.
Once you get to know your client niche, it’s also important to share relevant thought leadership with your colleagues and management. For example, if you read an article on regulatory or compliance issues, and you think it might be helpful to a coworker who’s preparing for an upcoming client meeting, be sure to pass it along to them.
- Be an observer. Ask to shadow your lead advisers in financial planning meetings with clients. This request may feel superfluous, especially if you have the CFP® certification. But the purpose is to watch how your lead adviser manages the client relationship, answers challenging questions, explains complex planning concepts, and empathizes with clients. This will help you improve your understanding of the firm’s culture with clients—and it can also help you develop your own style. Through the experience, you can pick up useful tactics to adopt and apply to your own client interactions, from setting up the discussion and running the meeting to segueing through topics and subjects.
Likewise, if you are struggling with one aspect of a meeting, feel free to ask your lead planner to observe you in action (as long as the client is comfortable with it) and give you feedback. This process will help you improve your skills and better handle certain client situations in the future.
- Ask for a walking meeting. During busy seasons, advisers run from meeting to meeting or squeeze in follow-up operational activities and notes directly after client meetings. This leaves little time in between sessions to debrief with their lead advisers. To prevent this, ask your lead adviser for a walking meeting, where you have a discussion and ask follow-up questions while you are both on your way back to your desks. This way, you don’t miss the opportunity to gain insight into their thought process and why they approached certain topics the way they did. This method will help you determine your own style in meetings and give you valuable insights into the lead advisers’ minds and relationship-managing techniques.
- Know your strategic role in the firm. Firms that participate in strategic planning or business planning exercises are likely to have targeted goals that go beyond increasing assets under management, adding new clients, or improving profitability. As a planner, it’s critical to be aware of those strategic goals and your role in achieving them. By understanding how you contribute to the overarching firm goals and, ultimately, the mission and vision of the firm, you can be strategic about prioritizing your work and establishing goals for your performance review (see below).
Keep in mind that some strategic planning happens exclusively at the leadership level. If you can’t be a part of these discussions, make sure to use your performance review meeting as an opportunity to ask about how you can help achieve firm goals. Proving yourself to be a proactive, reliable partner for leadership will help solidify their trust in you and how you handle your clients. And remember to raise your hand for special projects and offer to take challenging cases off their plates to prove that you are capable. It is important to show your willingness, be available, and consistently step up when needed.
- Maximize your performance review meetings. Many firms will hold annual performance meetings with their team members, where advisers are evaluated based on what they accomplished during the year. If this is the case with your firm, it can be challenging to remember your notable accomplishments over the course of the year. Instead, keep a working folder where you incrementally track your progress, and reference it before your performance meeting.
Additionally, consider creating a self-appraisal form you can fill out before your annual performance review. Providing the completed form to leadership can contribute to a more structured, productive performance review discussion. You’ll want the form to capture the milestones you have achieved over the past year, highlight areas where you want to improve (both technical and soft skills), and outline your specific goals for the year ahead. Self-appraisal forms are invaluable resources because they can help leadership to conduct your review using accurate, timely information and provide you with the opportunity to rate your performance objectively. Plus, it demonstrates to leadership that you are taking the initiative in both your professional development and self-awareness.
- Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Many people who are new to a role feel uncomfortable dealing with a challenging client situation or will lean on a senior leadership member to help them solve it. And sometimes, it may feel like you’re taking a risk by involving yourself in a tricky professional situation. But a part of growing professionally is putting yourself in these tough scenarios and working through them independently. So if a difficult client calls in, do not hesitate to talk with them and build up your skill set for working with them long term. Leadership will take note if you consistently work with challenging clients, take ownership to solve their problems, and give good advice.
All of us can remember a challenging client situation at some point in our careers. And since the markets fluctuate, there will be ebbs and flows in all client relationships. There is no designation or blueprint that can teach you how to weather these issues and become more seasoned with them—only time and experience. So, each time you encounter a situation that you think is overwhelming, consider that these experiences will help you build and strengthen your capabilities over the course of your career. Your baseline for what is uncomfortable will increase, and the complexity of situations likely will, too. If you get through one difficult situation, you will likely have another similar one on the horizon.
With each experience, you are building a library for yourself on how to navigate these situations with professionalism and leadership. And refining these skills will set you up for a successful future and make you stand out in your lead advisers’ eyes.
An Informed Path Forward
As you continue to hone and refine your professional skills, it’s important to be mindful of the differences between lead advisers and associate advisers when it comes to career development. Some lead planners haven’t always been planners; maybe they started in business development and moved to planning as they grew in their respective roles. Fast forward to the next generation of planners, and the reverse may be true—they may start out as planners and then learn the business development component later.
The two generations need symbiosis to keep moving forward so that newer advisers can learn the professional- and relationship-development skills of their lead adviser colleagues. This way, when the time comes for new advisers to show leadership, they are ready for the next step—they have proactively developed their soft skills, have a strategic career plan in place, and are ready to grow.
