Management Principle: Vicious Compliance

Today’s business environment is so challenging that we must fully employ the resources at our disposal. We underutilize our staff when we fail to delegate or tap into their thinking and judgment.

Management Principle: Compassion

Many people spend more time with business associates than they do their families–all the more reason to address the culture and climate of the workplace.

Management Principle: Harmony

The cost of a well-functioning team is high. It requires transparency, a commitment to other’s success, and the kind of vulnerability that leads to risk-taking, which, for sure, ensures mistakes will be made.

Building Relationships

When it comes to building meaningful and successful relationships with your family, friends, colleagues and clients, effective communication is foundational.

Advisors Creating Lasting Value With Customized Experiences

An article by James Fennessy in the Australian Banking and Finance magazine on March 10, 2011 highlights a key challenge for financial advisors. That is delivering value to their clients and getting paid for it. How do advisors demonstrate the trust in their advice to get paid for it? The article points out that the [...]

Financial Performance in the New Behavioral Economy White Paper

The winds of change are moving fast through the modern economy, and this includes the financial services industry. What we are seeing is the emergence of the “New Behavioral Economy” – where the client is king and behavioral finance is in. This means the approach to providing [...]

Resistance to Financial Planning

Last week, there was a Financial Planning Association group discussion in which someone posed the question: “Why do people resist creating a formal financial plan”.
This is a great question and gets to the core of financial planning.
Many people do not know what financial planning is. I think many financial planners are [...]

Know Your Client’s Trust Levels

Last week I was working with one of our Certified Wealth Mentors with my role to offer some behavioral insights on some difficult client cases. The cases were difficult because of the clients’ attitudes not only to financial decision-making but also to life. These cases reaffirmed to me how much trust is core to all dimensions of every client situation. This is why when we redeveloped our DNA personality system in the past year we made trust a new stand-alone personality factor.

Often when we talk about trust it is in the context of our role as trusted advisor and building open relationships with clients. Certainly, this is an important dimension. Talking about trust in this way is fine. However, the heart of truly understanding trust and to knowing our clients is to know where trust comes from.

Advisor Trust

The theme at this week’s FPA Conference in Anaheim centered on trust. Becoming the trusted advisor is not a new idea however, it is increasingly talked about.
The question is how do you become the trusted advisor? How do you accelerate trust in your advisory relationships, and for that matter in any [...]

New DNA Behavioral Solutions to Accelerate TRUST and Your Relationships

At the moment, more than ever, the whole notion of trust in every aspect of our lives is important. For many, trust is very low, if not shattered, with our leaders, advisors, partners and family members. Furthermore, trust in ourselves is low, which is the core of the issue. If your [...]