Peter Switzer says the lack of someone to follow is the cause of many ills.
Right now, our industry is under one of the greatest threats we’ve ever seen. The Gillard Government’s proposed reforms have challenged the pricing model and many practices that most financial planners have taken for granted. These changes are Government-imposed improvements, but were they necessary?
Now, I am not going to keep you hanging on until I reveal my position. I will give you what I think and then I will justify it.
Most of the changes were necessary because financial planners lack leadership. In the past, we’ve lacked it from the top of our associations and from many financial institutions. And individually, as planners, we have not been encouraged to embrace leadership. This was best underlined to me when the Government found it necessary to enshrine in law that we had a legal responsibility to our client to do the right thing.
I must have gone to sleep in class when they taught us that we don’t have such a responsibility!
This tells me that not only has our leadership failed to set a good example, but many of us have failed to lead ourselves. And one of the world’s most respected leadership lecturers and authors, John Maxwell, made this point clear to me a few years ago when I acted as MC for him at a business conference in Dubai.
As my business grew, I, like many of us, was thrown into a position of leadership. And while I had been a teacher, lecturer and football coach – where I had been pretty successful leading my students and my players – leading people who depended on me for their living, their career development and their families’ standard of living was a whole new ball game.
In his book Start Small Finish Big, the co-founder of Subway, Fred Deluca, defers to John Maxwell and his book, Developing Leaders Around You, where Maxwell argues that when you believe in people, you motivate them to reach their potential.
“You can hire people to work for you,” Maxwell says, “but you must win their hearts by believing in them in order to have them work with you.”
Getting this right builds passion and intensity in the eyes of your employees, he argues.
My favourite Maxwell book is The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, which is easily the most battered and re-read book in my library. In this book he delivers the 21 laws that I was able to benchmark myself off, and that was the way that I was able to create a program to build up my leadership skills.
But how were Maxwell’s views relevant to our industry’s problems? It’s simple – we lacked leadership.
If we operated on a lack of transparency we would not only mislead our clients but we would mislead our staff!
From his Law of Solid Ground Maxwell argues that “to build trust, a leader must exhibit competence, connection and character”.
Maxwell points to the observations of General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who said: “Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without strategy.”
Maxwell reminds us that character makes trust possible and trust makes leadership possible.
Too many financial planners weren’t taught this, and this is why government action has resulted.
And while the changes could hit our bottom lines, the great leaders amongst us will turn a threat into an opportunity. After all, financial planners are, by their very definition, leaders of their customers – and the better we lead them, the better we will lead our teams.
By the way, Maxwell is coming to Australia soon, and I am speaking on the programs. He is at the Sofitel in Melbourne on June 29, Sheraton on the Park in Sydney on June 30 and at the Mercure in Brisbane on July 1.
Any reader who wants to attend, go to http://www.eiseverywhere.com/ehome/index.php?eventid=23534 and I will see to it that you get the $375 ticket for $325.
Good leading!
Peter Switzer is founder of fee-for-service financial planning firm Switzer Financial Services and hosts SWITZER on Sky News Business Channel, Monday to Friday at 7pm and 10pm.
